Home > Authors Index > J. Stewart Barney > L.P.M. : The End of the Great War > This page
L.P.M. : The End of the Great War, a novel by J. Stewart Barney |
||
Chapter 32. 50. P. M. |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXXII. L. P. M. Almost beside himself, Lawrence resisted all of Edestone's efforts to get him back into the elevator. "You damn' dirty Dutchman, I'll pay you for this!" he yelled over his shoulder, as he struggled to break loose from the firm grip which held him, and get at the Count. It was not a time to permit of argument. Overpowering him with his great strength, Edestone simply dragged him back, and flung him into a corner of the car, where he sat crying like a baby with uncontrollable rage. After he had started the lift, however, Edestone went over and patted him soothingly on the shoulder. "I am sorry, old man," he said regretfully, "awfully sorry! He thought it was I, and I almost wish it had been." This brought Lawrence back to himself. He knew that Edestone meant every word he said and, jumping to his feet, he threw his arms around his friend's neck. "Bo!" he exclaimed, half-laughing, half-sobbing, "you are a king among men!" little dreaming of the amount of truth there was in what he said. A moment later he dropped back into the vernacular, where he was more at home. "You are the best sport I ever knew," he said, "and I am nothing but a rotten squealer! Forgive me, and I will try to be good. But, Bo! that did hurt!" The tears came to his eyes once more. "He was such a nervy little chap!" By this time they had gotten to the roof, where they found Black, Stanton, and James eagerly awaiting them. "Where is Fred?" asked Black, noting his absence as the other two stepped out to join them. "Dead by God!" Lawrence started again to become hysterical. "That devil, Count von Hemelstein, killed him!" "Shut up, Lawrence!" broke in Edestone sharply. "Cut out that swearing and get to work. We have no time to lose." In the same quick, authoritative tone, he issued his orders to the others, as they stood staring at the news, each in his different way showing his breeding. Black was commencing to whine; Stanton with a scowl of rage was in sympathy with Lawrence; while James, demonstrating his years of training, stood statue-like with hand behind his back, leaning forward as if to catch his master's next order, and carry it out with perfect decorum. "Have you locked the door at the foot of the stairs? Ah! That is good!" he exclaimed, as he saw that they had barricaded the door of the bulkhead by putting a piece of timber between it and the coping around one of the skylights. It had grown quite dark in the interval, but in the glare of the great searchlights which were playing upon her he could plainly see above him the Little Peace Maker which had swung into a position directly over the Embassy, and was now slowly descending. She was not over a thousand feet above the roof as she hung there, three of her great searchlights bearing steadily on three different points in the city, and giving to her the aspect of an enormous spyglass standing on its gigantic tripod, and by its own weight forcing the feet of the tripod into the soft earth, as the ship slowly settled. Shrapnel shells were exploding all about her, and at times she was almost entirely enveloped in smoke. Between the reports of the heavier artillery could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one of the gunners would reach one of her searchlights, and as the ray was extinguished, one almost expected to see her topple in the direction of her broken support, but in each case it was quickly replaced by another, and she continued to drop nearer and nearer to the earth. Excepting for the searchlights there was no sign of life on board. Silently and without response of any kind, she came. But as she approached nearer, and the angle of the German guns was still further reduced, although they must already have been doing frightful damage in all parts of the city, the shrapnel and small bullets could be heard screaming over the heads of the little party on the roof. "It is getting pretty hot here, and we had better lie down," Edestone said. But the words were hardly out of his mouth before Stanton fell with a bullet in his head, and James sat down, probably more abruptly than he had ever done anything before in all his life. "I beg pardon, sir," he observed with a little gasp, "but I think, sir, as how they have got me in the leg, sir." They all dropped down. Stanton was dead, and James was bleeding badly from the flesh-wound in his leg. "That was the fellow in that tower over there." Lawrence made a reconnoissance. "He is now shooting straight at us." "This has got to stop." Edestone frowned. "Lawrence send this message. No cipher; I would rather have them catch this. "Tell 'Specs' first to haul down the U. S. flag and run up my private signal. Then he is to silence every gun he can find that is bearing on us, and train a machine-gun on the door of the bulk-head, ready to fire when I give the signal by throwing up my hat. "Take Lawrence up to the instrument, Mr. Black," he directed, turning to Black who was giving "first aid" to the unfortunate valet. "I will do what I can for James." When the elevator with Lawrence and the electrician had gone up above the level of the roof, leaving the shaft open down into the house, he could distinctly hear the soldiers running up the stairs. At any moment now they might be hammering on the door at the foot of the stairway leading to the roof. He hated the idea of killing those innocent Germans, mere machines, as they were, in the hands of a Master, who with his entire entourage had become sick with a mania which took the form of militarism, imperialism, and pan-Germanism. But after the death of his two fellow-countrymen--for at heart he was still true to the land of his birth, although to save her he had just renounced the flag--he felt that he was justified in what he was about to do. With a silent prayer for the peasant mothers who were soon to lose their dear ones, he commended their souls to God, and not as these mothers, poor benighted creatures, had done, to their Emperor. He was startled from these sorrowful reflections by the white glow of a searchlight from the Little Peace Maker sweeping across the roof, and playing hither and thither. Evidently, "Specs" had received his order, and was now feeling about for the bulkhead door. A moment later he located it. Immediately the night was made hideous with the roar of the guns from the airship, as they sowed bursting shells in all directions, and carried death and destruction to the heart of this great and wonderful city, built up stone by stone, and standing as a living monument to one of the greatest people on the face of the earth--a people that science teaches are the very last expression of God's greatness shown in His wonderful evolution of matter into His own image. And for what? That one family might maintain the position given to one of their ancestors in the remote, dark, and grovelling ages of the past for prowess of which a modern prizefighter might be proud, but for acts to which he with a higher standard might not stoop. The telling response of the Little Peace Maker soon put an end to the storm of shrapnel and bullets which had been singing, whistling, buzzing, and screaming about them, and Edestone might have been able to stand up, but for the pertinacity of the snipers, those serpents of modern warfare, who were searching every dark corner of the roof. Matters were fast coming to a climax, however. By the time that Lawrence and Black had returned from sending the wireless message, and had crawled over to where Edestone lay, the soldiers had broken down the lower door, and were pounding at the upper, which "Specs" was holding as with a rapier point at the heart of a fallen foe, ready to strike at the slightest movement. Crawling over to the elevator shaft, Edestone called down a warning in a loud voice to those below: "I have a machine-gun trained on the top of the stairs! If you order your men to break that door down, I will order my guns to fire, and will kill them faster than you can drive them up!" For a moment the only response to his challenge was silence. Then a voice rang out which he had heard before, arrogant and commanding: "As God has ordained that I and none other should rule the earth, with Him alone, I shall. By my Imperial order, and with His assistance, bring that man to me, dead or alive!" A brief pause ensued. Edestone could hear the officers urging on their men. Suddenly pistol-shots rang out, and with a mad rush they came on. The door swayed and shivered under the impact. It split and shattered. Finally it fell. "May God have mercy on his soul!" murmured Edestone, and he tossed his hat high in the air. "Specs" from his look-out caught the signal; and instantly the doorway became a writhing, shrieking mass of wounded humanity. Like vaseline squeezed out of a tube, it was forced out of the opening by the pressure of those behind and spread in wider and wider circles across the roof, until the aperture itself was choked and stopped with bodies. But Edestone and his companions were spared the full measure of this sickening sight, as the rapid manoeuvres of the Little Peace Maker compelled them to devote their attention to her. As the great ship descended to within about ten feet of the chimney-tops, men appeared on her lower bridge and dropped over the insulated ladder which extended almost to where the refugees lay. Picking James up and putting him on his back where he clung like a baby, Edestone ran for the ladder, quickly followed by Lawrence and Black. He reached the bridge just in time to turn James over to one of the crew, and extend his assistance to Lawrence, who had received a shot in one hand, and was rather dizzily holding on to the ladder with the other. Eventually, though, they all gained the bridge, and with their rescuers already there raced up the gangway under a perfect hail of bullets for the open doorway at the top. But before the last man had passed through, two of the sailors had been shot, and had fallen to their death on the roof. As they entered the ship, they were met by "Specs," Captain Lee, Dr. Brown, and other officers in uniforms which at the first glance might have been taken for those of the New York Yacht Club, except for the insignia on their caps which was a combination of Edestone's private signal and the letters L. P. M. Edestone, however, interrupted their attempt to salute him. "Please waive all ceremony," he said. "We have wounded men here that must be attended to." At this, Dr. Brown immediately came forward, and after ordering Lawrence and James to the hospital gave a start as his glance fell upon Edestone. "You did not tell me that you yourself were wounded, sir," he exclaimed; and then for the first time Edestone discovered that his face, hands, and clothing were covered with blood which was streaming from a wound above his temple. He was about to permit himself also to be examined, when there was heard from below the detonation of one of the Kaiser's big mortars; and pulling away from the Doctor, he called an excited order to "Specs": "Throw on your full charge, and lift her as fast as you can!" He ran to the gangway in time to see the wire carried up to a great height by the ball from the mortar settling down across the Little Peace Maker about midships. It was falling now, and would soon come in contact with the ship. When it did, there was a slight jar perceptible, but no such result as the enemy had hoped. The wire was so quickly fused, accompanying an explosion giving out an intense light, that it seemed to shoot to the earth like a streak of lightning, setting fire to or knocking down everything that lay in its path. Another and another mortar shot followed until the sky seemed to be filled with falling wires which were swinging, twisting, and snapping above him. The Little Peace Maker was the centre of an electrical storm, and was sending back by every wire messages of death to those who were striving to bring her down. The ship was rising very rapidly now, however, and almost before Edestone had time to sing out, "Steady now, as you are," she was 3000 feet above the German capital, and out of range of the wire-throwers. _ |
||