L.P.M. : The End of the Great War

by J. Stewart Barney

“Take Lawrence up to the instrument, Mr. Black,” he directed, turning to Black who was giving “first aid” to the unfortunate valet. “I will do what I can for James.”

When the elevator with Lawrence and the electrician had gone up above the level of the roof, leaving the shaft open down into the house, he could distinctly hear the soldiers running up the stairs. At any moment now they might be hammering on the door at the foot of the stairway leading to the roof.

He hated the idea of killing those innocent Germans, mere machines, as they were, in the hands of a Master, who with his entire entourage had become sick with a mania which took the form of militarism, imperialism, and pan-Germanism. But after the death of his two fellow-countrymen—for at heart he was still true to the land of his birth, although to save her he had just renounced the flag—he felt that he was justified in what he was about to do.

With a silent prayer for the peasant mothers who were soon to lose their dear ones, he commended their souls to God, and not as these mothers, poor benighted creatures, had done, to their Emperor.

He was startled from these sorrowful reflections by the white glow of a searchlight from the Little Peace Maker sweeping across the roof, and playing hither and thither. Evidently, “Specs” had received his order, and was now feeling about for the bulkhead door.

A moment later he located it. Immediately the night was made hideous with the roar of the guns from the airship, as they sowed bursting shells in all directions, and carried death and destruction to the heart of this great and wonderful city, built up stone by stone, and standing as a living monument to one of the greatest people on the face of the earth—a people that science teaches are the very last expression of God’s greatness shown in His wonderful evolution of matter into His own image. And for what? That one family might maintain the position given to one of their ancestors in the remote, dark, and grovelling ages of the past for prowess of which a modern prizefighter might be proud, but for acts to which he with a higher standard might not stoop.

The telling response of the Little Peace Maker soon put an end to the storm of shrapnel and bullets which had been singing, whistling, buzzing, and screaming about them, and Edestone might have been able to stand up, but for the pertinacity of the snipers, those serpents of modern warfare, who were searching every dark corner of the roof.

Matters were fast coming to a climax, however. By the time that Lawrence and Black had returned from sending the wireless message, and had crawled over to where Edestone lay, the soldiers had broken down the lower door, and were pounding at the upper, which “Specs” was holding as with a rapier point at the heart of a fallen foe, ready to strike at the slightest movement.

Crawling over to the elevator shaft, Edestone called down a warning in a loud voice to those below:

“I have a machine-gun trained on the top of the stairs! If you order your men to break that door down, I will order my guns to fire, and will kill them faster than you can drive them up!”