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And Flint, now, what of him! And Waldron?
While the Air Trust plant was burning, crumbling, smashing down, what of its masters, the masters of the world?
A sense of vast relief possessed them both, at first, as the steel door clanged after them.
Now, for a time at least, they realized that they were safe, safe from the People, safe from the awakened and triumphant Proletariat. Even now, had they surrendered, they would have been spared; but nothing was further from their thoughts than any treating with the despised and hated enemy.
Foremost in the mind of each, now, was the thought that if they could but stand siege, a day or so, the troops of the government—their government and their troops, their own personal property—would inevitably rescue them.
With this comforting belief, together they descended the long steel staircase to the trap-door, passed through this, and climbed down the metal ladder to the vast storage-vaults.
Here, everything was cool and quiet and well-lighted. Not yet had the electric-generating plant been put out of action. Though all its workers had either been drafted into the ranks of the Cosmos mercenaries, or Herzog's regiments, or else had fled to hiding, still the huge turbines and enormous dynamos were whirling, unattended. Thus, for the first few minutes, in their living tomb, down over which the ruins of the now white-hot laboratory-building had crashed, the world-masters had electric light.
Reassured a little, they descended to the very bottom of the first huge tank.
"God!" snarled Flint, as he breathed deeply and glared about him. "The curs! The swine! To think of this, this really happening! And to think that if we hadn't got here just in time, they'd actually have—have used violence on us —"
Waldron laughed brutally, his body still trembling and his face chalky. His laugh echoed, hollowly, from the metal walls.
"You old fool!" he spat. "Canting old hypocrite to the last, eh? Violence? What the devil do you expect? Rosewater and confetti? Violence was all that ever held 'em, wasn't it? And when they slipped the leash, naturally they retorted—that's all! Violence? You make me sick! Damned lucky for us if we get through this yet, without violence, you whining cur!"
Flint, for the first time hearing Waldron's honest opinion of him, failed even to note it. All his panic-stricken ear had caught was the note of hope, of survival.
Clutching eagerly at Waldron's sleeve, he cackled:
"If we get through? If we get through, you say? Then, in your opinion, there is a chance to get through? They can't get us here? We surely shall be rescued?"
"Bah!" Waldron flung at him, some latent spark of courage still smouldering in his sodden breast, whereas old Flint was craven to the marrow. "You nauseate me! Afraid to die, eh? Well, so am I; but not so damned paralyzed and sick with panic as all that! If you'd taken less dope, the last twenty years, you'd have more nerve now, to face the music! World-master, you? Eh? Playing the biggest game on earth—and now, when things break bad, you squeal! Arrrh! You called me a quitter once, you mealy-mouthed old Pecksniff! We'll see, now, who quits! We'll see, at a show-down, who can face it, you or I!"
Waldron's brutality, the hard, savage quality that all his life had made him "Tiger" Waldron, now was beginning to reassert itself. His first sheer panic over, a little manhood was returning. But as for Flint, no manhood dwelt in him to be awakened. Instead, each moment found him more abject and more pitiable. Like an old woman he now wrung his hands and groaned, hysterically; and now he paced the steel floor of the vault that was destined to be his tomb; and now he stopped again and stared about him with wild eyes.
On all sides, sheer up a hundred feet or more, the smooth steel sides of the vast oxygen tank rose, studded with long lines of rivets.
Near the top a dark aperture showed where the six-inch pipe joined the tank; the pipe destined to fill it, when Herzog's last process—never, now, to be completed—should have been done.
The huge floor, 150 feet in diameter, sloped gently downward toward the center; and here yawned another pipe, covered by a grating—the pipe to drain the liquid oxygen out to the pumping station.
So deeply set in the rock of the Niagara cliff was this stupendous tank, and so cunningly surrounded by vacuum-chambers, that now no faintest sound of the Falls was audible. All that betrayed the nearness of the cataract was a faint, incessant trembling of the metal walls, as though the solid ribs of Earth herself were shuddering with the impact of the plunge.
Old Flint surveyed this extraordinary chamber with mingled feelings. It surely offered absolute protection, for the present—or seemed to—but his distressed mind conjured alarming pictures of the future, in case no rescue came. Death by starvation, thirst and madness loomed before him. Nervously he recommenced his pacing. Another terribly serious factor was to be considered. He had now been three hours without his dose of morphia, and his nerves were calling, tugging insistently for it.
"Rotten luck," he grumbled, "that I've got none with me!" Even there, in the imminent presence of disaster and death, his mind reverted to the poison, more necessary to him than food.
Waldron now had grown fairly calm. He stood leaning against the steel ladder, down which they had descended. Choosing a cigar, he proceeded to light up.
"Might as well be comfortable while we wait," said he. "I only wish we had a couple of chairs, down here. Oversight on our part that we didn't have some steel ones put in, and a line of canned goods and a few quarts of Scotch. The floor's a bit damp and cold to sit on, and I want a drink damn bad!"
Flint swung about and faced him, pale and shaking, tortured with fear and with longing for his dope.
"You—you don't think it will be long, eh, do you?" he demanded. "Not long before we're taken out?"
Waldron shrugged his shoulders and blew a long, thin arrow of smoke athwart the brightly-lighted air.
"Search me!" he exclaimed. "To judge by what was happening when we made our exit, the Plant must be a mess, by this time. We seem to have been checked, even if not mated, Flint. I must admit they caught us by surprise. Caught us napping, damn them, after all! They were stronger than we thought, Flint, and cleverer, and better organized. And so—"
"Don't say 'we,' curse you!" snarled Flint. "Blame yourself, if you want to, but leave me out! I knew there was trouble due, I tell you. I saw it coming! Who's been trying to crush the swine completely, if not I? Who's worked night and day to have those bills put through, and who had the army increased, and conscription started? Who's driven the President to back all sorts of things? Who's forced them? Who made the National Mounted Police a reality, if not I? Damn you, don't include me in your blame!"
Waldron shrugged his shoulders, and smoked contemplatively.
"Suit yourself," he answered. "If we both die, down here, it won't matter much either way."
"Die?" quavered the old jackal, suddenly forgetting his rage and peering about with furtive eyes. "Did you say die, Wally? No, no! You didn't say that! You didn't mean that, surely!"
Waldron smiled, evilly, joying in this abject fear of his hated partner.
"Oh, yes, I did, though," he retorted. "It's quite possible, you know. In case our government—yours, if you prefer—can't get troops through, here, or a big general revolution sweeps things, inside a day or two, we're done. We'll starve and stifle, here, sure as shooting!"
"No, no, no! Not that, not that! " whimpered Flint, shuddering. "I can't die, yet. I—I'm not ready for it! There's all that missionary work of mine not yet done, and my huge international Sunday School League to perfect; and there's the tremendous ten-million-dollar Cathedral of Saint Luke the Pious that I'm having built on Riverside Drive, and there's—"
"Cut it!" gibed Waldron, spitting with very disgust. "If your time's come, Flint, you'll die, cathedrals or no cathedrals. Your Sunday schools won't save you any more than my investments will—which have largely been wine, women and song. As a matter of fact, if it comes to starvation, if we aren't rescued and taken out from under the red-hot wreckage that's on top of us, I'll outlive you! I can exist on my surplus adipose tissue, for a while; but you— you're nothing but skin and bone. You'll starve far quicker than I will, old man."
"Don't! Don't!" implored the shaking wretch, covering his eyes with both trembling hands.
"Moral, you oughtn't to have been a dope-fiend, all these years," continued Waldron, cuttingly, determined that now, once for all, his despised partner should hear the truth. "How you've lived so long, as it is, I don't understand. When I tried to marry Kate, and failed, I reckoned you'd pass over in almost no time—and, by the way, that's why I was so insistent. But you've disappointed me, Flint. Disappointed me sorely. You still live. It won't be long, however. Down here, you know, you simply can't get any dope. In a little while you'll begin to suffer the torments of Hell. You'll die of starvation and drug 'yen,' Flint, and you'll die mad, mad, mad! Understand me! Mad, for morphine! And I, I shall watch you, and exult!"
Flint cringed, shuddering and stopped his ears. His partner, gloating over him, smoked faster now. A strange light shone in his eyes. His pulse beat faster than usual, and a certain extravagance of thought and speech had become manifest in him.
He tried to compose himself, feeling that he must not push the cowardly Flint too far, but his ideas refused to flow in orderly sequence. Wonderingly he stared at his cigar, the tip of which was now glowing more brightly than before.
And then, suddenly sniffing the air he understood. His eyes widened with horror absolute. He started forward, gasped and cried:
" Flint! Flint! The oxygen is coming in! "
Uncomprehending, the old man still stood there, mumbling to himself. His face was now tinged with unusual color, and his heart, too, was thumping strangely.
" Oxygen! " shouted Waldron, shaking him by the shoulder. "It—it's leaking in, here, somewhere! If we can't stop it— we're dead men! "
"Eh? What? " stammered the Billionaire, staring at him with eyes of half-intoxicated fear. "What d'you mean, the oxygen? In—in here?"
" In here! " cried "Tiger," casting a wild and terrible gaze about him at the vast, empty trap of steel. "Can't you smell it? That ozone smell? My God, we're lost! We're lost!"
"You're crazy!" retorted Flint, with vigor. "Nothing of the sort could happen!" His head was held high, now, and new life seemed surging through that spent and drug-wrecked body. "There's no way those curs could have turned on any gas, here. You're crazy, ha! ha! ha! Insane, eh? A good joke—capital joke, that! I must tell it at the Union League Club! 'Tiger' Waldron, suddenly insane, and—ha! ha! ha!"
He burst into a long, shrill cacchination. Already his face was scarlet and his mind a whirl. Though neither man understood the reason, yet the fact remained that one of the last great explosions had ruptured a subterranean check-valve closing the six-inch pipe that was to feed the storage-tanks; and now a swift, huge stream of pure oxygen gas was rushing at tremendous velocity into the vast chamber of steel.
Waldron, his heart leaping as though it would burst his ribs, raised a fist to strike down his insulter; then, with drunken indecision, joined in the maniacal laughter of the staggering old man.
In their ears a strange, wild humming now became audible. Lights danced before their eyes; their senses reeled, and violent, extravagant ideas surged through their drunken brains.
" Ha! Ha! Ha! " rang Waldron's crazy laughter, echoing the old man's. All at once, his cigar broke into flame. Cursing, he hurled it away, staggering back against the ladder and stood there swaying, clutching it to hold himself from falling.
There he stood, and stared at Flint, with eyes that started from his head, with panting breath and crimson face.
The old man, in a sudden revulsion of terror, was now grovelling along the floor, by one of the massive walls, clawing at the steel with impotent hands and screaming mingled prayers and oaths. His ravings, horrible to hear, echoed through the great tank, now swiftly filling with gas.
"Help! Help!" he screamed. "Save me—my God—save me—. Let me out, let me out! A million, if you let me out! A billion— the whole world! The world, ha! ha! ha! Damn it to Hell—the world, I say! I'll give the world to be let out! It's mine—I own it— all, all mine! Ha! Dogs! You would rise up against your master and your God, would you? But it's no use—we'll beat you yet—out! out! —the world—I own it! All this plant—this gas, all mine! My oxygen—ah! it chokes me! Help! Help! —Swine! I'll scourge you yet— absolute power — the world —!"
With one final spark of energy, panting, his heart flailing itself to death under the pitiless urge of the oxygen, old Flint sprang up, ran wildly, blindly straight across the steel floor, and, screaming blasphemies like a soul in Hell, dashed into the opposite wall.
He recoiled, staggered, spun round and fell sprawling most horribly—stone dead.
Waldron, at sight of this awful end, felt an uncontrollable terror sweep over his drunk and maddened senses. Though all his blood was leaping in his arteries, and his breath coming so fast it choked him, yet a moment's seeming sanity possessed his reeling brain.
"The door! The door, up there!" he screamed, with a wild, terrible curse.
Then, turning toward the ladder, in spite of his fat and flabby muscles quivering in terrible spasms, he ran up the long steel structure with a supreme and ape-like agility.
Fifty feet he made, seventy-five, ninety—
But, all at once, something seemed to break in his overtaxed heart.
A blackness swam before his dazzled eyes. His head fell back. Unnerved, his fingers lost their hold. And, whirling over and over in midair, he dropped like a plummet.
By one wall lay Flint's body. At the foot of the ladder, like a crushed sack of bones, sprawled the corpse of "Tiger" Waldron.
And still the rushing oxygen, with which they two had hoped to dominate the world, poured through the six-inch main, far, far above—senseless matter, blindly avenging itself upon the rash and evil men who impiously had sought to cage and master it!