"Erik-san, oh, Erik-san!" She was in Karsten's arms now, high hair-dress against his shoulder. As he slid the partition shut, Kent caught a glimpse of the man's head bending down towards her. It was dramatic, affecting. He caught his breath sharply, blinked his eyes, and at the same time the thought came to him, frivolously erratic—it was just like the cinema film; he had cut the picture at the very most intense moment.
CHAPTER XXI
He sat up in bed in bewildered wonder whether it had been an actual sound, an explosion, that had awakened him, or whether it had been some particularly realistic bit of dream. Still, there was a peculiarly dry, rattling clatter, something like hail—and yet the sun was shining—just as he was trying to shake himself thoroughly awake, the sound ceased abruptly.
As he swung himself out of bed, Karsten hurried in. "Hallo, time to get busy, Kent. It has broken loose, the revolution, riot, or whatever it is, shooting, burning. That was machine-gun fire we just heard, from the Aoyama barracks, I take it. Breakfast will be ready for you when you have dressed. You had better make a meal before you start; you're likely to have a strenuous day."
It was difficult to take time for eating, but Karsten insisted. "Won't you come along?" asked Kent. "You should see the excitement." But Karsten shook his head, laughed. "No, to-day, I'm staying home, even if they burn down all of Tokyo." He smiled to Jun-san. She came over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. Happiness, radiated over these two, made them look younger, an odd appearance of newness, as if they had been refurbished, brightened. A flash of envious admiration came to Kent; after all, though modern life smiled at romance, it was the thing that mattered, woman, affection between the sexes, the one ingredient that could vitalize humdrum existence with the color, the play and sparkle of joy of living. From a distance came the reverberation of a dull boom; from somewhere near the center of the city a great smoke cloud shot skywards, mushroomed in the still air, dissipated slowly into a thin pall of bluish haze.
He ran into the street. It seemed like a holiday, with the absence of the usual bustle of business. Here and there groups of people, mostly women, chattered excitedly, with a frightened and yet fascinated look on their faces. It reminded him of the aspect the neighborhood took on when there was a fire in the quarter. The street cars were not running. A detachment of police passed him, about a hundred of them, running with their peculiar stiff trot, each with a gloved hand clamped on his short sword, in a long double file.
As he came near the square at Toranomon, he ran into a line of infantrymen, resting stolidly on their rifles, keeping clear the wide space behind them, the quarter containing the Diet building, Foreign Office, the Kasumigaseki Palace and, farther back, the General Staff headquarters. He made his way along a side street hurriedly, avoiding the crowds which had gathered here and there, wherever temple grounds or square afforded a convenient space. There was not so much excitement as he had expected, rather an air of expectancy; they did not appear like people who were engaged at this moment in overthrowing their overlords; rather they seemed eager for the staging of some event which they knew was about to happen, as if they were waiting for a show of daylight fireworks. Still, here and there might be seen small groups of men who seemed to have a definite objective, who were intent on some certain purpose, on going somewhere. It was significant that they all, even the more stolid ones, ran, or walked, or drifted in the same general direction,—towards the government building quarter stretching from the central police station at Hibiya to the War Office in a long curve following the outer palace moat and centering on the wide street running from the palace gate at Sakuradamon, near which lay the nerve centers of the Government, the Navy, War and Judiciary buildings, the Diet quarters, and the rest.
The whole movement was too vast, too intangible, covered too much ground to make it possible to handle the story single-handed. They would know more at the Japan American Office. He found Carew there, tired-eyed, helping himself to hot, black coffee from a thermos bottle.