Bell could not believe how the great thoroughfare of the city, with its magnificent buildings, had changed from the evening before. Gone were the fleets of vehicles, the throngs of happy, contented people working or shopping in the heart of the city’s business district. Now the boulevard was scarcely recognizable. The tall buildings had crumbled to pieces, huge pillars with their decorative cornices and ornamentations had been wrenched from the façades of the structures and hurled to the sidewalk and street in jumbled fragments. The enormous office and store windows were shattered. Signs that once advertised the businesses occupying them lay scattered amid the wreckage.

As Bell made his way down through the destruction, he could see that the blocks to the south were becoming an ocean of flame. He knew it was only a matter of time before the big hotels, government buildings, tall office skyscrapers, the great department stores, and the theaters would be burned-out skeletons. There were far too few firemen and almost all of the underground water mains had been ruptured by the earthquake. Hundreds of the city’s fire hydrants and water taps trickled and then ran dry. The firemen, helpless in fighting the mushrooming fires, began a heroic struggle to repair the water lines.

After dodging the automobiles transporting the injured and making his way over the landslides of brick, Bell came within sight of the Call Building. At first, the twelve-story skyscraper looked in good shape, but as he walked closer he saw that the base of one side of the building had moved two feet over the sidewalk toward the street. Inside, he found that none of the elevators were working because the interior was twisted out of alignment. He made his way up the five flights of stairs to the Van Dorn office and stepped over the mounds of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. Footprints in the plaster told him others had preceded him.

The furniture scattered about the office by the quake had been set upright where originally positioned.

Bell walked into the conference room and found four Van Dorn agents including Bronson, who rushed over and pumped his hand. “Am I ever glad to see you alive. I was afraid you might be lying under a ton of rubble.”

Bell managed a smile. “Marion’s house lost the front wall, but her apartment is a mess.” He paused and looked around room. Not seeing Curtis, he asked, “Have you heard from Art?”

The look on everyone’s face told Bell what he needed to know. “Art is missing, assumed to have been crushed under tons of brick as he made his way from the Palace Hotel to our office,” Bronson answered solemnly. “From what reports we’ve managed to gather, two of my agents are either injured or dead. We don’t know yet. Those you see here are the only ones who survived without injury.”