They waited for
their trains, and the twilight gathered. For ten minutes trains continued
to enter the shed. This puzzled Longman until he remembered that gravity
would bring in those this side of Harlem. None went out. The waiting
throng was a hotbed for rumors. Longman collected much human-interest
stuff, and was quite well satisfied with his story--until he saw what it
had meant elsewhere.
For in the subways and tubes the stoppage of the trains had automatically
discontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, in
mortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their way
painfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephitic
vapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. When
revived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over windrows of bodies
there below.
Through the gathering twilight of the streets, dusky and shadowy,
flitted bat-like the criminals of the underworld. What they saw, that
they took. Growing bolder, they progressed from pocket-picking to
holdups, from holdups to looting. The police reserves were all out;
they could do little. Favored by obscurity, the thieves plundered. It
would have needed a solid cordon of officers to have protected
adequately the retail district. Swiftly a guerrilla warfare sprang up.
Bullets whistled. Anarchy raised its snaky locks and peered red-eyed
through the darkened streets of the city.
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