"On the southeast sh.o.r.e of the Great Gopher lake." Mr. Ticks finished the sentence mechanically.

"Ah! I remember. Its population?"

"Twenty-nine thousand five hundred and fifty-two. It increases at the rate of thirty a day."

"Exactly so! It is--?"

"Just two years nine months and twelve days old."

"To be sure. Its property--?"

"Is one hundred and sixty-four million dollars, in round numbers."

"Of course. Its industries are--?"

"The usual pertaining to Western cities, I suppose. I confess ignorance to concrete particulars. The reports have been singularly deficient in this respect. I credit this entirely to its youth."

"Indeed! Its railroad facilities--?"

"The C. H. & S. F. is its great trunk line. Three branch lines have their centre there--just built. Two roads are surveyed to shorten the distance to Chicago and San Francisco respectively."

"Any other facts of interest, Mr. Ticks?" Mr. Ticks hesitated.

"Well--no--yes--no. In fact, there is nothing of special importance that I--that is different from any other city--except--nothing, sir, that I am willing to stake my professional reputation upon; you must excuse me, sir."

"Is it in the cyclone area, Mr. Ticks?"

"No, sir. The centre of barometric depression is farther north. The Buzzard mountains to the south deflect all such storm centres. Russell will be singularly free from tornadoes."

The editor-in-chief looked somewhat nonplussed, and handed Mr. Ticks the telegram, with the remark:

"What do you think of that?"

"I do not know, sir. I cannot give an opinion."

"I, Mr. Ticks, I for one believe this is true. I'll--I'll stake my reputation on it!" said Swift decidedly. Mr. Ticks' exasperating caution grated on the news editor and converted his scepticism into conviction.

"If it is," replied his chief, quietly, "you can start for the scene to-night on the six thirty express. You did up the Charleston earthquake. You were the first on the spot at Johnstown, and this promises to be as bad--or as good."

Swift tried to look indifferent at this c.u.mulation of trust. He had been on the paper for five years; he had started in as night reporter, and his own ability and quickness, united with a certain caution, one might call it a news integrity, had raised him to his present position. The _Planet_ had the singular reputation of printing the truth. It rarely was "taken in," with a false item. It aspired far beyond the local.

The _Planet_, under the able management of its chief and of Swift, had become the mirror of the world. And, if at times it reflected important news from a convex surface, it did no more and far less than the majority of its contemporaries, who had no telegraphic facts to throw away daily, and who, when hard pressed to it, manufactured a murder at home or a war rumor abroad to help pad their lean columns.

"Let me see! It is five forty-five," continued the chief, consulting his watch. "I will not detain you any longer, Mr. Ticks. We shall want a column from you on Russell, to-night. And now, Swift,"--when Mr. Ticks had faded out of the room,--"who's this correspondent signed D.?"

"It's Dubbs. You know him. a.s.sociated press man and special correspondent. Never failed me. He's the only one there who knows our cipher."

The editor-in-chief did not change his expression, but his eyes had the steady, stern look that showed easy determination. He quickly wrote a few words on his pad and handed them to his favorite "sub."

"Take this to the cashier! Get to the elevated as fast as you can! Buy what you need when you get time, and--_go!_ I depend on you for the fullest description to be had. If you do as well as you did on the Conemaugh, I'll give you a raise on your return. Good luck to you."

It did not take Mr. Swift five minutes to rush to his den, slip on his coat, s.n.a.t.c.h his hat from the floor, run downstairs, receive a fat roll of bills from the phlegmatic cashier and bolt for the elevated train. In twenty-five minutes he was at the central station, with two minutes to spare. He nodded pleasantly to the gatekeeper and boarded the train as nonchalantly as if he were going to his suburban boarding-house.

II.

All of our readers will remember the curiosity, the speculation, the horror, the apprehension, and the sympathy universally excited when, on the tenth of September, it was learned from the morning papers that Russell, the new capital of Harrison, was cut off from all communication. Each morning sheet hinted darkly at the cause of this unheard-of calamity. The _Daily Braggart_ said there was no doubt that a cyclone of gigantic proportions, followed by a water-spout, had swept the city entirely away, and that its evening edition would print full details of the "awful visitation," with pictures by their special artists, now on the spot, ill.u.s.trating the ruin.

Rut there was one piece of additional news about Russell that only the _Daily Planet_ gave. Let us quote, in order to be perfectly accurate.

The sheet is before us as we write:

"EXTRAORDINARY CALAMITY!

"RUSSELL CUT OFF FROM ALL COMMUNICATION!

"_The citizens of the State of Harrison are wild with apprehension. As yet we cannot speculate on the nature of this disaster. Up to this moment no one knows what it is. We will be honest, and say we know no more than our neighbors. But this much is a.s.sured: Not only is communication cut off within a radius of twenty miles of the ill-fated city, but it is impossible to re-establish it at present. There are forces at work as yet uncatalogued by scientists. There is a definite circle drawn about Russell, and to cross it means death. Two men repairing the C. H. & S. F. tracks dropped, smitten by a mysterious and invisible hand. The white mile post announced that Russell was twenty miles from the spot where the corpses of these brave fellows lay. What baneful miasma envelops this broad area? What is the fate of the thousands within its borders? Time will tell. Our reporters are on the spot. But as we go to press we do not know._"

Most people sniffed at this "dead line" as the wildest newspaper canard of the lot. Many shook their heads. While those who had relatives or friends or business connections in Russell tried to drown their horrible suspense as best they could.

The _Planet_, it may be remembered, closed its leading editorial as follows:

"_We are a Democratic paper, and we had little love for this baby State and its upstart capital, created solely to guarantee a Republican majority at the next presidential election. But when the news that an inscrutable fate had overtaken this fraudulent State (we may be pardoned for saying that it seems to us a sort of Divine retribution for political jobbery) party feeling was washed away in that common compa.s.sion that all Christians feel for their enemies in adversity._"

Who could mistake the diction of the uncompromising but tender chief?

But it happened this time, as so often before, that the _Planet's_ information was true. Again that enterprising daily had made its "scoop"

on the other papers. Its elation was pardonable.

It is an indisputable fact that civilization as it progresses develops in its advance new diseases and new catastrophes. Hay fever and la grippe were not popular a hundred years ago. To breed a first-cla.s.s cyclone, cut down your trees and dry up your water supply. This has been conscientiously attended to, and the natural consequences have followed. Science can eliminate the simooms that strike Bombay and Calcutta at such a day year after year, by simply flooding the desert of Sahara. England can be more easily conquered by deflecting the Gulf Stream a quarter of a point than by a thousand ironclads. Who knows but that it would be less expensive to change her into a glacier than to bombard her with hundred-ton guns?

More white people are killed by railroad accidents yearly in our highly civilized land than were slaughtered by native braves in the palmy days of the "Last of the Mohicans." It is a fact that our boasted civilization, instead of affording surer protection, murders more men in one way or another than barbarism, only in the present case the victims are not eaten; the coffins are sumptuous; the processions decorous; the mourners in good form; the burial service pregnant with hope, and culture is not shocked. With us murder is committed by corporations, not by paid a.s.sa.s.sins. That is the difference. The a.s.sa.s.sin fails in his blows once in a while; the corporation never.

But where was Russell? What was the nature of the calamity? The impenetrable fact that there was an actual, invisible dead line cast about that territory, with Russell as its centre, became confirmed with every report. It will be recalled that all the railroad tracks entering the doomed city were twisted as if clawed by a maddened monster. It presented a similar appearance to the South Carolina railroad on the day of the Charleston earthquake. This gave rise again to the earthquake theory. But why had not the shock been felt? No rumble had been heard.

Could an earthquake account for the deadly something that filled the air?

No intelligence came from Russell. The way must be forced to it.

Who forgets the relief expeditions started in wagons and on foot from every point of the compa.s.s? These were invariably repelled on reaching the dead line. We could understand the fetid miasma that made the Great Dismal Swamp an unknowable country. We could comprehend the encroaching dead line of the spreading yellow fever bacillus. But this fearful death, that brooded silently, impenetrably, mysteriously and occultly over a vast area once the garden of civilization, baffled all attempts at explanation. Even birds were observed to vacate this tract. Only a few sinister buzzards wheeled their flight, with straight, unflapping wings, high above Russell, almost out of sight, as if they were the embodied ghosts of Russell's unbaptized inhabitants.

What was that implacable power? Reporters and trackmen who steadily scoffed at it were themselves attacked with violent heart-beats when they crossed the invisible and fatal line. A convulsion of all the members followed, as if in an epileptic fit,--insensibility and, generally, death ensued. Many who were with difficulty rescued, and who finally recovered, averred that they experienced an overcoming odor, acid and penetrating, such as is peculiar to ozone when manufactured in a chemical laboratory.

At the end of the fourth day of Russell's complete isolation a despair settled upon the country. England was staggered by the uniqueness of these phenomena. The French Academy of Sciences, after a prolonged sitting, announced that they could suggest no solution. It is only too well remembered that the newspaper bulletins were besieged in our own cities, but these offered no further information or encouragement. Was advanced civilization responsible for this disaster or not? That was the burning question. Or was this a special visitation of G.o.d, a plague new to the medical world, spontaneously generated, sporadic in its appearance, and destined forever to be an _obscurum per obscurius_ or perhaps to spread with further undetermined horrors?

Thousands were now on the ground. They encompa.s.sed that section about as Joshua did the city of Jericho, as the settlers did the Territory of Oklahoma on the day of its opening, as the rabble do a house when a murder has been committed.

On the evening of the fourth day from the time when the messenger boy brought the first despatch to the office of the _Daily Planet_, its chief, obviously nervous for the first time in his public life, received the following cipher telegram, which cheered him wonderfully: