The Unsuspected

control.

Grandy was peering into the pit distastefully. His face was pained. The big bucket went down again, gnawed at the nauseous heap, nuzzled at it, then slowly it rose toward the top of the wall.

'Listen, they gotta clean up the pits before they can quit,' the man said stubbornly. 'They don't stop just for anybody's fun, you know. The men down there firing, they wanna get through.'

The fires, then, must be somewhere below, somewhere below the floor where they were, and beyond that wall, at the top of which still stood the man in the gas mask. His big glassined eyes were turned down and toward them.

Fire. Very hot fire. Very hot indeed, to burn what was down there in those pits, what went slowly up in the big steel bucket, hunk by hunk, mouthful after steady mouthful.

'What a place!' said Grandy. 'What a scene! What a place!' His nostrils trembled. He peered over. His hand was on Mathilda's shoulder. She shrank away from the rim, and yet something drew her irresistibly. To lean closer. To look down. She could see the top of the trunk. It was a big, old-fashioned turtleback, a big box with a humped cover. It was half buried in the debris, tilted, top upward. She tried to imagine Francis, down there in the pit, bound and imprisoned, shut in a dark box, waiting to be destroyed. She knew that was what Jane thought and imagined. But it couldn't be. It couldn't be real. Such a tiling could not happen, could not be happening.

The big, empty, smelly place, the rumbling crane feeding the hidden fires, the efficiency of destruction that was going on here—the whole thing made her want to close her senses against it, not to believe, not to watch; to turn and go; to run away and go to a clean sweet place and bathe and forget.

Jane was sobbing, 'Oh, please, please, listen to me! You can't take the chance! You've got to be sure!'

Grandy swayed a little. 'Jane,' he said, 'you think he's down there!' The thought seemed to make him ill. Tyl felt him going.

She screamed. Somebody grabbed at her and held her back. She screamed again and again. The demon on the wall threw up his hands and disappeared. Men milled around her and shouted. The fumbling faltered and stopped. The bucket hung half raised, and

from its iron lips the gobs of garbage fell.

Down in the pit was Grandy. He lay on his back in the ruck, his thin arms and legs spread out, his face up. Was he dead? Had he fainted? She would have gone on screaming, but the man who was holding her put his hand roughly over her mouth to stop the noise.

Jane had crouched down, was almost kneeling, right at the edge. Her eyes had a glitter. She was watching hard. Gahagen was shouting hard. Somebody came running with a rope. Gahagen was making as if to loop it around his own waist.

But Grandy wasn't dead or even unconscious. As they watched in the new silence, he struggled up. He got part way out of the ruck. Then, on his knees, he began to move, slowly, with difficulty, crawling across the pit, wallowing in the refuse because he had to, to move at all.

They heard him say, 'Wait. Not yet.' He was wallowing toward the trunk. He was curiously like someone swimming. He reached the trunk and hung to it a moment as if he might otherwise sink and disappear. They saw him strain to lift the lid, lift it a trifle. Saw

his white head bend to bring his eyes to a position to see within. They saw him let the lid fall, fumble a moment more as if to look again. Then he raised his arm.

They heard his voice come out of the pit, drawn out like a signal cry, humming and droning in the echoing silence, 'Let . . . the ro-ope . . . do- own!'

The rope went down with a loop at the end of it. Gahagen lay on the floor, looking over, calling encouragement and instruction.

Jane was a frozen bundle huddled at the brink. Her hand was flat on the dirty floor. Tyl thought, How can she bear to get her hand so dirty?

Somebody called out from the big entrance way, and Oliver came running across the floor. He wound up, panting, 'Cop told me! Where's Grandy? Tyl, what happened?'

Tyl thought, No time for gossip.

'He fell.'

Oliver's eyes bulged with horror.

Grandy was dangling now. They were pulling him out. He was rising from the pit on the end of the rope. They hauled him over the edge and he crumpled into a heap on the floor. His lids went down wearily.

“Fainted.'

'No wonder.'

'Oh, by the way, gentlemen,' said Grandy's velvet voice calmly, 'there's nothing in the trunk but some pieces of plaster, I think, and some old rags.'

'My God, Luther, you're game!' cried Gahagen. 'Good man!'

'After all,' said Grandy wryly, “I was in the neighborhood.' He turned his head, eyes closed, a tired old man.

Somebody laughed. Somebody swore. Somebody must have given a signal then, because the rumbling whispered out of silence, began and grew.

Oliver was kneeling at Grandy s side. He was the image of devotion. 'Get a doctor,' he demanded. 'Get an ambulance.'

'Nonsense, my dear boy,' said Grandy, but his lids were trembling. He looked very sick. He was filthy and contaminated—fastidious Grandy! An old man, after all. He lay on the dirty floor.

'This'll be the end of him!' cried Oliver in despair. 'Call a doctor, one of you! Hurry, can't you see! Tyl, snap out of it'

Tyl stood looking on. She had not fallen on her knees. She felt unable to bend or to move at all. She contemplated the image of devotion. She saw the puppet working to swing attention and concern. She saw Grandy lying filthy on the floor and the people all

beginning to swing, to center him.

The scene had nothing to do with her. She was alone, outside the circle and alone, suspended, lost. A puppet without strings would be as limp and lost. The bucket descended, to fall again at its work. She noticed that it had a weakness. She felt it was curiously repulsive that the great wicked tiling with its greedy mouth was so weak

at the neck. It had no neck, only cables. It fell weakly, and then it would nibble and chew and scrabble about, and gape and close and rise sternly, with the cable taut, to carry its load over the wall. Mathilda's eyes followed it.

Jane wasn't in the circle, either. That circle around Grandy, where invisible bands drew like elastic, where he was pulling them with the magnet of himself, and they were responding like iron filings.

Jane screamed. Jane got up from the crouching position and fastened on Blake s arm. 'No, stop it! Don't let it start! You've got to look!'

'Look where, Miss?'

“In the trunk! In the trunk!'

'Mr. Grandison looked.' The big arm rejected her.

'No, no, not Mr. Grandison! You can't trust him!'

'What do you mean, you can't trust—'

Oliver got up. 'What the devil's the matter with you, Jane?' he asked severely.

'Francis is in that trunk! In a minute that thing is going to take it! Where does it take things? Where does it go?'

'The chutes. To the fires,' somebody said.

'No!' Jane was nearly hysterical. 'I tell you, you can't take his word! Any one mans word! You've got to stop that thing! Open the trunk! Let me see! Let me see inside!'

'Now, just a minute, miss. After all—'

'It's your duty!' she cried. Tears ran down her face. She was frantic.

Oliver said, 'Slap her, somebody. Slap her in the face.' His voice got shrill. 'We've got to get Grandy out of here! He's a mess! Tyl!'

'Seems to me we've done our duty,' Blake was answering. 'Mr. Grandison saw what was inside the trunk. Now, miss—er—you don't know the trunk came from Press's house, do you? It could have come from anywhere in town. It's full of typhoid germs.'

Tyl thought dully, Grandy'll catch typhoid. She was watching the bucket, on its way up now. It seemed to be working a little faster. The men who tended the fires wanted to get through and get home.

Jane said, “I know I can't make you believe he's lying. But he could be mistaken. You can't afford to take even that chance. Suppose he's mistaken? It's a man's life! Mathilda knows he was there in that house.'

Tyl stirred. 'Yes,' she said dully. She thought, If I can trust my own senses.

The bucket was dropping down. Its cables were slack. It fell with that disgusting weakness at the neck. It fell, it nibbled, it crept quite near. Quite near the old turtleback trunk that lay half buried. The buckets jaws were big enough to take it up—just about big

enough. Perhaps next time.

'. . . nobody in the cellar.'

'. . . girl musta made a mistake.'

Blake said impatiently, 'Now, look, miss. If I thought there was any danger—'

'I don't care what you think! I know there's danger!'

Oliver said, 'What's this about, anyhow? I wish somebody would—'

Jane said, 'Don't take the time to tell him.'

Maddeningly, Blake began, 'This young lady —'

'Stop that thing, I tell you!' Jane's voice was ugly with her terror. 'Stop it!' She tore