“What has happened?” she cried. “Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God—and see—”

She dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery.

The tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks, and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body.

“I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet which I took last night; when I came out—I saw the dead!

“What has happened?” she cried again.

He answered slowly:

“Something—comet or devil—swept across the earth this morning and—many are dead!”

“Many? Very many?”

“I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you.”

She gasped and they stared at each other.

“My—father!” she whispered.

“Where is he?”

“He started for the office.”

“Where is it?”

“In the Metropolitan Tower.”

“Leave a note for him here and come.” Then he stopped. “No,” he said firmly, “first, we must go—to Harlem.”

“Harlem!” she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely down the steps.

“There’s a swifter car in the garage in the court,” she said.

“I don’t know how to drive it,” he said.

“I do,” she answered.

* * *

In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz rose and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th Street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th. He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray. She did not look, but said:

“You have lost—somebody?”

“I have lost—everybody,” he said simply, “unless—”

He ran back and was gone several minutes—hours they seemed to her.

“Everybody,” he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like in his hand, which he stuffed into his pocket.

“I’m afraid I was selfish,” he said. But already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem—the brown, still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence—the wild and haunting silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan Tower hovered in sight.

Gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent:

Dear Daughter: