ped out....

"God Almighty! May the Lord of Hosts save the world from destruction!"

From New York's canyons, from the roof of the Hadley building, came the
great composite prayer.

A whistling shriek, growing second by second into enormous proportions,
came out of the west, above the Hudson.

CHAPTER IV

_Frantic Scheming_

There was no mistaking the meaning of that whistling shriek. Whatever
agency had held the Vandercook building aloft had now released its
uncanny grip on the building, and thousands of tons of brick and mortar,
of stone and steel, were plunging down in a mass from five thousand feet
above the Hudson. The same force had also released the ill-fated men and
women who had been carried aloft with the building. And there must have
been hundreds of people inside side the building.

It fell as one piece, that great building. It didn't topple until it had
almost reached the river and its shrieking plunge became meteor-like,
the sound of its fall monstrous beyond imagining. The conference above
the Hadley building fancied they could feel the outward rush of air
displaced by the falling monster--and drew back in fear from the edge of
the roof.

The Vandercook struck the surface of the Hudson and an uprush of
geysering water for a few seconds blotted the great building from view.
Then all Manhattan seemed to shudder. Most of it was perhaps fancy, but
thousands of frightened Manhattanites saw that fall, heard the
whistling, and felt the trembling of immovable Manhattan.

The great columns of water fell back into the turbulent Hudson which had
received the plunging building. Not so much as a wooden desk showed
above the surface as far as any one could see from shore. Not a soul had
been saved. Shrieks of the doomed had never stopped from the moment the
Vandercook building had started its mad journey aloft.

Jeter whirled on Hadley.

"Will you see that all my suggestions are carried out, Hadley?" he
demanded.

Hadley, face gray as ashes, nodded.

From Manhattan rose the long abysmal wailing of a populace just finding
its voice of fear after a stunning, numbing catastrophe.

"I'll do whatever you say, Jeter," said Hadley. "We all agreed before
the arrival of Eyer and yourself that your advice would be followed if
you chose to give any."

"Then listen," said Jeter, while Eyer stood quietly at his elbow,
missing nothing. "Advise the people of New York to quit the city as
quietly and in as o