“There’s a swifter car in the garage in the court,” she said.

“I don’t know how to drive it,” he said.

“I do,” she answered.

In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind.  The Stutz rose and raced like an airplane.  They took the turn at 110th Street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th.

He was gone but a moment.  Then he returned, and his face was gray.  She did not look, but said: 

“You have lost—­somebody?”

“I have lost—­everybody,” he said, simply—­“unless——­”

He ran back and was gone several minutes—­hours they seemed to her.

“Everybody,” he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket.

“I’m afraid I was selfish,” he said.  But already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem—­the brown, still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence—­the wild and haunting silence.  Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue they whirled.  In and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan Tower hove in sight.  Gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward.  The door of the office stood open.  On the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk.  The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent: 

     Dear Daughter: 

     I’ve gone for a hundred mile spin in Fred’s new Mercedes.  Shall not
     be back before dinner.  I’ll bring Fred with me.

     J.B.H.

“Come,” she cried nervously.  “We must search the city.”

Up and down, over and across, back again—­on went that ghostly search.  Everywhere was silence and death—­death and silence!  They hunted from Madison Square to Spuyten Duyvel; they rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn; from the Battery and Morningside Heights they scanned the river.  Silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign.  Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped.  He sniffed the air.  An odor—­a smell—­and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning.  The girl settled back helplessly in her seat.

“What can we do?” she cried.

It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly.

“The long distance telephone—­the telegraph and the cable—­night rockets and then—­flight!”