“You’ve seen a clerk dressing a figure in a store window, fiddling around with it? Well, suppose he slapped its face. Suppose a kid struck pins in a toy pussy-cat, or threw pepper in the eyes of a doll. Like that. Lousy and rotten. No decent live man would have anything to do with it. He’d either go back to his place in the machine and act out the part set for him, or else he’s hide away like me and live as quiet as he could, not stirring things up.”
He looked at Carr from under his arched and ragged brows. “What are you going to do? You’re young. Why don’t you go back to your place in the machine and sweat it out that way?”
Carr tried to lift himself up a little. The room rocked and blurred. “I can’t,” he heard himself whispering, “because the ones after me know my place. And there’s a girl. They know her place too…if they haven’t found her already.”
The bargeman leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Who are they?” he asked. “What gang? What do they look like?”
Carr heard himself describing Miss Hackman, Mr. Wilson, and Driscoll Aimes. When he was part way through, the bargeman interrupted him.
“I know them. A mean lot. I’ve seen that bitchy black cat of theirs.”
He slopped the rest of the whisky into his tumbler, drank, then sat working his big-knuckled hands. Finally he heaved himself up. The tumbler rolled across the floor. He lurched to the door, slid it open wide. The darkness and the noises of the city flowed in. He looked around.
“You go back,” he mumbled at Carr. “You and your girl go on back. Don’t worry about anything. Leave it to me, leave it to Old Jules. I got connections.” He flapped his big hand at Car. “You go back.” Then he stumbled through the door and slid it to behind him.
Carr sat up, biting his lips against the sudden rush of dizziness. He got his legs over the edge of the bunk and sat there, the cool air drifting along his skin, the walls of the cabin advancing and retreating and every now and then erupting in a coruscation of bright sparks.
After a while he stood up, holing on to the edge of the bunk. As soon as his eyes quieted down he made his way across the cabin, remembering to stoop, until his fingers reached his clothes where they were hanging, stiff from the water. He dressed slowly and clumsily like a child. His trousers were stuck together and he had to run his hands down the legs.
He heard the distant hooting of a ship on the lake. He finished dressing and stood smoothing out his clothes. Then he made his way to the door, with difficulty slid it open, and stepped out onto the narrow deck.
The late night-sounds of Chicago enfolded him—the lonesome purr of traffic, the jangling of a bell, the rattle of an elevated train crossing the Well Street bridge, the rumble of unidentified machinery. Across the river, Carr saw three or four sets of headlights probing their way along the two levels of Wacker Drive, a red warning light on the embankment, a few patches of lighted window in the towering buildings, and their reflections wriggling like quicksilver on the black water.
Carr realized that the barge was moored to the embankment. Only he was standing on the side of the barge away from it. With groggy care he made his way around the deck, by the stern, found the embankment, peered over the rail, saw hardly a foot of water between him and the stone. He waited a moment, got his legs over the rail, steadied himself.
Just then a great red glow flamed up behind him, turning the nearer bricks of the embankment bright almost as day. Clutching the rail spasmodically, pressing his legs against it to steady himself, Carr turned his head. He saw the bargeman standing at the prow with a railroad flare sizzling in his hand. Against the black river, the lower half of his huge body cut off by the low cabin, his back in the shadow, his lumpy muscles and great face and tangled hair reflecting the blinding red light, he looked like some torchbearer in the inferno, some signalman on the Styx. He saw Carr. Seven times he whirled the torch in a circle, then seven times more, then he sent it whirling high in the air.
“Signals,” he muttered enigmatically across the cabin. “Trust Old Jules.”
The flare shot down like a small meteor, hissed out in the river.
“Listen!” Carr heard the bargeman call. He could hardly see him for the moment, the darkness swam so after the flare, or else his dizziness had come back. “Listen! D’ya hear it?” the bargeman repeated in a hushed and drunken voice. Carr strained his ears but was aware of nothing but the machine-sounds of Chicago. “There it is,” the bargeman called, “Clankety-clank…clankety-clank…That’s the real sound of the universe. That’s the music of the spheres. That’s your heavenly choir. Not very sweet is it?” He paused. Then turning toward the city, he shook his fist. “But you wait,” he roared, “you wait! Your time’s coming. There’s a new power running the big engine. A power that can melt cities like a blowtorch melts steel. We’ll see if the big engine can stand up under that, and people still all asleep. We’ll see! We’ll see! We’ll see!”
Carr’s vision cleared. He stepped across the ribbon of water and walked unsteadily up the embankment.
Chapter Fifteen
Quiet, Daisy
Carr opened the door of his apartment, steadied himself against the frame. The windows were still black with night. He softly called, “Jane?” There was no answer. He slumped a little. His head felt painful, his body fagged, his clothes wretchedly uncomfortable.
He listed to the faint, throaty machine-hum of 4 A.M. Chicago, like the purring of a circle of vast, crouching cats. He shivered. Then he gathered himself together, shut the door an switched on the light.
He glanced at the letter he had automatically snatched from his pigeon-hole downstairs. It was from Marcia. No need to look at that one. He had read it—let’s see—two nights ago. He tossed it down.
A propped rectangle of paper on the mantle caught his eye. There were only a few lines of writing on it. His chest felt tight as he read the signature: “Jane.”
The writing was more hurried and crabbed than any of hers he had seen before, but he quickly made it out.
This place is no longer safe. I’ve gone to the old mansion, to my place on the third floor. Come to me there.
It seemed to Carr that the distant purring grew a shade more deep and menacing. He went to the bureau, rummaged around, found a flashlight. It made only an old yellow glow, but he stuck it in his pocket.
Outside in the late darkness, the streets were more deserted than he had ever known them. His footsteps seemed to echo for blocks. He felt a vague gratitude toward the chance forces that had made a path for him, that had cleared the way of automatons. For he was fearfully tired. Only the thought that he would soon be with Jane kept him moving. The awful discoveries of the past days weighed on him as crushingly as if his body were a clumsy metal machine that he must hold up with the feeble strength of flesh and sinew. If he could now go back to his appointed place in life, he felt that he would never have more strength than to do merely his machine work. He would be a machine and nothing more than a machine.