The daily worker., 1929-01-05
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? Harmed at an alarm" In minute
the gas flooded the rooms.
Nobody coughed, nobody checked,
as was the case during former at
! tacks. The gas had no unpleasant
smell. The guests felt slight dizzi-
ness, and they were soon unable to
move. In less time than it takes
to count twenty their blood was con-
gealed. Everybody was dead.
The hall remained as brightly lit
as before. On a very low chaise
between two marble Venuses the
newly married couple remained
seated-he holding her hand. The
young man was in military uniform,
the girl in white frock with light
pink pattern. The poses of both re-
mained unchanged, only the color of
their faces became blueish. At the
table, one hand on bottle of red
wine, the host was seated. In the
middle of the hall few couples
remained leaning one against the
other-the pose they instinctively
took when they became dizzy. Some
fell down looking like exhausted
revelers fallen asleep in the midst
of hilarious feast. In the door
way, his back to the door post, the
butler was standing, young man
with an oval face and smoothly
plastered black hair. The man held
a tray of fruit in his rigid hand
On the table, in the very center. a
blond-bearded man sat laughing: his
teeth glistened; his lips were still
red; his face was puckered with
merry wrinkles; in his uplifted hand
he held glass of wine. 1t looked
as if he were pausing in the midst
of a lively and witty toast. Next to
him stood Negro musician holding
his drumstick ready, as if waiting
to burst out in a tornado of music
as soon as the speaker has finished
his remarks. Both were dead. The
flowers on the table were black; the
leaves of the plant scorched.
|
THERE was not a house, even in
the well-to-do sections of the city
where there was not number of
dead. A nurse had fallen asleep at
the bedside of sick child; when
she was awakened, she ran in a
panic to the stairs instead of taking
the elevator. Before she could
reach the ground floor, she was
dead. So was the child in her arms.
An old scientist was absorbed in
a chemical experiment in the eighth
floor of the Chemical Institute. The
laboratory apparatus was in opera
ton. The grey head of the scientist
was bent over the interesting eX-
pertinent; every atom of his atten-
tion was riveted to the remarkable
changes that were taking place in
the little red-hot stone mortar. The
Eold man failed to hear the alarm
signal.
The day found him blue in the
face, bent over an extinguished
stove. In corner, behind low
enclosure, the guiana pigs with
whose blood he had been experiment
ing, lay dead. There were houses
in which the people were asleep and
could not hear the signal. They
remained motionless. There were
some that were walking in the
streets while the alarm was being
sounded, although there was strict
military order forbidding civilians
to leave their houses afterr2 p,, m.
without military passport:y Still
there were men and women in the
streets and most of them had no
time to reach place of safety:
they remained fixed wherever they
happened to be. Y - NJ
Nevertheless the majority Of the
population remained alive in the
well-to-do sections of the city. In
the poor sections and n the suburbs
the number of victims was incom-
parably larger. Here the alarm ap-
pliances were not so well installed
and far from working accurately.
Many perished before they heard
the signal; many did not reach the
safety chambers. Worst of all:In-
formation from the central telephone
station reached the suburbs, as a
rule, much slower than the center.
1t was due to this that by the time
the warning finally reached the
suburbs, the inhabitants of entire
houses were already dead. Many