Bell gazed across the bedroom. It looked like the contents of a wastebasket that had been dumped on the floor. He put his arm around Marion’s waist and pulled her toward the closet, where their clothes still hung on hangers, free of the dust.

“Dress and be quick about it,” he said firmly. “The building isn’t stable and might collapse at any minute.”

“What happened?” she asked in utter confusion. “Was it an explosion?”

“No, I believe it was an earthquake.”

She stared through the wreck of her parlor and saw the ruined buildings on the other side of the street. “Good Lord!” she gasped. “The wall is gone.” Then she discovered that her piano was missing. “Oh, no, my grandmother’s piano. Where did it go?”

“I think what’s left of it is down on the street,” replied Bell sympathetically. “No more talk. Hurry and throw on some clothes. We’ve got to get out of here.”

She ran to the closet, her composure back on keel, and Bell could see that she was as tough as the bricks that had fallen around them. While he put on the suit he’d worn the night before, she slipped into a cotton blouse under a coarse woolen jacket and skirt for warmth against the cool breeze blowing in from the sea. She was not only beautiful, Bell thought, she was also a practical, thinking woman.

“What about my jewelry, my family photos, my valuables?” she asked. “Shouldn’t I take them with me?”

“We’ll come back for them later, when we see if the building is still standing.”

They dressed in less than two minutes, and he led her around the gaping hole in the floor made by the fallen chimney and past the overturned furniture to the front door of the apartment. Marion felt as if she were in another world, as she stared out into open air where the wall once stood and saw her neighbors beginning to wander bewildered out into the middle of the street.

The door was wedged tight. The earthquake had shifted the building and jammed the door against its frame. Bell knew better than to attack the door by charging against it with his shoulder. That was a fool’s play. He balanced on one leg and lashed out with the other. The door failed to show the least sign of give. He looked around the room and surprised Marion with his strength when he picked up the heavy sofa and shoved it against the door like a battering ram. On the third thrust, the door splintered and swung crazily open on one hinge.

Thankfully, the stairway was still standing, winding its way to the floor below. Bell and Marion made it past the main entrance and found a high mountain of debris piled outside the apartment house, thrown there when the front wall crashed and buried the street. The front section of the structure looked as if it had been sliced clean by a giant cleaver.