Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/352

 ing his children with the chance neighbors whom he had found beside him when morning came, he stumbled across the town, heart-heavy. Led by some strange fascination, his feet were guiding him to that fatal spot, the First National Bank site, the only piece of real estate to which he had ever laid the shadow of a claim. In defiance of his principles he had bought that alleged title, to annoy his economic enemy, the president of that bank. Out of sheer perversity he had been a tool of Hornblower to push that claim, pushing from court to court to—this.

His mind was as full of debris as the street through which he picked his way. He wasn't a Marxian any more—not for the present. He had no philosophy to cope with a situation like this; and his mind was still wabbling when he came to a stand before a stone building with marble casements; a gutted wreck that stood on a corner.

Behind this wreck was a seething basement, full of the junk of printing presses; in front of it, in the street, were the remains of rather lavish office fittings, highly polished desks and chairs of mahogany, lying as they had been dragged. Some articles had burned afterward; some had been badly blistered and scorched; others, unscathed of fire, had been broken by rough handling. It was just here that Salzberg's eyes, roving curiously, encountered that which gave him a start. Amid this street-wide, chaotic solitude of tangled wires, broken glass and wreckage of half-consumed furniture, with a dead horse adding its grisly note to the picture, there sat, uncannily, an impassive figure in a swivel chair—a stoutish man, well dressed, with shoulders bowed, and a green velour hat pulled low over his eyes.