"What are they all waiting for?" queried Viola.
"For the competitions. They don't often take so much interest. This time the Numbers have a candidate for musical director, and they are waiting for blocks around until the result is announced."
Drayton wondered why such a large percentage of the population were concerned over an apparently unimportant office; but he made no comment.
The run from the hotel to the former City Hall was a short one. As the car swung into the open traffic lane, Drayton looked ahead. There, closing the brief vista, loomed that huge gray bulk of masonry which is the heart-the center-the very soul, as one might say, of the ancient Quaker City.
From the street no sign of the golden dome was visible, nor any exterior hint of the vast innovations within. There rose the tower upon whose pinnacle, visible for many a mile around, stood the giant figure of that good old Quaker, his vast hand forever outstretched in gentle blessing. There he stood, as he had stood for troublous centuries. Below him was the familiar clock and a wraith of white mist obscured its face. Drayton remembered how, on previous visits to Philadelphia, that wraith of mist had prevented him from seeing the time. The wind was perpetually blowing it across. And Broad Street-he had once been here through a city election. All Broad Street had been crowded, just as it was crowded now, with people in fixed masses before the bulletin boards. The bulletins were missing now, but what other difference was there in appearance?
A yellow multiplicity of numbered buttons and yes, the emblem displayed above the Public Building's southern entrance. Then it had a huge replica of the Knight Templar insignia, with "Welcome K. T." in varicolored bulbs. Now the emblem was a sword-crossed bell. Above it gleamed four ominous figures-2118. That was the difference.
Drayton emerged from his homesick comparisons to find that the car was drawing up at the curb. Where had once been an open archway were doors of studded iron. A traffic policeman hurried forward and hustled the crowd aside. He used his stick freely, but the crowd did not even growl. It sickened Drayton-not so much the blows, as the spirit in which they were taken. Had the backbone of this people been entirely softened in the vinegar of even two centuries of oppression? And these were his own people, or their descendants-his fellow Americans! That hurt.
Doubtless, however, as he became adjusted to new usages, the injustice and oppressions of the year A.D. 2118 would seem no more intolerable than the tyrannies and injustices of the twentieth century.
The iron doors swung wide and closed silently behind the little party. They found themselves in a long corridor, walled and floored with polished red marble, artificially lighted and lined with doors, paneled with frosted glass. "Part of the administrative section," explained the Loveliest, as she hurried them along the passage. "These are all offices of the different departments. Would you care to see the crowd under the Dome from the balcony?"
Without waiting for assent, she led the way up a short flight of red marble stairs. Suddenly they emerged from beneath a low arch and looked out into the space beneath the Dome of Justice. They stood upon a little balcony. Out from it extended a narrow bridge of planking to the rough scaffold that hung about the Red Bell.