The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Runaway Skyscraper, by Murray Leinster

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Title: The Runaway Skyscraper

Author: Murray Leinster

Release Date: December 19, 2005 [EBook #17355]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Runaway Skyscraper

_by_ Murray Leinster

COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE.[*]

I.

The whole thing started when the clock on the Metropolitan Tower
began to run backward. It was not a graceful proceeding. The hands
had been moving onward in their customary deliberate fashion,
slowly and thoughtfully, but suddenly the people in the offices
near the clock's face heard an ominous creaking and groaning.
There was a slight, hardly discernible shiver through the tower,
and then something gave with a crash. The big hands on the clock
began to move backward.

Immediately after the crash all the creaking and groaning ceased,
and instead, the usual quiet again hung over everything. One or
two of the occupants of the upper offices put their heads out into
the halls, but the elevators were running as usual, the lights
were burning, and all seemed calm and peaceful. The clerks and
stenographers went back to their ledgers and typewriters, the
business callers returned to the discussion of their errands,
and the ordinary course of business was resumed.

Arthur Chamberlain was dictating a letter to Estelle Woodward,
his sole stenographer. When the crash came he paused, listened,
and then resumed his task.

It was not a difficult one. Talking to Estelle Woodward was at
no time an onerous duty, but it must be admitted that Arthur
Chamberlain found it difficult to keep his conversation strictly
upon his business.

He was at this time engaged in dictating a letter to his principal
creditors, the Gary & Milton Company, explaining that their demand
for the immediate payment of the installment then due upon his office
furniture was untimely and unjust. A young and budding engineer in
New York never has too much money, and when he is young as Arthur
Chamberlain was, a