Page:St. Nicholas, vol. 40.1 (1912-1913).djvu/603

at such a tension that, when Will nudged me, I fairly shouted, “What ’s the matter?”

“That fellow is a fraud,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“He is simply trying to make a sensation, but he has mistaken his audience this time.”

“Who, the iron-worker?” I asked in bewilderment.

“No, no, the megaphone man. His mathematics are all wrong, and he thinks he can fool us. The velocity figures to only 179 feet per second, not counting the resistance of the air, or less than 125 miles an hour.”

“Well, one would find that fast enough if one should happen to take the journey,” said I.

“Certainly,” said Will, “it is bad enough as it stands without any exaggerations. But, shucks!” he said, when the ride was over, “I could n’t trust a thing that fellow had to say. We will have to go all over the ground ourselves and verify his statements. Let us go down to that building and find out something about it. It would make a good subject to start the diary.”

Photograph by Brown Brothers.

Waiting to receive a beam—“All in the day’s work.”

Chapter II

Five hundred fee above Broadway

Immediately after luncheon, we went down to the Manhattan Syndicate Building. We walked in at what appeared to be the main entrance on Broadway. No one stopped us, and we wandered about rather aimlessly. Here and there were busy groups of men. Though we were on the street level, we could look down, at one place, about four stories. There was an engine-room below us, and a place where they were mixing mortar, putting it in wheelbarrows, and then shooting it up, wheelbarrow and all, to the upper floors, in elevators that moved at terrific speed.

“I wonder where the passenger elevator is,” said Will.

“I guess that is it,’ I replied, pointing to a ladder.

“It looks good enough for me,” he rejoined. “It leads upward, anyhow.”

It was a broad, double ladder, so arranged that one person could go up while another went down.