CHAPTER VI
TREASURE-TROVE
Never before had either of them realized just what the meaningof forty-eight stories might be. For all their memories of this heightwere associated with smooth-sliding elevators that had whisked them upas though the tremendous height had been the merest trifle.
This night, however, what with the broken stairs, the debris-cumberedhallways, the lurking darkness which the torch could hardly hold backfrom swallowing them, they came to a clear understanding of theproblem.
Every few minutes the flame burned low and Stern had to drop on morealcohol, holding the bottle high above the flame to avoid explosion.
Long before they had compassed the distance to the ground floor thegirl lagged with weariness and shrank with nameless fears.
Each black doorway that yawned along their path seemed ominous withmemories of life that had perished there, of death that now reignedall-supreme.
Each corner, every niche and crevice, breathed out the spirit of thepast and of the mystic tragedy which in so brief a time had wiped thehuman race from earth, "as a mother wipes the milky lips of herchild."
And Stern, though he said little save to guide Beatrice and warn herof unusual difficulties, felt the somber magic of the place. No poet,he; only a man of hard and practical details. Yet he realized that,were he dowered with the faculty, here lay matter for an Epic of Deathsuch as no Homer ever dreamed, no Virgil ever could have penned.
Now and then, along the corridors and down the stairways, they chancedon curious little piles of dust, scattered at random in fantasticshapes.
These for a few minutes puzzled Stern, till stooping, he stirred onewith his hand. Something he saw there made him start back with astifled exclamation.
"What is it?" cried the girl, startled. "Tell me!"
But he, realizing the nature of his discovery--for he had seen a humanincisor tooth, gold-filled, there in the odd little heap--straightenedup quickly and assumed to smile.
"It's nothing, nothing at all!" he answered. "Come, we haven't got anytime to waste. If we're going to provide ourselves with even a fewnecessaries before the alcohol's all gone, we've got to be at work!"
And onward, downward, ever farther and farther, he led her through thedark maze of ruin, which did not even echo to their barefoot tread.
Like disheveled wraiths they passed, soundlessly, through eerielabyrinths and ways which might have served as types of Coleridge's"caverns measureless to man," so utterly drear they stretched out intheir ghostly desolation.
At length, after an eternal time of weariness and labor, they managedto make their way down into the ruins of the once famous and beautifularcade which had formerly run from Madison Avenue to the square.
"Oh, how horrible!" gasped Beatrice, shrinking, as they clambered downthe stairs and emerged into this scene of chaos, darkness, death.
Where long ago the arcade had stretched its path of light and life andbeauty, of wealth and splendor, like an epitome of civilization allgathered in that constricted space, the little light disclosed starkhorror.
Feeble as a will-o'-the-wisp in that enshrouding dark, the torchshowed only hints of things--here a fallen pillar, there a shatteredmass of wreckage where a huge section of the ceiling had fallen,yonder a gaping aperture left by the disintegration of a wall.
Through all this rubbish and confusion, over and through a score ofthe little dust-piles which Stern had so carefully avoided explainingto Beatrice, they climbed and waded, and with infinite pains slowlyadvanced.
"What we need is more light!" exclaimed the engineer presently. "We'vegot to have a bonfire here!"
And before long he had collected a considerable pile of wood, rippedfrom the door-ways and window-casings of the arcade. This he set fireto, in the middle of the floor.
Soon a dull, wavering glow began to paint itself upon the walls, andto fling the comrades' shadows, huge and weird, in dancing mockeryacross the desolation.
Strangely enough, many of the large plate-glass windows lining thearcade still stood intact. They glittered with the uncanny reflectionsof the fire as the man and woman slowly made way down the passage.
"See," exclaimed Stern, pointing. "See all these ruined shops?Probably almost everything is worthless. But there must be some thingsleft that we can use.
"See the post-office, down there on the left? Think of the millions inreal money, gold and silver, in all these safes here and all over thecity--in the banks and vaults! Millions! Billions!
"Jewels, diamonds, wealth simply inconceivable! Yet now a good watersupply, some bread, meat, coffee, salt, and so on, a couple of beds, agun or two and some ordinary tools would outweigh them all!"
"Clothes, too," the girl suggested. "Plain cotton cloth is worth tenmillion dollars an inch now."
"Right," answered Stern, gazing about him with wonder.
"And I offer a bushel of diamonds for a razor and a pair of scissors."Grimly he smiled as he stroked his enormous beard.
"But come, this won't do. There'll be plenty of time to look aroundand discuss things in the morning. Just now we've got a definiteerrand. Let's get busy!"
Thus began their search for a few prime necessities of life, there inthat charnel-house of civilization, by the dull reflections of thefirelight and the pallid torch glow.
Though they forced their way into ten or twelve of the arcade shops,they found no clothing, no blankets or fabric of any kind that wouldserve for coverings or to sleep upon. Everything at all in the natureof cloth had either sunk back into moldering annihilation or had atbest grown far too fragile to be of the slightest service.
They found, however, a furrier's shop, and this they entered eagerly.
From rusted metal hooks a few warped fragments of skins still hung,moth-eaten, riddled with holes, ready to crumble at the merest touch.
"There's nothing in any of these to help us," judged Stern. "But maybewe might find something else in here."
Carefully they searched the littered place, all dust and horribledisarray, which made sad mockery of the gold-leaf sign still visibleon the window: "Lange, Importer. All the Latest Novelties."
On the floor Stern discovered three more of those little dust-middenswhich meant human bodies, pitiful remnants of an extinct race, ofunknown people in the long ago. What had he now in common with them?The remains did not even inspire repugnance in him. All at onceBeatrice uttered a cry of startled gladness. "Look here! A storagechest!"
True enough, there stood a cedar box, all seamed and cracked andbulging, yet still retaining a semblance of its original shape.
The copper bindings and the lock were still quite plainly to be seen,as the engineer held the torch close, though green and corroded withincredible age.
One effort of Stern's powerful arms sufficed to tip the chest quiteover. As it fell it burst. Down in a mass of pulverized, worm-eatensplinters it disintegrated.
Out rolled furs, many and many of them, black, and yellow, andstriped--the pelts of the grizzly, of the leopard, the chetah, theroyal Bengal himself.
"Hurray!" shouted the man, catching up first one, then another, andstill a third. "Almost intact. A little imperfection here and theredoesn't matter. Now we've got clothes and beds.
"What's that? Yes, maybe they are a trifle warm for this season of theyear, but this is no time to be particular. See, now, how do you like_that?_"
Over the girl's shoulders, as he spoke, he flung the tiger-skin.
"Magnificent!" he judged, standing back a pace or two and holding upthe torch to see her better. "When I find you a big gold pin or claspto fasten that with at the throat you'll make a picture of another andmore splendid Boadicea!"
He tried to laugh at his own words, but merriment sat ill there inthat place, and with such a subject. For the woman, thus clad, hadsuddenly assumed a wild, barbaric beauty.
Bright gleamed her gray eyes by the light of the flambeau; limpid, anddeep, and earnest, they looked at Stern. Her wonderful hair, shakenout in bewildering
masses over the striped, tawny savagery of therobe, made colorful contrasts, barbarous, seductive.
Half hidden, the woman's perfect body, beautiful as that of awood-nymph or a pagan dryad, roused atavistic passions in theengineer.
He dared speak no other word for the moment, but bent beside theshattered chest again and fell to looking over the furs.
A polar-bear skin attracted his attention, and this he chose. Then,with it slung across his shoulder, he stood up.
"Come," said he, steadying his voice with an effort; "come, we must begoing now. Our light won't hold out very much longer. We've got tofind food and drink before the alcohol's all gone; got to look out forpractical affairs, whatever happens. Let's be going."
Fortune favored them.
In the wreck of a small fancy grocer's booth down toward the end ofthe arcade, where the post-office had been, they came upon a stock ofgoods in glass jars.
All the tinned foods had long since perished, but the impermeableglass seemed to have preserved fruits and vegetables of the finersort, and chipped beef and the like, in a state of perfect soundness.
Best of all, they discovered the remains of a case of mineral water.The case had crumbled to dust, but fourteen bottles of water werestill intact.
"Pile three or four of these into my fur robe here," directed Stern."Now, a few of the other jars--that's right. To-morrow we'll come downand clean up the whole stock. But we've got enough for now."
"We'd best be getting back up the stairs again," said he. And so theystarted.
"Are you going to leave that fire burning?" asked the girl, as theypassed the middle of the arcade.
"Yes. It can't do any harm. Nothing to catch here; only old metal andcement. Besides, it would take too much time and labor to put it out."
Thus they abandoned the gruesome place and began the long, exhaustingclimb.
It must have taken them an hour and a half at least to reach theireerie. Both found their strength taxed to the utmost.
Before they were much more than halfway up, the ultimate drop ofalcohol had been burned.
The last few hundred feet had to be made by slow, laborious feeling,aided only by such dim reflections of the gibbous moon as glimmeredthrough a window, cobweb-hung, or through some break in the walls.
At length, however--for all things have an end--breathless and spent,they found their refuge. And soon after that, clad in their savagerobes, they supped.
Allan Stern, consulting engineer, and Beatrice Kendrick, stenographer,now king and queen of the whole wide world domain (as they feared),sat together by a little blaze of punky wood fragments that flickeredon the eroded floor.
They ate with their fingers and drank out of the bottles, _sans_apology. Strange were their speculations, their wonderings, theirplans--now discussed specifically, now half-voiced by a mere word thatthrilled them both with sudden, poignant emotion.
An so an hour passed, and the night deepened toward the birth ofanother day. The fire burned low and died, for they had little toreplenish it with.
Down sank the moon, her pale light dimming as she went, her faintillumination wanly creeping across the disordered, wrack-strewn floor.
And at length Stern, in the outer office, Beatrice in the other, theywrapped themselves within their furs and laid them down to sleep.
Despite the age-long trance from which they both had but so recentlyemerged, a strange lassitude weighed on them.
Yet long after Beatrice had lost herself in dreams, Stern lay andthought strange thoughts, yearning and eager thoughts, there in theimpenetrable gloom.