The First Casualty

1

The tall man with the mustache parted his hair in the middle. He wore a bowler hat and a light coat over his suit despite the heat wave that had been ravaging the city for more than a week. Shutting the main door of the four-story brick building, he turned to lock it before proceeding south. He was tempted to ride the El, Broadway’s elevated railway, but chose a more direct route. He took his time walking through the Bowery, looked in a few shop windows along Saint James and picked up his pace when he reached Pearl Street.

At no time did his hand come out of the left pocket of his coat.

He stopped when he reached the steel skeleton of a building under construction on Wall Street. He had observed the project for a week, the only one suitable for the experiment. Finding a spot across the street shaded from the afternoon sun, he watched workers swarm over the structure like ants, driving rivets, manning the crane, riding the hydraulic lift up and down, until he was certain no one had noticed him. As calmly as though he owned the property, he sauntered over to the spot where one of the girders met the earth before it sank into the foundations.

He withdrew a metal cylinder from his left pocket, a device that closely resembled the battery-powered electrical hand torches that had just come on the market a few months earlier. He froze as a streetcar clattered by, iron-shod hooves of the two horses ringing on the rails.

Ascertaining he was still unobserved, he bound the metal tube to the steel with a leather belt and retreated to his previous observation post in the shade.

Minutes passed as a mix of pedestrians, horse-drawn vehicles, and automobiles made their way down the narrow confines of the street. He checked his pocketwatch. Thirty-six minutes. He frowned. It should not take this long.

He took a step as though to inspect the device just as he detected the slightest movement of the steel. One girder visibly expanded and retracted, then another. Now all were beating as if a human heart lay within.

There was a shout of fright from above. Within seconds, workers were crowding the elevator. Some were sliding down ropes hastily tied to crossbars.

Ignoring the growing pandemonium, the man in the coat crossed the street, removed his device and returned it to his coat pocket before leisurely departing the scene. This time, he would treat himself to the luxury of the El, though somewhat out of the way back to East Houston Street. He stopped long enough to hear an excited exchange between a policeman and a construction worker with a palpable Irish brogue.

“I’m telling you as God is my witness, an earthquake it was!”

“But I was only blocks away and didn’t feel a thing.”

“Then maybe you can be telling me what made the very steel shake.”

The man in the overcoat didn’t wait to hear a response.