The Runaway Skyscraper
by Murray Leinster
COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE.[*]
I.
The whole thing started when the clock on the Metropolitan Towerbegan to run backward. It was not a graceful proceeding. Thehands had been moving onward in their customary deliberatefashion, slowly and thoughtfully, but suddenly the people inthe offices near the clock's face heard an ominous creakingand groaning. There was a slight, hardly discernible shiverthrough the tower, and then something gave with a crash. Thebig hands on the clock began to move backward.
Immediately after the crash all the creaking and groaningceased, and instead, the usual quiet again hung over everything.One or two of the occupants of the upper offices put theirheads out into the halls, but the elevators were runningas usual, the lights were burning, and all seemed calm andpeaceful. The clerks and stenographers went back to theirledgers and typewriters, the business callers returned tothe discussion of their errands, and the ordinary course ofbusiness was resumed.
Arthur Chamberlain was dictating a letter to Estelle Woodward,his sole stenographer. When the crash came he paused, listened,and then resumed his task.
It was not a difficult one. Talking to Estelle Woodward was atno time an onerous duty, but it must be admitted that ArthurChamberlain found it difficult to keep his conversation strictlyupon his business.
He was at this time engaged in dictating a letter to hisprincipal creditors, the Gary & Milton Company, explaining thattheir demand for the immediate payment of the installment thendue upon his office furniture was untimely and unjust. A youngand budding engineer in New York never has too much money,and when he is young as Arthur Chamberlain was, and as fondof pleasant company, and not too fond of economizing, he isliable to find all demands for payment untimely and he usuallyconsiders them unjust as well. Arthur finished dictating theletter and sighed.
"Miss Woodward," he said regretfully, "I am afraid I shallnever make a successful man."
Miss Woodward shook her head vaguely. She did not seem totake his remark very seriously, but then, she had learned neverto take any of his remarks seriously. She had been puzzled atfirst by his manner of treating everything with a half-jokingpessimism, but now ignored it.
She was interested in her own problems. She had suddenlydecided that she was going to be an old maid, and it botheredher. She had discovered that she did not like any one wellenough to marry, and she was in her twenty-second year.
She was not a native of New York, and the few young men she hadmet there she did not care for. She had regretfully decidedshe was too finicky, too fastidious, but could not seem tohelp herself. She could not understand their absorption inboxing and baseball and she did not like the way they danced.
She had considered the matter and decided that she wouldhave to reconsider her former opinion of women who did notmarry. Heretofore she had thought there must be something thematter with them. Now she believed that she would come totheir own estate, and probably for the same reason. She couldnot fall in love and she wanted to.
She read all the popular novels and thrilled at the love-scenescontained in them, but when any of the young men she knew becamein the slightest degree sentimental she found herself bored,and disgusted with herself for being bored. Still, she couldnot help it, and was strugg