The Last Man on Earth

by John D. Swain

 

The Last Man on Earth

A COMPLETE NOVELETTE—THE STORY OF THE THREATENED EXTINCTION OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION IN THE GENERATION THAT FOLLOWED THE END OF THE GREAT WAR

By John D. Swain
Author of “Billy Kane—White and Unmarried,” etc.

IN the lounge of an austere club which has fronted Boston Common since the era of town criers and hoop skirts, a woman stood before a framed notice which read:

Women shall be granted the privileges of this club only upon New Year's Eve, Bunker Hill Day, and such other occasions as may be designated by the House Committee. .

Minot Bulfinch, Chairman.

The solitary occupant of the great Georgian room gazed upon these words with eyes which saw them not. Nor did she Observe the long line of past presidents, whose life-sized portraits furnished an interesting study of American whiskerage, from the smooth jowls of the founder, as seen by Gilbert Stuart, down through the luxurious effects of the Forty-Niners and the neat burnsides of the Civil War, to the clipped mustache of the last incumbent, Colonel Bowdoin, a handsome bachelor of fifty-five when he was borne to the ancestral tomb on Copp's Hill.

The woman who stood unmoved in this citadel of Boston Brahmanism revealed her sex only in a certain delicacy of feature. Incredibly thin, her face and hands were dry and leathery, her hair bleached by exposure. She wore a loose tweed coat, a stained pith helmet, riding breeches, and serviceable boots, against which she idly tapped a heavy crop. A cigarette smoldered between her thin, straight lips, its blue smoke curling sacrilegiously about the framed ukase of the house committee.

Miss Edna Furlong, athlete and explorer, hunter of big game in Darkest Africa and conqueror of Mount Everest, had driven to the club immediately upon her arrival in Boston, half an hour before, and had not even followed her kit bags to the room assigned to her.

She had traveled three thousand miles by monoplane to meet Dr. Lulu Prodwell, the most noted pathologist of her generation; and it is not too much to state that their forthcoming interview was, everything considered, the most momentous conference ever held upon this earth.

Its gravity precluded the ironical thoughts which would, under normal conditions, have occurred to Miss Furlong as a guest of that club to which, as an almost sacred rite, she had as a young girl been taken one New Year's Eve, to be presented with two small biscuits and a sip of the famous punch invented by Paul Revere and served from a silver bowl of his own fashioning.

The explorer's musings were broken by the brisk entrance of Dr. Prodwell, followed by a plump, rather pretty woman in the late forties. The physician was clad much like Miss Furlong, save that instead of riding breeches and boots she wore knickers and thick golf hose; but her companion was entirely feminine, and even a trifle coquettish, in attire.

“Ah, here you are!” Dr. Prodwell advanced to wring the visitor's hand. “Good of you to fly so far! I brought Professor Tarbell with me. You must know of her—high gun in chemistry and physics—discovered the who-ray, which predetermines sex in unborn babes.”

Miss Furlong bowed, her thin lips curving in a half smile.

“Which discovery, under prevailing conditions, is my idea of just nothing at all,” she drawled.

“Right, oh!” agreed Dr. Prodwell. “But, you see, we've been counting on you to save the situation—and the world!”

She gestured toward a little table, and the three seated themselves. The physician lighted a cigarette, first offering her case to Professor Tarbell, who shook her head, her melancholy eyes fixed upon the portrait of Colonel Bowdoin.

“I wonder,” she sighed, “how many women have uttered the blasphemous words: 'I wouldn't marry him if he were the last man on earth!'”

Her companions, drier and less romantic in type, looked at her in surprise. Prodwell coughed.

“Considering the somewhat momentous reason which has brought us here—” she began.

“I don't care!” Professor Tarbell dabbed at her eyes with a scrap of cambric. “That portrait—I never saw it before. The last president, and—it may well be—the last man on earth!”

Furlong's eyes lifted in unspoken query. The professor blew her still pretty nose, and nodded.

“He had a marvelous constitution. It almost seemed that he was immune against masculitis. His death is the last recorded among males. Of course, there may have been survivors among savage tribes, or in inaccessible places of the globe, where no records were kept.”

She rose and crossed the room to gaze up into the proud, handsome face with its fearless eyes and firm chin. After a long moment she turned to face the little table at which the others waited in silence.

“And it was to him—that prince among men—that I said those fatal words: 'I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth!' And now God has wreaked His terrible retribution on me, and on all women!”

“Why, why did you refuse him?” Dr. Prodwell asked.

Professor Tarbell covered her flushed face with anguished hands.

“Be-because I was a w-wicked woman, and put my scientific researches above anything so common as mere human love! Because I was on the verge of something big—the who-ray—and feared emotion would sidetrack it!”

She wept quietly, standing there beneath her silent accuser.

Dr. Prodwell turned impatiently to her guest.

“I say, Furlong, would you like a drink?”

The traveler nodded abstractedly.

“I could do with a high ball.”

A bell summoned an elderly waitress, who fetched Scotch and a siphon.

At this time the Volstead Law stood, along with hundreds of other outworn statutes, unrepealed but ignored. With the passing of men had passed the need of prohibition. When that strange and baffling malady, attacking only men, first appeared, a couple of decades after the Great War, and, despite the frantic efforts of scientists, in a brief ten years swept every male above the age of fourteen into eternity, it was realized by women that the liquor question was thereby settled for all time.

Men, they tenderly mused, poor, weak creatures at best, had to be protected from their own ungovernable appetites; but women were different. The prohibition amendment remained in the Constitution, but it was as dead as the Mann Law.

Professor Tarbell, her tears dried, wandered back to the table and seated herself dejectedly. She knew that Miss Furlong, sent out by the Women's Relief Corps, had for two years braved heat, cold, exposure, hunger, thirst, and savage tribes in order to penetrate to the remote places of the earth, to see if there might be, somewhere, a nucleus of men to replenish the doomed race. As a scientist, she had eagerly embraced the opportunity to listen to the explorer's confidential report to Dr. Prodwell; but as a woman, her thoughts were of poor Eliot Bowdoin, her suitor, asleep these ten years past in haughty, frowzy old Copp's Hill, walled in by squalid tenements.

Furlong finished her drink—not downing it as men used to do, but sipping it relishingly—and in two words summed up the net result of two years of incredible hardship.

“Nothing doing!”

Prodwell's face paled.

“Literally that?” she pleaded. “I—we—had hardly expected much in the way of concrete result; but we had hoped that you might have found indications that would leave us at least a hope that in some as yet unexplored region—”

Furlong shook her head impatiently.

“Not a chance!” The microbe you medicos have failed to check has swept our planet. I think I realized how much depended upon my investigations. I know I didn't spare myself. Courted death a hundred times. Covered Tibet and the Desert of Gobi. Staggered, delirious with fever, through the swamps of equatorial Africa. Froze both ears and a foot up among the Lapps. Cruised among little islands that aren't on any map. Crossed the Sahara twice. In my sober belief, there isn't an adult man alive to-day!” After a pause she added: “But what difference does it make, anyhow, since you haven't found a cure?”

Prodwell leaned forward, and whispered:

“Wrong! I have isolated the germ and discovered a vaccine that confers complete immunity!”

With fingers that trembled a little, she drew from a coat pocket a small morocco case, and from it produced two small vials and some glass slides.

“I succeeded on the very day your radiogram arrived,” she continued; “after a laboratory battle as thrilling in its way as your own fight against climate and privation. You are the first to know of it, excepting Tarbell here, who has been assisting me. She is attacking the question from another angle—seeking the cause, and the reason for woman's immunity. All this will be cleared up in due time.”

She held up the two vials, identical in appearance, filled with a colorless fluid.

“One of these is alive with virulent germs of masculitis. The other contains only inert organisms, destroyed by a tiny drop of my vaccine. Seen under a microscope, this slide reveals the bugs as very similar to the pneumococcus, save for a minute hook at one extremity.”

Edna Furlong drew a deep breath.

“But that means,” she said in awe-struck tones, “that you can inoculate all the remaining boys, and that you don't need any adults! It's only a question of time!”

Dr. Prodwell carefully replaced the tubes and slides in their little morocco case, and pocketed it. She lighted a fresh cigarette before replying.

“Theoretically, of course, it means just that. The medical profession will at once be supplied with vaccine; but it isn't so simple as you make it sound. How long will this immunity last? I don't know. Will there be unexpected aftereffects? No one can say. Granted that it is all that we hope and believe, how many boys are left? Not one under ten years of age, or over fourteen. Only the hardy few have reached the latter age. Of this nucleus of boys, in how many have the ravages of the baffling disease gone too far? And of the pitifully small residue, don't forget that an alarming proportion will succumb to other maladies, or drown, or get themselves run over by radiobiles, or fall out of trees, or monkey with a gun they thought wasn't loaded. Furlong, we'll be lucky if we rear three thousand, here in America, to marriageable age!”

Tarbell nodded.

“Six years from now, my who-ray will insure a preponderance of boy babies; but even if everything works out smoothly, Civilization will have been set back at least five hundred years. Matrimony will be a state function—”

“The state function, I'd say,” interrupted Furlong. “With bachelorhood a capital crime!”

“Upon you we rely to carry the vaccine to the heathen,” they told Furlong, “to see that the brown and yellow and black races do not perish.”

“And meanwhile?”

“The press will have the facts to-night. The tragic news that in no forgotten corner of the world have you been able to find living men will be mitigated by the fact that the disease has been conquered by medical science, and that a limited supply of husbands will be available in five or six years more.”

Prodwell signed her bar check, and they rose and passed from the room, Tarbell casting a final languishing glance at the sternly beautiful features of the late Colonel Bowdoin.

“I don't wish to sound a pessimistic note,” remarked Edna Furlong, as they parted at the club entrance; “but it's my guess that in about five or six years hell will break loose on this earth!”

II

A world without men, without battleships, B.V.D.'s, or bigamy. A world of women, frantic at first, then stunned; and finally, when the last man on earth was borne to his rest, going on with its daily life because the habit of untold centuries was too strong to be overthrown in a single generation.

Going on—but to what purpose? At first, and for a long time, there was the hope that as medical science had conquered other great plagues of history, so it would conquer this worst plague of all while there yet remained a few adult males to carry on. As this hope dwindled, thoughtful minds accepted the awful facts, and admitted that before another half century had rolled by the earth would be inhabited by a handful of aged women.

Nature—caring no more for the breed of humans than it did for so many turnips, or lizards—would tranquilly behold the taking over of great cities and sleek suburbs by rodents and weeds and insects. Waterfowl would disport in municipal reservoirs; big game would prowl unmolested where their ancestors roamed in the time of J. Fenimore Cooper. Riotous vines would embrace the skyscrapers; rank grass would stand knee high in Fifth Avenue.

The thinkers, then, began planning great community houses, rat-proof and weatherproof, with vast storage rooms for food and fuel—houses with no stairs to climb, located in California and other healthful and equable climes. In these citadels, so they planned, poor, decrepit humanity should make its last stand.

Already a swift and deadly poison had been chosen for those who should find life intolerable when our race had shrunk to a few dodderers, unable to care for one another, or for themselves. In that day—the true end of the world—when there was no longer strength enough to reach out and place a fagot on the hearth, and tremulous fingers could not open the tins and boxes of preserved foodstuffs, there would be the little capsules ready to hand.

Meanwhile, at least partially, gloom lifted from the world. Time, the healer, did not fail utterly, even in this crisis. So long as a single male child lived, there remained the secret hope that he might somehow escape, and recreate a race.

Ten years had passed since Colonel Bowdoin, the last man of perhaps five hundred million adult males, had died. In every conceivable aspect, life had changed. Human relations in 1923 bore far more resemblance to those prevailing in the glacial age than to those of 1950. There were no babies, of course. Children of ten or eleven were so rare as to attract attention anywhere. The public appearance of a boy more than twelve years old was enough to create a mob.

And pampered little beasts they were, too. They were the kings of earth; nothing was too good for them. The poorest lad had at least one physician and two nurses in constant attendance. With anguish, their relatives reflected that in two or three years, at most, they would almost certainly perish; and they were humored and petted as the dying are. To affront one of them was to court lynching. It was regarded as a combination of blasphemy, high treason, and lese majesty.

All boys were wards of the state, and under rigid surveillance. Most of them were housed in luxurious institutions.

Religion had undergone as great a convulsion as any human organization. The great historical churches which depended upon a masculine priesthood had ceased to exist. Dust lay thick upon their altars. The same fate, of course, had overtaken the fraternal orders, some of them centuries old, others the creation of yesteryear. Their pompous temples were untenanted, and their ritualistic robes fed the complacent moth.

An army of frenzied female evangelists, fired by the fast approaching end, wandered up and down the land, barefoot and with disheveled hair, and preached repentance; but the great sober majority of their sisters regarded them as deranged. There were many churches with women pastors, who drew fair-sized congregations; but these steadily diminished in number. It was plain that a manless religion was doomed to atrophy.

Rentals were absurdly low. One could obtain a modern city mansion, with half a dozen bathrooms and every convenience, for the price of a kitchenette apartment back in 1920. Two spinsters bought an entire country club, with a fifty-room house equipped with swimming pool and bowling alleys, surrounded by an eighteen-hole links, paddocks, and an artificial lake, for less than three thousand dollars. A well known sculptress chose to live in a cathedral that had cost fifteen million. She paid no rental whatever, as nobody owned it, or wanted it.

No structural ironwork was attempted by the world of women, and there was little building of any sort. Splendid edifices in city and country stood vacant; repairs were kept up only on those in actual use. All the great ocean liners were tied up at their piers, and international relations practically ceased. A few yachts plied the seas, and cables and wireless bore meager news across the Atlantic.

Newspapers, as we used to know them, early gave up a losing fight. With no news of men, no threats of war, no abductions or elopements, no market reports or strikes, the daily press rapidly dwindled to a few weekly organs filled with stories of the Sunday supplement order. Women preferred to get their news from the broadcasting stations, which were as common as corner drug stores had once been; and they were devoted almost wholly to reporting social and sporting events—for women went in for athletics with an almost unbelievable fury.

The great universities continued their rivalry. Such classics as the Harvard-Yale football games were still played, but soccer had replaced the old American game. Boxing contests drew huge throngs. The feminine champions of the ring were as fast and clever as men, and some of them packed almost as mean a wallop. Golf, tennis, racing, hockey, lacrosse, were played as never before. Our country was developing that race of “fierce athletic girls” prophesied by the poet Whitman.

The feminine gambling instinct preferred bridge to the stock market. Every city had its municipal card house, with a uniform “kitty” established by law, and a limit based upon the sworn tax returns of the players.

Quite naturally, a profound change took place in amusements. Dancing ceased, save in its formally classic aspect. Literature maintained a high level, but fiction ceased to be written or read. With love, fighting, sex jealousy, double-living, bootlegging, bohemianism, villains, missing heirs, and faithless lovers and guardians removed, what was the poor novelist to do?

Similarly, the drama languished. At first, plays and pictures were produced with women in male rôles; but the memories evoked were too poignant. The stage was given over to vaudeville, juggling, jazz, and animal acts.

The various forms of censorship died a natural, if not a painless, death. It appeared that only men had needed censoring! Watch and ward societies, vice squads, keyhole and transom experts, were out of luck. Not that immorality entirely ceased, of course. There were certain curious books, veiled in symbolism, which voiced the tenets of obscure groups; but they were negligible. Curfew laws, homes for wayward girls, travelers' aid societies, uplift movements, chaperons, were as extinct as the pictures of beautiful youths advertising popular brands of collars.

There were, at first, a few barrooms; but they soon failed. It was proved that women—even the rare dipsomaniacs—were not partial to drinking on their feet, assisted by a brass rail. Moreover, they utterly lacked the treating instinct, which, in weaker mankind, had so largely supported bars. They argued noisily as to who should pay for the drinks, consuming more time than liquor.

To cater to the morbid or sentimental, great waxwork museums were established in the larger cities, wherein were displayed groups illustrating every activity of vanished men. Among the popular exhibits was one of an old-time saloon. Everything was complete—sawdust on the floor, huge brass cuspidors, innumerable rows of bottles and glasses, soiled towels hooked to the corners of the great rosewood bar, and photographs of undraped beauties and undefeated pugilists on the walls. A ferociously genial bartender leaned across to demand of a carefully modeled gathering of souses:

“What 'll it be, gents?”

Other groups showed men cracking safes, operating moonshine stills, dragging their wives about by the hair, asleep on park benches, engaged in whipping or lynching one another, initiating a candidate in a lodge room, or busy about other typical masculine pursuits.

In these days the gentle art of dining fell to a low level. For several decades housewifery had been dying out. All the great chefs and stewards were masculine. Now, with the incentive of reaching the male heart by way of his stomach no longer remaining, women found that preparing meals irked them more than ever. Great municipal kitchens were established, and delicatessen shops multiplied in the residential districts.

In apparel, the old question whether women dress to please men, or to make other women jealous, remained unsettled. A great proportion wore loose knickerbocker suits and common-sense shoes; but the demand for elaborate toilettes and smart hats was very great, and the sale of rouge, lotions, and hair dyes did not languish. Women still powdered their noses, revealed themselves generously on formal occasions, and paid exorbitant prices for rare perfumes.

So went the world, adapting itself to stupendous changes. Little girls still played with dolls, though the babes they symbolized could never be born to them. Boys in their games imitated the rough contests of the men they could never grow up to become.

Makers of cigars, valentines, and safety razors, jewelers, florists, and hundreds of others, found their trades unprofitable. There were no labor strikes, because there was no future proletariat to plan for. In no profession save the medical was any attempt made to do more than mark time. What was the use?

And yet the world—only a half world now—plodded on, laughing and crying, working and playing, and hoping against all reason, because hope is the very last thing to die within us.

To this world, by newspaper, radiophone, billboard poster, and public addresses, came the news that Edna Furlong's two-year search for missing men had been in vain, but that Dr. Lulu Prodwell's antitoxin was available, to be administered to the young lads who alone could prevent the total extinction of the race.

III

At a corner table in the Chicken Coop, a malodorous tea house on the western slope of Beacon Hill, three women sat in a conference as momentous in its way as the one in the old Beacon Street club.

Greenwich Gertie, leader of the notorious Tea House Gang of female crooks, had summoned Frisco Kate and Red Sal, two of her henchwomen, to share a secret of tremendous import.

The trio were alike in this—they all belonged to the twenty-minute egg class; but the hardness of Red Sal, a watery-eyed blonde, was mitigated by a sentimental streak that sometimes irritated her two companions. She also had a touch of catarrh; and since Greenwich Gertie was speaking in a whisper, her snuffling was more audible than usual.

The leader, without removing her cigarette, spat her information from one corner of cruel lips that barely moved. The others gave her the close attention which she always exacted, and which her ingenious schemes really deserved.

“Ya read about that old dame what's-her-name—Furlong—chasin' herself all over the woods to find any stray man that might 'a' been overlooked?”

“Yeah,” Frisco Kate answered.

Red Sal sniffed that she, too, was thus far in touch with the news of the day.

Gertie, not lacking the dramatic instinct, paused to heighten the suspense, her beady black eyes flitting from Kate's big, stolid face to Sal's pimpled one.

“Listen! I got us sittin' pretty for the rest of our sweet lives. What that old dame couldn't find in two years, with all her expenses paid, I digs up all by myself. I got a live man!”

The effect was all she had hoped for. Frisco Kate's face, ordinarily as expressionless as a cabbage, for once flamed into incredulous amaze. Red Sal's watery eyes and weak mouth flew open together.

“Get out! Where is he?”

The bony fingers of Greenwich Gertie closed on Sal's soft forearm like the jaws of a woodchuck trap.

“Shut up!” she hissed. “D'ya want to start a riot?”

After a furtive survey of the room, to see if any of the dozen listless drabs who were lounging over the dirty tables had overheard Red Sal's incautious query, Gertie continued:

“Never mind where is he at. He's where I can put my hooks on him any old time.”

“How old is he?” whispered Sal.

“I dunno. He's got so much hair and whiskers, it ain't easy to dope out. Not over thirty-five, I guess, and he's sound, kind, and not too big for us to handle.”

“Chee! I thought the last one croaked when I was a kid!”

The bandit leader nodded.

“Sure! Everybody thought so; I wouldn't believe nothing but my own lamps, neither.”

“What ya goin' to do?” breathed Kate.

“Do? What ya s'pose? Write a piece about it and send it to the paper? This is what we're goin' to do—because I can't pull it alone. I got to have help; so ye're in on it, and whatever we get is cut three ways. We're gonna sell that bird to the gov'ment for a million dollars!”

Red Sal's reply to this carefully worked-up climax of Gertie's story was amazing. A wistful look came into her watery eyes, and she snuffled loudly.

“Aw, don't let's sell him! Let's keep him!”

The leader glared at her in withering contempt.

“Snap out of it, you ash can! Pass up a million fish for one bow-legged, cross-eyed man? Not if—”

“Ya didn't say nothing about him being all that,” complained Frisco Kate.

“No, nor I shan't say nothing about it when I'm offering him for sale! Anyhow, he's a man, even if he never could double for Romeo. But get me, kid—if either of ya act mushy over this bird, and try crossing me up, I'll rub ya out so they won't be so much as a snuffle left of ya!”

Red Sal shivered slightly.

“I ain't never crossed ya, Gert,” she whispered. “I only suggested we keep him for a while. It's so long since I seen a john, I've forgot how one looks.”

Gertie leaned back, mollified.

“Well, folks 'll forget how you look if ya try to slip me anything. Now listen!”

She swept the cigarette stubs to the floor, rested her wiry arms upon the greasy table top, and leaned closer to her pals.

“I was in that all-night lunch when Big Alice croaked the Feeney woman. Her mouthpiece slips me a nice bit of change to lose myself as a material witness—which is why Big Alice didn't take the high voltage. I sneaks up into New Hampshire, in the hills; and I'll tell the world that as a place to hide out in, it's fine country. I drops off a flat car just beyond Ashland, a thrivin' burg of eleven or thirteen old maids and a few thousand cats. From there I clumb a hill for four solid miles, and in all that time I never see nothin' more exciting than a flock of crows. On top of this hill was a lot of cellar holes and some busted barns, which same had once been a hick village called Bridgewater. I see it was a good place to lose myself in, but it begun to look a little too good. It was getting toward sundown, and I hadn't found any place to eat or sleep. Then I hear somebody chopping wood. It sounded so loud I thought 'twas close by; but it must 'a' been a mile farther on before I come to the house, a tumbledown place as big as a church. Ya could 'a' knocked me for a row of kosher laundries when I see that it was a man who was busy at the wood pile!”

Grunts of sympathetic interest came from Gertie's hearers.

“At first,” she went on, “I couldn't believe my own eyes, and doped it out it must be a bearded lady or something like that; but from the way he stands, and the big chaw he takes from a hand of tobacco, I got to admit here's one he-male that didn't contract the pip. He swung a mean ax, too. Just then an old dame comes to the door and makes noises like the whooping cough. It seems she's a dummy, and cuckoo besides; and they talks in sign language for a while, with me sneaking behind a big tree, so they didn't see me. Pretty soon the man takes a basket, with bread and butter and eggs in it, and goes away; and because a real he-man is a novelty in my young life, I shadows him to see where does he hang out, and has he maybe got any brothers. Will ya believe me, he lives in a cave, and is a hermit, which I thought they never was any, only in story books! I waits till he goes in, and then I follows. Honest, I thought he was going to throw a fit or something; but finally I convinces him that I'm dodging the police, and that his secret is safe with me, and then he gives up the story of his life. He's been living in this way for thirteen years, and has the cave all dolled up like the kitten's vest. They's a spring close to the entrance, and a thick blanket for a door, and inside it's nice and dry, with a good bunk and a stove and plenty of tinned grub, a sack of spuds, and a ham hung up at the end of the tunnel.”

Gertie paused. The other women silently waited for her to resume her absorbing narrative.

“It seems that this bird got stuck on some jane named Hattie, way back when the supply of men was more than equal to the demand, and she cans him for some better-looking guy. He gets an awful grouch on, and decides he's off of women for life; so he finds this cave, and here he's lived ever since, seeing nobody but the dippy old woman, who can't talk, and hasn't got nothing to say if she could. The poor fish don't even know he's worth his weight in platinum as the last man on earth, because he never sees any books or newspapers. He has it fixed with granny to split her wood and raise her spuds and cabbages and so forth, and he takes his pay in milk and bread and eggs and stuff. Well, I leave it ride that way, because already I got an idea of kidnapping this hairy prize when the right time comes, and I don't want him to get wise. As he's lived in this one cave going on thirteen years, I ain't leery he'll leave, because he's scared stiff at the sight of a woman, except only granny, who, as you might say, is more like an animal than a real woman. I note the place in my mind, so that I can't fail to find it when needed; and after letting him fix me a mess of fried eggs and a big bowl of bread and milk, I allow I'll be on my way—which tickles him so he won't take no pay for the feed. I go down the other side of the hill, and come to some houses on Newfound Lake, and there I board with some old dames till after Alice's trial is over. Now I'll spring the glad news to the Senate and the Cabinet and a few heiresses, and get 'em to bidding against each other. Of course, they'll first try to find this bird, but as I'm the only one that's turned him up in over thirteen years, we should worry! Then they'll make their offer—and that's when you two come in; for this bird is going to put up an awful holler. When a man hates women so he hides in a crack in the rocks all this time, he'll just love to be drug out and auctioned off to the highest bidder, or to a syndicate! Selling him is going to be a pipe, but delivering the goods is going to be a real woman's job. Your play is to keep mum, hang around where I can find you any time, and stay in training for a real scrap.”

As Greenwich Gertie finished her narrative, Frisco Kate doubled a huge and freckled fist.

“Lemme get my hooks on a real live man, and he'll never get away till I say so! Not a chanst!”

Red Sal sighed.

“There couldn't be no harm in kissing him just once, before we turn him over?”

“Aw, ya make me sick! When ya get that kale, ya can kiss all the pretty boys that's growin' up. They got a new dope now that 'll keep 'em alive. Wait till ya see this hermit. and ya won't even want to shake hands with him, let alone kiss his hairy mug!”

The trio shut up like clams as a policewoman entered the Chicken Coop, sharply scanning its habituées. When she had left, they separated, to go to their lodgings and sleep and dream of pursuing a riotously bewhiskered Apollo over mountains and across lakes and up tall trees, and to awake just as they cornered him and were about to enfold him in a mighty embrace.

IV

Elmer Robinson possessed a rare lack of personal charm. Nature had unquestionably designed him for a father and husband, for he was of the faithful, unimaginative type which would have turned over all his wages to his wife, eaten whatever was set before him, and gone outdoors whenever he felt that he needed a smoke; but having said thus much of him, we have said it all.

In an era when snappy youths with glib tongues and belted and pleated coats were common enough, Elmer had contrived to get himself engaged to a pretty schoolteacher in a Vermont village, where he happened to be about the only eligible bachelor, and where he worked a lean farm inherited from his ancestors.

Then Hattie—the schoolma'am—spent a vacation in Brattleboro, waiting on a summer hotel table; and it was all over with Elmer. Odious comparisons got in their deadly work; and before her school reopened, she had become Mrs. Bliss, and was living up to her new name.

The tragic news came to Elmer as he was toiling in the hot sunshine, destroying potato bugs. He was what might be called a one-woman man. Romance died in him as surely as the Colorado beetles died beneath his Paris green. He cursed the sex, sold his farm, pocketed the two hundred dollars that it fetched over and above the first and second mortgages, and became an Ishmaelite, wandering in lonely places, avoiding his own kind as far as possible and the perfidious sex at all times.

In due time he fetched up on Bridgewater Hill, and, stumbling upon a large, dry, and airy cave, he became a hermit, just about the time when the ravages of masculitis began to denude the world of its men.

His subsequent contact with humanity consisted in a satisfactory arrangement he made with the sole inhabitant living within four miles—an old woman, deaf, dumb, and half-witted, whose cow, chickens, pigs, and simple culinary gifts gave him all he needed, in return for such chores as he did for her.

Never a student, Elmer Robinson was prejudiced against literature in any form, because the faithless Hattie had been an educator. Henceforth he willingly gave up the Rural Economist, the Holy Scriptures, and his annual “Farm Almanack”—his three sources of culture. He neither bathed, shaved, nor manicured himself. He worked every day until he was tired, he slept soundly, he ate heartily whenever hungry. He was troubled by no fears that the world was going to the bowwows, or that morals and manners were degenerating. He became an expert weather prophet, and knew the habits of beast and bird and fish, but practically ceased to think. His existence was much the same as that of a healthy cucumber on its vine.

Since nobody had any occasion to climb the four miles to the top of his hill, he was untroubled by visitors. The old woman now and then hitched up her steed and drove down to Ashland or Plymouth, to get supplies; but her mental and vocal impediments, coupled with a natural taciturnity, prevented her from mentioning the existence of her equally taciturn neighbor of the cave.

In one of nature's grandest outposts, with forty miles of the Presidential Range as an ever-changing panorama, and the blue mirror of Newfound Lake below him, the hermit didn't come within miles of a wandering masculitis germ. While his fellow men perished miserably and were mourned, he lived on, and was not molested. It is doubtful if the wits of the old woman were equal to a realization of the calamity which had desolated the globe. If so, she did not evince any concern.

The unsuspected appearance of a woman—young and not wholly without physical attraction—at the mouth of his cave gave Elmer a horrible turn. Unlike his great prototype, St. Anthony of Thebes, he was not tempted, save to flight; and there was nowhere to go! It was many years since he had seen a girl, and he had never seen many; yet even his inexperience recognized in Greenwich Gertie a hard and perdurable quality that turned his joints to water.

When, after his first panic and his recognition of the fact that he was cornered, she had made him understand that she was herself a fugitive from the law—which he could well believe—he had been only too glad to give her his own supper and speed her on her way.

It was now some weeks since he had watched her going down over the hill toward the lake settlement; and she had never come back; but her beady eyes still followed him in his dreams, and his nerves became jumpy by day. The flight of a rabbit through the brush, the sudden scream of a blue jay, would bedew his lush whiskers with trickles of cold sweat.

He thought of giving up his snug cave; but no other place seemed any safer. Besides, he was very comfortable here, and he had taken root like a tree. It was his home. He knew every shrub, every brook, every bowlder, every ground hog's hole, for a mile in every direction. So he stayed on, but with the feeling that hard-featured nymphs were spying upon him day and night.

One precaution he took. His cave had but one opening, protected by an old pair of horse blankets, and concealed by a clump of mountain laurel. The farther end terminated in a crevice of loose shale. On this latter he began to work feverishly, with a pick and a shovel borrowed from the old woman.

As he was vigorous and wiry, in a surprisingly short time he had made a rear exit big enough to crawl through. This came out behind a great cedar; and he cunningly strewed branches over it, so that the eye of a passer-by could not detect it. After that, he slept better.

“And then, one night,” as the screen titles say, Elmer had retired to his husk mattress feeling unusually at peace. It had come on to rain at dusk; and he had unearthed from its warm nest a big pot of pork and beans which had simmered underground for a full twenty-four hours.

Full of beans and hot coffee, he sat for an hour, smoking the tobacco leaves that he raised and cured. He poured out a mug of hard cider, into which he thrust a red-hot poker from his little cannonball stove. It sizzled protest, an amber froth boiled up; and ten minutes later gentle snores filled the hermit's cavern.

V

A disreputable taxicab, whose piloting up Bridgewater Hill in the rainy dark had been a species of miracle at which Red Sal was an adept, came to a pause just this side of the clearing where the old woman lived. From its unlighted interior stepped two alert figures.

“Wait here,” commanded Greenwich Gertie. “Keep her engine turning. The old dumb-bell lives there, and we got to walk the ties from this place. Back her round,” she directed Red Sal, “so's we can make a quick get-away.”

Accompanied by big Kate, she skillfully led the way past the landmarks she had memorized, identifying here a blasted tree and there a bowlder heaved up in the glacial age, her pocket torch darting from side to side of what had once upon a time been a turnpike, lined with prosperous farms.

At a clump of junipers she left the trail and struck off through the thicket. Frisco Kate cursed heartily as her burly figure was clutched at by sharp thorns, and her big, flat feet found rolling stones.

“Wait!” whispered Gertie. “Don't ya hear somethin'?”

They did, indeed, make out a new noise that rose gently above the drumming of rain and the sough of wet branches.

“The bird's asleep, all right. All the better!”

Gertie cautioned her helper to stop swearing. From now on to the big rock that marked the last stage of their journey, their progress was as slow and stealthy as that of a pair of stoats.

A peep behind the blanketed opening revealed a pleasant scene of rustic tranquillity. The little stove still gave forth a genial warmth; the odor of properly baked beans blended with the aromatic challenge of hard cider. Lying flat on his back, barefooted, clad in patched corduroys and an ancient sweater, slept the last man on earth, his whiskers stirring rhythmically with every snore.

“Ain't it a sight for sore eyes?” breathed Frisco Kate. “I got to hand it to you, Gert. I don't mind sayin' that I thought it was only a pipe dream!”

It could hardly have been her almost inaudible whisper that roused Elmer Robinson from slumber so profound. Possibly he had, in his years of solitude, acquired a sort of feral instinct such as foxes and weasels possess. Perhaps a faint, feminine fragrance was wafted to his subconsciousness from the two dripping, motionless figures beside him.

Whatever it may have been, one second Elmer lay fathoms deep in the tides of sleep; the next, he was on his bare feet, his eyes wide open, every sense awake.

Greenwich Gertie knew nothing of the secret exit her prey had so zealously excavated since her first visit. As Elmer bounded wildly to the far end of the cave, five precious seconds were lost before her quick mind grasped the danger.

“Come on!” she bawled. “There goes a million dollars!”

The hermit, a skinny man, had made his arduous tunnel none too wide. He was out and away before Gertie wriggled half through. Frisco Kate stuck for a full half minute, cursing like Jezebel, before she won through and plunged after her leader's darting electric torch.

The mad flight of a hirsute Paul and two ravening Virginias through the black night of storm ended when the unfortunate hermit's bare feet, cruelly bruised by sharp stones, faltered. His pursuers, wearing stout shoes, dragged him down.

Undeterred by false gallantry, he fought like a hound at bay, with legs, claws, and even teeth; but Frisco Kate was a worthy successor to the stick-up men of yesteryear, and Greenwich Gertie was almost as good.

Fifteen minutes later Red Sal, patiently waiting, was guiding her taxicab down Bridgewater Hill. Within, Elmer Robinson lay bound and gagged. His two captors relaxed, and lighted cigarettes.

“Well, that's that!” commented Gertie, with Napoleonic brevity.

VI

It was a shrewd move on Greenwich Gertie's part to approach Dr. Lulu Prodwell, the celebrated physician, rather than to struggle with the red tape which hampered those who, without any pull, attempted to get in direct touch with any of the government officials.

The plump, genial lady who presided over the White House was largely a social figure. Her Cabinet was a galaxy of notable entertainers. There were no Secretaries of War and of the Navy, and no foreign relations to discuss. The Secretary of the Interior devoted herself to a series of brilliant state dinners. Only the Treasury and the postal service demanded serious thought.

Few new laws were introduced in Congress. Far too many had been inherited from a long series of masculine lawmakers. The judges of the Supreme Court were seldom called upon to pass on anything more vital than the fit of their gorgeous judicial robes.

Who—so Gertie argued—would be more interested to learn of the existence of the hermit of Bridgewater Hill than Dr. Prodwell, who had as yet no mature subject upon whom to try her vaccine? And as the most prominent member of the Federated Women's Relief Corps, with ample funds at command, Dr. Prodwell could instantly get done what Gertie would have to cajole or bribe supercilious officials and political lobbyists to do.

If the doctor could not be handled, there were plenty of millionaire spinsters who, once they began to bid against one another, might run the ransom up to such staggering figures that the modest million asked would look like chicken feed.

The sunny office was well filled with patients when Gertie breezed in. She recognized them as solid citizens, able to pay for the best advice. Easing herself upon a great Spanish leather divan beside a well known jurist, she lighted a cigarette and stared absently at the prominent notice on the opposite wall:

LADIES WILL NOT SMOKE IN THIS ROOM.
OTHER FEMALES MUST NOT!

She pictured the scene, were these pampered women who glared at her to know that she could, at any time she chose, produce a real live man in the prime of life. Why, they would kneel and kiss her soiled, down-at-heel Louis shoes! They would stand on their elaborate coiffures at her command. They would open the doors of their houses to her, and empty their safe deposit vaults.

Gertie's humor was of the rare sort which can enjoy a secret advantage, meanwhile enduring overt contempt. When the general hauteur became too pronounced, she met it with her own coarse weapons. She answered an insolent regard, through effective jeweled lorgnettes, by sticking out her tongue at a matron who had cornered the ostrich plume market, and who had once snubbed Lillian Pratt, the President of these United States. Where subtlety would have failed, Gertie's derisive red tongue and outthrust chin routed the impregnable dame.

Time passed so agreeably that, before she realized it, her turn had come, and the uniformed nurse admitted her to the consulting room.

Dr. Prodwell bestowed upon this, her last patient of the day, a piercing regard, not too affable. She recognized Gertie at once as of a different class from her usual clientele.

“Well, my good woman, what can I do for you?”

Greenwich Gertie shook her head languidly, and winked.

“Not a thing, doc—not one little thing. I'm all set!”

Dr. Prodwell frowned impatiently.

“My time is valuable—to others,” she snapped. “If you are not here to see me professionally—”

Gertie interrupted her.

“I am, in a way; but I don't want advice. I've got somethin' you want—the worst way!”

“Look here!” Dr. Prodwell's straight back became even straighter. “I very much question if you have, or could have, anything that I would accept as a gift. If you are a peddler—”

Gertie's loud laugh cut the doctor short. Yes, in a way she was a peddler; but what a treasure it was she bore in her pack, so to speak! She lighted another cigarette, unmoved by Dr. Prodwell's glare.

“Keep yer brassière on, Lulu! I've got yer number—that's what I got. There's one thing in the world ya do want, and can't get—except from me. I got a man!”

“You—what rot is this? I—”

“I said it. I got the only real, live, healthy he-man in captivity! When I reads about the new dope ya mixed, with nobody but a lot o' kids to practice on, I decides to spring my little find here, instead of peddling it, as ya put it, at Washington, or on Fift' Avenoo!”

A certain calm assurance which shone through her visitor's disgusting crudity warned the physician, no mean student of human nature, that a little urbanity could do no harm. Of course, the creature might be demented. The world was so full of neurotic women these days—

“I see,” she agreed soothingly. “Naturally, and greatly to your credit, you wish as a good American citizen to do your bit toward restoring normalcy.”

Greenwich Gertie waved a bored hand—the one holding her cigarette.

“Ferget it! Do I look like I had got that way?”

Prodwell looked, and had to admit that Gertie didn't. She looked thoroughly capable of safeguarding her own material interests, under any circumstances.

“What I want,” said Gertie, “is a million bucks—fish—iron men—payable on delivery.”

Dr. Prodwell forced a laugh.

“You don't want much, do you?”

“What do you think? I got a man. He's all they is. There ain't any more. He's worth whatever money can be raised, ain't he?”

Prodwell did not find it easy to deny this. She temporized.

“Of course, nobody buys a pig in a poke—still less a man. He'd have to be examined by competent scientists.”

“Sure! Go as far as ya like. He's one hundred per cent. But get this—if ya try to stall, and give him a phony rating to queer the sale, it 'll need a lot stronger medicine than yer new dope to keep ya in yer usual health!”

The doctor looked squarely into her visitor's cold orbs, and felt that Gertie spoke truth. She poised a pencil over a pad of prescription blanks.

“Tell me how I can communicate with you,” she decided. “I shall have to consult with others about this. It's too big to handle alone, even if I kept a million dollars on hand.”

Greenwich Gertie gave her name—or one of her names—and a telephone number. Then she rose.

“S'long!” she spoke at the door. “Don't call me up till ye're ready to do business. One man, one million—no discount fer cash!”

VII

During the ensuing twenty-four hours, Greenwich Gertie occupied a surprising portion of the valuable time of several important people.

Hurrying over to Pemberton Square, Dr. Prodwell was closeted with the district attorney, a personal friend of years.

“What do you know about her, Nellie?” she asked. “Anything?”

“Plenty!”

The D. A. pressed a button and summoned a clerk. In a short time the long and variegated record of Greenwich Gertie was spread before the two women on a great flat desk.

“You see, Lulu, she's bad all the way through. We know that she's the brains of one of the most troublesome criminal organizations in the East; but we've never been able to pin anything on her.”

Prodwell nodded soberly.

“I see. Isn't there a so-called 'third degree,'—a sort of supermoral suasion—that has been successful in getting her sort to talk?”

There was, Nellie Gary readily agreed; but it had never got anything out of this woman except violent outbursts of the most shocking language.

“Of course, I could turn loose a whole regiment of plain clothes women, and try to locate this alleged man; but it would spread all through the underworld, and half a dozen gangs would set out to find him for themselves. In the general excitement he might be killed, or mutilated. It's her move. Make her produce him!”

“A million is a lot of money,” objected Prodwell. “There's a fine chance of getting flimflammed.”

The D. A. dissented.

“Not a chance, my dear! Put the ransom in escrow—that is, deposit it in a trust company, to be paid over only on the report of your examining board after they have seen the goods.”

Satisfied that this was good advice, Dr. Prodwell proceeded to carry out a little idea of her own as to the raising of so large a sum.

She felt that notoriety was by all means to be avoided, until they were sure of their facts. Furthermore, she greatly desired to have a free hand in dealing with the hermit. Were she to approach Congress for an appropriation, or even to permit the Women's Relief Corps to finance the deal, there would be too many shapely fingers in the pie.

She therefore arranged for an interview with Dora Grant, the great producer and showwoman, who controlled, among other public amusements, the chain of waxwork museums which perpetuated vanished man's activities. To her she suggested that, as a public spectacle, a live man would be worth an initial investment of far more than a million dollars.

As Miss Grant was in every way a modern business woman, she needed no persuading. Without delay, her certified check for one million dollars was deposited, in escrow, and an hour later Dr. Prodwell telephoned to Greenwich Gertie.

On the following evening, a seedy-looking taxicab drew up before the iron gates of the select sanitarium that Dr. Prodwell maintained in Chestnut Hills; and from it a forlorn figure was carefully lifted and borne within.

Two days later Gertie received curt notice that the ransom awaited her; and at this point she and Frisco Kate and Red Sal fade out of our picture.

Each received an equal share of the money; but in one respect—important or not, according to one's viewpoint—Red Sal had the advantage. For, as the helpless hermit was lifted from the vehicle, she bent swiftly and, through a tangled thicket of dank whiskers, kissed him full upon his gagged mouth.

VIII

Bromides, and a merciful oblivion; and, as soon as possible after a balanced breakfast, his first vaccine treatment.

Elmer Robinson awoke from the terrifying experiences of the night before to a scientific kindness that was even harder to bear. He was shampooed, clipped, shaved, boiled, sterilized, and clad in spotless linen garments. A dental surgeon attended to his teeth. The best oculist obtainable fitted him to huge goggles. His blood pressure was taken, and, with stethoscope and little rubber-tipped hammer, specialists explored his surface inch by inch. His reflexes were duly noted, and the Wassermann test was applied.

For two days he belonged, body and soul, to Dr. Prodwell and her collaborators; then the epochal news was broadcasted to the world. An astonishingly virile bachelor of thirty-four, whose only defects were those incident to some thirteen years' abstention from dental and tonsorial parlors, had been snatched from the jaws of masculitis.

That the story would create a profound impression had been foreseen; but that it would result in what came perilously near to being chaos, nobody had guessed—although they might have!

Picture a feline universe, into which is introduced a lone canary; a world of hungry robins, and one solitary angleworm; or a kingdom of mice intrigued by the last remaining morsel of cheese!

Miss Grant, the enterprising producer, began at once to recoup herself for the heavy ransom she had paid. The hermit was posed before the camera, before and after renovations. The true story of his life was syndicated in the press. In it Robinson told of his early struggles, of his shy and yet affectionate nature, of his first meeting with Hattie, of her acceptance of his homage. The account was written by a competent journalist. As for Elmer, he never even read it.

Foreign and second serial rights, the publication of the completed memoirs in book form, illustrated, and later in a cheap reprint, totaled a tidy sum.

A great screen production—in which a slender, athletic girl doubled for Elmer—appeared. The scene of his abduction by the Tea House Gang was especially thrilling. The love episodes drew buckets of tears from audiences which had almost forgotten how to weep. A competent and eloquent legitimate cast and six road companies attended to the stage version of Elmer's life drama.

There were, of course, innumerable signed interviews in the magazines, on special topics—“How I Avoided Masculitis,” “What I Think of the Women of To-day,” “My Ideal Sweetheart,” and the like; but the big money was taken in when Elmer appeared in person, selling little arts and crafts lockets containing a photograph of himself.

Before a week had elapsed, a daring attempt by female yeggs to kidnap him from Dr. Prodwell's sanitarium warned thoughtful women that a stronger guard must be maintained at all times. Only because the district attorney had reënforced the hospital staff with a number of detectives, was the yeggwomen's attempt abortive. As it was, three of them and an orderly were killed, and several severely wounded.

Elmer's life followed a rigid régime. He was attended night and day by a trained nurse and a bodyguard of two heavyweight pugilists armed to the teeth. A physician was ever within call. Everything he ate and drank was prepared by his own chef. He pleaded for baked beans, and ham and eggs, and cider, and received calories—things which he could not identify, and which never gave him the satisfying fullness that real grub imparted.

Worst of all to endure—worse than the daily tub, the rationing, the constant proximity of women, the cold feel of fresh linen—was his enforced exercise.

A celebrated physical instructor met him every morning, at precisely ten o'clock. She forced him to run so many times around the room, finishing with a sprint. She hurled a big medicine ball at him with such force that when his clumsy fingers missed it, he was usually bowled over. Imitating her, he bent over so many dozen times and touched his knuckles to the floor; squatted on his thighs, with his arms horizontal; inflated his lungs, while she counted ten slowly, and then exhaled with a sharp gasp; boxed for three mortifying rounds; was massaged, which tickled him agonizingly, and then sent to the cold shower.

This ordeal ended suddenly one morning when Elmer, wrought up past endurance, grappled with his instructress and bore her to the mat. Awkward enough he was, but strong as a chimpanzee. After all, he was a man, with a man's thews.

Wild screams brought a dozen attendants, who beheld him sitting on his trainer's chest and belaboring her with both fists. By no stretch of the fancy could the hermit be termed gallant, and the ethics of amateur sport meant less than nothing to him.

Thereafter his exercise consisted of long walks in the open, and a system of deep breathing, which he agreed to practice as long as he was spared the unwelcome attentions of a personal trainer.

IX

Meanwhile, unknown to Elmer Robinson, great disorders prevailed throughout the United States. With the disappearance of man, the world of women had sunk into a sort of lethargy. The discovery of one live specimen awoke all those jealousies which lay dormant. Of the fifty million women in the country, forty-nine millions and some hundreds of thousands had very definite ideas about Elmer and what should be done with him.

The Senate and House woke up, and introduced bills of every description relative to his disposal. In Boston it was argued that he was a public utility, and should be under control of the commission. The General Court voted that he must not be taken outside the Commonwealth. The Governor promptly affixed her name, and instantly an appeal was taken to the Federal courts.

There were other and even more ominous signs of unrest. After several Black Hand letters had been received, an investigation showed that the anarchistic group was bent on destroying civilization at one blow, by killing Elmer Robinson. Never before had the enemies of humanity had so glittering a chance!

A vast body of orthodox Christian women followed the banner of Pastor Fanny Hicks, who prophesied a fiery retribution if the law of monogamy were violated.

“One husband, one wife!” was her slogan, regardless of the desperate plight of the world.

Bishopess Pease, in a scholarly polemic, showed that the Old Testament distinctly tolerated polygamy, and that in no place does the New Testament expressly forbid it. Pastor Hicks retorted by quoting from the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians:

Let every one of you—love his wife—and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

These warring cliques, religious, economic, political, criminal, almost brought the business of living to a standstill. Families were divided—mothers against daughters, children against grandmothers. The disorders known as the Walnut Fudge Riots followed a spurious report that the dieticians in charge of Elmer Robinson had refused his pathetic pleas for half a pound of candy.

Finally a group of parlor socialists secured an injunction forbidding any person or persons from exhibiting Robinson in public, for a fee. It was argued that, aside from his own sufferings, many casualties occurred in the mobs which gathered about him. It was claimed that capitalists were exploiting what was in reality a public asset, like air, or rain, or sunshine.

On the last night before the injunction became operative, the unfortunate man was on view at Mechanics' Hall, where a charity bazaar was being held.

More and more he had grown to feel that some awful fate awaited him; that he was the fatted calf destined for a horde of female prodigals. Thus have unhappy captives of South Sea tribes felt during the fattening process that leads to the village stewpot.

For his personal security, he was always exhibited upon a high platform and in a large container of plate glass. Plain clothes women were scattered freely through the audience.

Upon this night no unusual disorder had taken place. The women present were largely of the better class, and there had been no public sale of tickets.

It was verging on eleven o'clock when, for the first time, the captive roused from the dejected attitude he always had maintained. His act was totally unexpected. Uttering a dreadful howl, he hurled himself against the transparent front of his cage, and, amid a great crash of shattered glass, landed upon about eight hundred dollars' worth of millinery.

The resultant panic was notable even in an era of unrest. Scores of women fainted; many others were clubbed by the frantic guards, who did not know what it was all about, but were there to keep the last man on earth from bodily harm.

When at length they got to him, he was clasped in the arms of a skinny and rather shabbily clad woman, who was moaning, over and over, the one word:

“Elmer!”

To which he fervently responded:

“Hattie—my own Hattie!”

Dr. Prodwell shouted to the guards to stop trying to pry the reunited lovers apart; and they were still locked in a deathlike grapple when they were bundled into a limousine outside the hall.

X

A marked change came over the last man on earth. With the discovery, out in the audience, of his lost Hattie—whose husband, of course, had gone the way of all male flesh—his eyes gained luster, his shoulders squared.

Under no circumstances, he told the world, would he consider any mate but Hattie. The authorities might pass laws, issue injunctions, send him to prison—aye, or to the chair! Let them select for him a whole army of wives, the most beautiful, virtuous, fascinating, roguish, shapely, adoring, healthy young girls that ransacked nations could produce. He reminded them of a saying current in his youth—that you could lead a horse to water, but, after that, it was up to the horse!

In the end, they had to yield. There was this to be said about it—since the plan was wholly Elmer's, none of the many antagonistic groups of women could claim victory, or crow over the others.

Pastor Fanny Hicks married Elmer and Hattie Robinson. There were three thousand flower girls, but no best man; nor was a honeymoon trip practicable. Every effort was made to induce the happy pair to accept a home suited to their importance; but they showed their sturdy common sense by deciding to establish themselves a modest summer hotel up in New Hampshire, whose two hundred rooms barely sufficed for the army of nurses, physicians, secretaries, secret service women, journalists, and servants.

 

It was in May that Elmer and Hattie were married; and upon a certain raw February night a mighty throng was gathered in the deep snow that surrounded the Robinson home.

For long hours they had stood, reckless of frozen toes or ears. The converted hotel glowed at every window like a power plant. Eloquent shadows passed and repassed the drawn shades of the upper story. Then, suddenly, upon an upper porch appeared the dapper figure of Dr. Lulu Prodwell, one hand raised for silence.

And such silence as fell! In it, the snap of a twig, or the sighing of an ancient pine in its winter sleep, was earsplitting to that dumb mass of watchers.

Then, as the ringing tones of Dr. Prodwell shook the very stars in their courses with the momentous news, a shout went up from the assembled throng that vibrated the ancient bones in country churchyards for miles around.

Twins—and boys at that! Romulus and Remus Robinson, destined to rebuild a greater Rome, and to appear on postage stamps and gold coins and treasury notes, and as trade-marks on a thousand as yet uninvented commodities!

So the old world, so very near its final suspiration, turned restlessly in its sleep, and opened tired eyes in which fever no longer burned. Not yet was the human race to follow the giant lizard, the dodo, the lumbering mastodon!

The gifts that poured in from the far corners of earth comprised such things as an offer of the throne to either twin, from a score of nations; a solid gold cradle from India; a remission of all taxes, Federal and State, to the house of Robinson forever.

Amid all the weeping, and laughing, and thanksgiving, there was no happier or more incongruous figure than that of an aged crone, outlandishly arrayed in priceless black satin, who, being deaf and dumb and withal half-witted, tottered about showing her toothless gums, and uttering noises much like the whooping cough!

THE END