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"She cannot spare me, Hawkins, you know not yet." "Why, there isn't the slightest element of danger," the inventor argued. "Surely, Griggs, even you must be able to grasp that. Can't you see that that is the chief beauty of the Hydro-Vapor Lift? There are no cables to break! That's the great feature. This car may be loaded with ton after ton; but if she's overloaded, she simply stops.
His head had turned to me, and his lips had curled slightly when the Hydro-Vapor Lift stopped with such tremendous suddenness that we almost flew up against the roof of the car. That was the law of inertia at work. Then we descended to the floor with a crash that seemed calculated to loosen it. That was the law of gravitation. I presume that Hawkins figured without them.
Hawkins was standing by a steel pillar, smiling blankly. Steam, by the cubic mile, I think, was pouring from the flooring of the Hydro-Vapor Lift and whirling up the shaft. I struggled to my feet and tried to walk and succeeded, very much to my own astonishment. Shaken and bruised and half dead from the shock I certainly was, but I could still travel. I picked up my coat and turned to Hawkins.
In the cellar of the Blank Building annex a pile of excelsior and bagging and other refuse packing materials protruded into the shaft where once had been the Hawkins Hydro-Vapor Lift. That fact, I suppose, saved us from eternal smash. At any rate, I realized after a time that my life had been spared, and sat up on the cement flooring of the cellar.
The Hydro-Vapor Lift did not budge the fraction of an inch. Then he pushed it back and forward again. And still the inexorable 13 stood before us. "Confound that er engineer!" growled the inventor. Just then the Hydro-Vapor Lift indulged in a series of convulsive shudders. It was too much for my nerves. I felt certain that in another second we were to drop, and I shouted lustily: "Help! Help!
Do you suppose anything was sticking out into the shaft? Has can it be possible that there is anything like a mechanical error in your Hydro-Vapor Lift?" "No! It's that blamed fool of an engineer!" "What!" I exclaimed. "Do you blame him?" "Certainly." "But how was it his fault?" "Oh you see bah!" said the inventor, turning rather red.
"But if it should," I said, dashing the streaming perspiration from my eyes for another look at the accursed plate. "If it should," the inventor admitted, "we'd either go up to Heaven on it, or we'd stay here and drop!" "Help!" I screamed. "Look out! Look out! Hug the wall!" Hawkins shrieked. A mighty spasm shook the Hydro-Vapor Lift. I fell flat and rolled instinctively to one side.
The Hydro-Vapor affair executed a series of blood-curdling shakes. From the edges of the plate the steam hissed spitefully and with new vigor. "That that jackass of an engineer!" Hawkins sputtered. "He's sending too much steam!"
"Packing ugh!" snapped the inventor "Do you know what that is?" "You turned down my first guess," I suggested humbly. "Griggs, what appears to you as a packing-box is nothing more nor less than the first and only Hawkins Hydro-Vapor Lift!" "The which?" "The Hawkins Hydro Vapor Lift!" "Hydro-Vapor?" I murmured. "Whatever is that? Steam?" "Certainly." "And lift, I presume, is English for elevator?"
"Hawkins," I said, "if you'd called this thing the Hydro-Vapor Bath instead of Lift " "Don't be witty," Hawkins said coldly. "Never mind. It may be a bit unreliable as an elevator, but you can let it out for steam-baths fifty cents a ticket, you know, until you've made up whatever the thing cost." Bzzzzzzzzzz! said the steam. "I'm going to shout for that ax again," I said determinedly.
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