The Chronicle also reported that an Arizona Indian chief was being held hostage on Angel Island against the good behavior of his entire tribe. I wondered if it were true. Already the paper showed a flair for the bizarre.
I walked down to Market, where New Montgomery was being extended to Howard. Hackmen there claimed this would soon become the city’s poshest district.
“What about Nob Hill?” I said.
“Too steep for horsecars.”
I realized then that I hadn’t seen any cable cars.
Across the street stood a partially finished, enormous iron-and brick-structure—the $400,000 Grand Hotel, scheduled to open early next year; it was secured by anchors, the hackmen said, to make it earthquakeproof.
“Hear about the big one this time last year?” one asked me. “Damn near knocked down Marine Hospital. Damaged the mint and city hall. Then there was the big ’un in ’sixty-five, same month. In heat just like this, too.” He grinned maliciously. “Earthquake weather.”
“Guess I'm just in time for it,” I said, amused at being baited as a tourist.
I knew it was silly, but I walked along Mission to Fifth, passing gashouses and factories and weather-beaten frame shacks. The street was paved with wooden blocks that had been dipped in tar. Wagons made a swooshing sound as they passed. I shut my eyes and told myself that when I opened them again I would see the Chronicle building’s familiar gray clock tower. For an instant I did feel something strange pass over me, but when I opened my eyes the plank sidewalk still lay beneath my feet and a horsecar moved on rails in the center of the broad street. I felt a pinch of disappointment.
A whiskey grocery stood on the Chronicle’s corner. I looked at it for a while. Smells of stew meat and boiling potatoes were heavy in the air. Across the street was a large excavation. I wandered over and was pleased to see the beginnings of a longtime friend—the Old Mint. I’d looked down on it thousands of times. Workmen on break said that its cornerstone would be laid sometime next year.
I walked back along Market, passing the five-story business place of H. H. Bancroft, book dealer. From the basement of St. Patrick’s, between Second and Third, boys in school uniforms boiled up and spilled into an adjoining lot. They had a baseball bat and a tape-covered ball.
“Dibs on George Wright!” A stocky boy waved the bat ferociously.
“Brainard!” another shouted.
“Andy Leonard!”
The kid imitating Brainard went into a contorted windup remarkably unlike the Stocking pitcher’s. I realized again that without TV or movies or stop-action photography, the only images these kids could get came from seeing their heroes firsthand.
On Montgomery I passed the Occidental Hotel, where Twain loved the oysters, and in the five hundred block came on the current Chronicle office. Maybe I should go in and apply for a job. Check out old De Young—or had he already died in the famous duel? But I didn’t stop until the next block, where I saw a sign above the sidewalk:
SAN FRANCISCO ADVERTISER
F. MARRIOTT
623 MONTGOMERY
A second-story window contained the same information in gold leaf. What the hell. Why not drop in and see about his airplane?
Tacked above the landing was an enormous advertisement: AVITOR NEXT IN POINT OF SPEED TO THE TELEGRAPH. The reader was urged to purchase stock immediately in this new wonder that would “bear men and messages through the air, while the railroad drags heavy burdens of freight.” Entranced, I read every word that followed, enjoying Marriott’s blowsy prose.
No savages in war paint shall interrupt its passage over and across our continent. No malaria or hostile tribes nor desert sands shall prevent the exploration of Africa, no want of water the examination of central Australia, nor ice floes the search for the Northwest Passage. No underground railways will be needed to accommodate the crowded thoroughfares of Broadway, no curcuitous passage to find a narrow isthmus between continents, no waiting for trade winds; no necessity of lying becalmed under tropical suns; no extortions for huge corporations who monopolize the great routes of travel. No tax for crossing New Jersey; no states under tribute to railway companies. Man rises superior to his accidents when for his inventive genius he ceases to crawl upon the earth and masters the realms of the upper air.
Lovely, I thought, simply lovely.
There was also an announcement that daily flights of the Avitor could be witnessed at the Mechanics Pavilion in Union Square.
Just as I finished working through it all, quick footsteps and a rustling of skirts sounded on the stairway. I turned as a small figure yanked Marriott’s door open and propelled herself inside. Before it slammed, I glimpsed blond ringlets and a thrust-forward chin. Interesting.
It grew more so by the second. Voices inside built in volume, one female and accusing, several male and placating. The female’s built to a shriek. The males’ grew urgent. I couldn’t make out any words until a sharp crack resounded, followed by a shouted “No!”
It wasn’t a gunshot—I knew that sound—but more like leather slapping a resonant surface. I stepped cautiously through the doorway. The sound came again. The outer office was empty.
“‘Indecent and nasty,’ is it?” the female voice shouted from a cubicle to my left. The door stood ajar, FREDERICK MERRIOTT stenciled neatly on it. “Those who attend are a low ‘lot’?”
The last was a combination of question and grunt. The cracking sounded again. There was a yell. I moved to the doorway and saw a shirtsleeved clerk cowering behind a desk. He looked at me imploringly. On top of the desk stood a middle-aged man. His eyes were riveted on the woman. She stood with her back to me, her right hand brandishing a riding whip, her left clutching a newspaper.
Crack! The whip snapped on the polished toes of his boots. He sprang with remarkable agility upward from the desktop.
“I didn’t write it! You’re demented!”
“‘No figure whatever’?” She waved
