"Tom, come here," Dora called from the living room. "What a queer smell!"
I met her frightened gaze; her nostrils were dilating. I could smell it—an acrid, pungent smell.
"Government Food Depot Raided!" The crisp low voice here with us in the living room was so unexpected that Dora gave a low scream and clutched me. It was our news-radio which Mrs. Holten had evidently left on; and now a news announcement was being made. "Allenville, New York. Mysterious raiders broke into the Government Surplus Food Depot, here tonight—probably about 9.50 p.m. Large supplies of sealed cooked food stolen. Four watchmen found dead—others missing."
Dora and I stood stricken, listening to the newscaster's droning voice. Allenville was the Municipal Housing Village we had just left. The Government Food Storehouses were on its other side half a mile from where we had heard the music.
"... and the bodies of the watchmen show that they were attacked by some mysterious weapon. There are no wounds. The clothing is charred a little, as though some weird form of heat were applied. Two of the men have burned spots on the forehead—as though some electric charge of a lethal power—"
The signal lights on top of our instrument showed that another public-news station was signalling it had a visual broadcast of immediate interest. I reached and tuned to it. The televisor glowed. Numbed with startled horror, Dora and I stood staring at the moving image on the televisor grid. It was from a public observor lens mounted on a pole beside one of the roads leading out of Allenville. An alarm signal had been turned in by a traffic director there on a crossing ramp. He had evidently flung on the alarm-light so that all the scene was bathed in its white actinic glare. And the road-side observing lens was bringing it now to us, broadcasting it to every receiving set in the country.
What we saw was the crossing ramp with milling, frightened pedestrians and the traffic in a tangle. Momentarily the people were blinded by the glare and deafened by the shrieking of the alarm-siren. In the background loomed a building which I knew was another of the Government Food Depots. The alarm evidently had originated there.
"Tom—look—that doorway!" Dora murmured.
From one of the dark doorways of the Food Depot a little figure came scurrying out. And then another—and at the foot of the ramp where the crowd was milling, several others suddenly were visible. Figures identical with the one which had watched us by the bench!
"Oh Tom—dear God!"