When the door of the room closed behind him, Ed Thatcher felt very lonely, full of prickly restlessness. If Susie were only here he’d tell her about the big money he was going to make and how he’d deposit ten dollars a week in the savings bank just for little Ellen; that would make five hundred and twenty dollars a year. … Why in ten years without the interest that’d come to more than five thousand dollars. I must compute the compound interest on five hundred and twenty dollars at four percent. He walked excitedly about the narrow room. The gas jet purred comfortably like a cat. His eyes fell on the headline on a Journal that lay on the floor by the coalscuttle where he had dropped it to run for the hack to take Susie to the hospital.
Morton Signs the Greater New York Bill
Completes the Act Making New York World’s Second Metropolis
Breathing deep he folded the paper and laid it on the table. The world’s second metropolis. … And dad wanted me to stay in his ole fool store in Onteora. Might have if it hadnt been for Susie. … Gentlemen tonight that you do me the signal honor of offering me the junior partnership in your firm I want to present to you my little girl, my wife. I owe everything to her.
In the bow he made towards the grate his coattails flicked a piece of china off the console beside the bookcase. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth as he stooped to pick it up. The head of the blue porcelain Dutch girl had broken off from her body. “And poor Susie’s so fond of her knicknacks. I’d better go to bed.”
He pushed up the window and leaned out. An L train was rumbling past the end of the street. A whiff of coal smoke stung his nostrils. He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.
The street was suddenly full of running. Somebody out of breath let out the word Fire.
“Where at?”
The group of boys melted off the stoop across the way. Thatcher turned back into the room. It was stifling hot. He was all tingling to be out. I ought to go to bed. Down the street he heard the splattering hoofbeats and the frenzied bell of a fire engine. Just take a look. He ran down the stairs with his hat in his hand.
“Which way is it?”
“Down on the next block.”
“It’s a tenement house.”
It was a narrowwindowed sixstory tenement. The hookandladder had just drawn up. Brown smoke, with here and there a little trail of sparks was pouring fast out of the lower windows. Three policemen were swinging their clubs as they packed the crowd back against the steps and railings of the houses opposite. In the empty space in the middle of the street the fire engine and the red hosewagon shone with bright brass. People watched silent staring at the upper windows where shadows moved and occasional light flickered. A thin pillar of flame began to flare above the house like a romancandle.
“The airshaft,” whispered a man in Thatcher’s ear. A gust of wind filled the street with smoke and a smell of burning rags. Thatcher felt suddenly sick. When the smoke cleared he saw people hanging in a kicking cluster, hanging by their hands from a windowledge. The other side firemen were helping women down a ladder. The flame in the center of the house flared brighter. Something black had dropped from a window and lay on the pavement shrieking. The policemen were shoving the crowd back to the ends of the block. New fire engines were arriving.
“Theyve got five alarms in,” a man said. “What do you think of that? Everyone of ’em on the two top floors was trapped. It’s an incendiary done it. Some goddam firebug.”
A young man sat huddled on the curb beside the gas lamp. Thatcher found himself standing over him pushed by the crowd from behind.
“He’s an Italian.”
“His wife’s in that buildin.”
“Cops wont let him get by.” “His wife’s in a family way. He cant talk English to ask the cops.”
The man wore blue suspenders tied up with a piece of string in back. His back was heaving and now and then he left out a string of groaning words nobody understood.
Thatcher was working his way out of the crowd. At the corner a man was looking into the fire alarm box. As Thatcher brushed past him he caught a smell of coaloil from the man’s clothes. The man looked up into his face with a smile. He had tallowy sagging cheeks and bright popeyes. Thatcher’s hands and feet went suddenly cold. The firebug. The papers say they hang round like that to watch it. He walked home fast, ran up the stairs, and locked the room door behind him. The room was quiet and empty. He’d forgotten that Susie wouldnt be there waiting for him. He began to undress. He couldnt forget the smell of coaloil on the man’s clothes.
Mr. Perry flicked at the burdock leaves with his cane. The real-estate agent was pleading in a singsong voice:
“I dont mind telling you, Mr. Perry, it’s an opportunity not to be missed. You know the old saying sir … opportunity knocks but once on a young man’s door. In six months I can virtually guarantee that these lots will have doubled in value. Now that we are a part
