"Sorry to keep you waiting, Ed," Varley boomed to one of the two business men in the cage. "Phone call. Held me up for a few minutes."
He stepped into the elevator, nodding to the others.
"Let's go," he said to the operator.
The cage started down.
The express elevators were supposed to fall like a plummet. They made the long drop to die ground in a matter of seconds, normally. And this one started like a plummet.
"Damn funny, that phone call I got just before I came out of my office," Varley boomed to the two men he was lunching with. "Some joker calling himself Doctor Satan"
He stopped, and frowned.
"What's wrong with the elevator?" he snapped to the operator.
"I don't know, sir," the boy said.
He was jerking at the lever. Ordinarily, so automatic was the cage, he did not touch the controls from the time the top floor doors mechanically closed themselves till the time the lobby was reached. Now he was twitching the control switch back and forth, from Off to On.
And the elevator was slowing down.
The swift start had slowed to a smooth crawl downward. And the crawl was becoming a creep. The floor numbers, that had flashed on the little frosted glass panel inside the cage as fast as you could count, were now forming themselves with exasperating slowness. Sixty-one, sixty, fifty-nine . . .
"Can't you make it go faster?" said Varley. "I never saw these cages go so slow. Is the power low?"
"I don't think so, sir," said the operator. He jammed the control against the fast-speed peg. And the cage slowed down still more.
"Something's wrong," whispered one of the girl secretaries to the other. "This slow speed. . . . And it's getting warm in here!"
Evidently Varley thought so too. He unbuttoned his vest and took his fedora off and fanned himself.
"I don't know what the hell's the matter," he growled to the two men with him. "Certainly have to have the engineer look into this. There's supposed to be decent ventilation in these shafts. And if they call this express service . . . Gad, I'm hot!"
Perspiration was bursting out on his forehead now. He began to look ghastly pale.
Fifty-two, fifty-one, fifty . . . the little red numbers appeared on the frosted glass indicator ever more slowly. The elevator would take five minutes to descend, at this pace.
"Something's the matter with me," gasped Varley. "I've never felt like this before."
ONE of the girl secretaries was standing near him. She looked at him suddenly, with wide eyes in which fear of something beyond normal comprehension was beginning to show. She shrank back from him.
"Get this cage down," Varley panted. "I'm—sick."
The rest looked at each other. All were beginning to feel what the girl, who had been nearest him, had felt.
Heat was beginning to radiate from Varley's corpulent body as if he were a stove!
"Good heavens, man!" said one of the two business men. He laid his hand on Varley's arm, took it away quickly. "Why—you're burning up with fever. What's wrong?"
Varley tried to answer, but couldn't. He staggered back against the wall of the cage, leaned there with arms hanging down and lips hanging slack. There was
