Now, swaying in the subway as the train lurched over the rails, he studied those opposite him — the steaming garments, the soggy feet. It was early, too early for the rush hour. He shuddered.
Life in the big city was all right for those who wanted it, not for him. He idly noticed the headlines of a newspaper in the hands of a reader opposite him. “Unprecedented Flood Conditions Sweep Country.”
Phil Bregg yawned. Then his eye caught a subheadline. “Arizona Drenched!”
An involuntary exclamation came from Phil’s lips. The man who held the newspaper looked up, caught Phil’s eye on the sheet, and fastened him with a look of cold disapproval. He was the type of man, Phil noticed, who was particularly good at eying people with disapproval. Phil, with the ready friendliness of the open spaces, sought to explain matters.
“Arizona’s my state,” he said. “I seen it was raining there, and that’s sure some news.”
In his own state the remark would have brought forth a smile, a greeting, perhaps a handshake. On the New York subway it merely caused people to stare at him with cold, impersonal curiosity. The man who held the paper folded it so Phil couldn’t see the headlines. No one said anything.
Phil felt a red flush mounting under the bronzed skin. His big hands felt awkward and ill at ease. He seemed all hands and feet, felt ashamed, yet realized bitterly that it was these others who should feel ashamed.
A hand touched his sleeve. He looked down and to one side. A girl was smiling up at him.
“I spent a winter in Arizona,” she said, “and I know just how you must feel. It’s funny it’s raining there. Why, down in Tucson—”
Nothing in his life had ever felt quite so good to Phil as the touch of that hand, the sound of the words, the friendliness in her eyes. And yet he realized she was violating the customs of the city simply to make him feel a little less hurt, that she had realized and understood.
“Tucson, ma’am! You know the place? Why—”
And the car suddenly, abruptly lurched to a dead stop.
Phil looked at the black walls of the subway and forgot the words that were on his tongue. He felt very much buried alive. His wet garments were clammy. There was the dank drip of death in the air.
“Ugh!” he said.
The girl’s form was tense, she was staring at the windows.
There was a red light ahead, between the rails. Now a man came running forward. The motorman lowered a glass. There was a jumble of words. Out of the darkness ahead came the tail end of another subway train, backing up.
Their own car lurched into motion, started backing.
The girl gave an exclamation.
“Trouble ahead. I’ll be late at the office!”
But the car continued its reverse, gathering speed. And the train ahead was also reversing.
“What’s the trouble?” yelled a man in the back of the car, but the question was unanswered.
An air whistle screamed a warning signal at intermittent intervals. There came a burst of light, and the car stopped.
A guard bellowed orders.
“Everybody’ll have to get off here and go to the surface. Take surface transportation to your destination. There’s trouble ahead in the subway!”
There was a muttered chorus of protest. Some man was demanding the return of his fare. Others were clamoring for explanations.
“Hurry!” bawled the guard. “There’s water in the subway!”
Phil Bregg didn’t know cities, but he knew men, and he knew emergencies. He recognized an undertone of something that was akin to panic in the tones of the guard’s voice.
“Hurry,” he said. “It sounds serious.” And he gripped the arm of the young lady who had been in Tucson.
She let him make a way for her through the crowd, swirled up the stairs in the midst of a confused boiling mass of jabbering people.
They emerged into a drab, wet daylight, and were greeted by water. The street was filled from curb to curb. Taxicabs were grinding forward slowly. Here and there cars were stalled. People were standing open-mouthed, up to their ankles in water, watching the street. Here and there one more determined than the rest was wading knee deep across from curb to curb.
The rain was sheeting down from a leaden sky without interruption or cessation.
Phil grinned.
“I’ve seen cloudbursts in Arizona,” he said, “and a fellow’s saddle can get awfully wet at times, but I don’t think I’ve ever been wetter in my life.”
The girl’s face was puckered with concern.
“This is serious,” she said, “and the water seems to be rising. There’s quite a current you can feel.”
Phil pointed to some of the towering skyscrapers that stretched upward until their towers were lost in the moisture.
“Well there seems to be lots of room to climb!”
She nodded.
“Let’s get inside. I want to telephone the office. But I guess this is one day I can be late without any one calling me on the carpet about it. I’m due there at a little before eight.”
They climbed marble stairs, pushing their way through a crowd of people who were taking refuge there from the water, people who were staring, silent, wet, looking very much like sheep huddled on a small island in the midst of a rising river.
There was a narrow lane left for occupants of the building to push their way up through the huddled figures, and Phil Bregg’s broad shoulders pushed a way for the girl through this lane.
They entered a foyer which looked very normal and workaday. A cigar stand was in one corner. A uniformed elevator starter was starting the elevators. A long board of colored lights marked the progress of the cages as they shot up and down.
“Sorry,” said a voice; “no loitering in the foyer. If you’ve got business, go on up.”
“I want a telephone,” said the girl.
The man in uniform made a motion with a gloved hand.
“Sorry, but there’s an emergency. No loitering in the foyer. Those are orders.”
He turned away to speak to a frightened-faced woman who was holding a whimpering child in her arms.
“Sorry, but you can’t stay here...”
And the words were lost in the noise that was made by two dozen people storming into the entrance at once. For the water, in place of streaming silently past the building in a rising sheet, had suddenly reared the crest of a miniature wave, and rose a good eighteen inches at once.
Phil pushed the girl toward an elevator.
“You can get a telephone in an office upstairs,” he said. “There’s going to be a riot here.”
The girl allowed herself to be pushed into the elevator. The door clanged, and the cage shot upward.
“There must be a broken dam somewhere,” explained the girl. “There couldn’t be this much water collected from the rain. And the drains are probably clogged. Heavens, I hate to think of the people that must be crowded in the subway! I hope the water doesn’t get any higher!”
The elevator was whisking upward.
“Express to the thirtieth floor,” said the operator.
“Thirtieth,” said the girl.
The cage swung to a sickening stop, a door opened, and, abruptly, the lights went out. The elevator operator worked the handle of the door, swung the elevator control from side to side.
“Lucky you called,” he grinned. “Power’s off.”
Phil Bregg instinctively took the arm of the girl with the manner of a protector. “Let’s get to a telephone,” he said. “Maybe your office won’t keep open, after all.”
The girl looked around her at the marble corridor, lined with doors.
“Here’s an insurance office,” she said in a tone that strove to be cheerful and matter of fact. “They’ll have a telephone.”