Shot With Crimson

“What was it! Sounded as though something had smashed in the roof. There's a tremendous wind. It may have got that big tree at the corner of the locker room.”

“It couldn't have been thunder,--not at this time of the year,” said one of the women, sending a nervous, frightened look at her husband who sprawled ungracefully in a big Morris chair at the end of a table littered with newspapers and magazines.

“'Gad, did you feel the house rock?” exclaimed he, sitting up suddenly, his eyes narrowing as with pain. “Like an earthquake.

“It couldn't have been an earthquake,” interrupted his wife, starting up from her chair.

“Why couldn't it?” he demanded crossly, and then glanced around at the other occupants of the room,--ten or a dozen men and women seated in a wide semi-circle in front of the huge logs blazing in the fireplace. “What do you think it was, Zimmie?”

“We'll find part or all of the roof gone,” answered the man addressed. As he spoke, he rose quickly and started across the room in the direction of the door leading to the steward's pantry. “I'll have a look from the back of the--”

He stopped short. The dull, ripping crash that had startled them was repeated, this time a little louder and more prolonged than before. The club-house shook. Several of the men sprang to their feet in alarm. A look of comprehension shot among them.

“By Gad! An explosion!” cried one of them. “The damned beasts!”

“The Reynolds Works!” cried another, gripping the back of his chair with tense fingers. “Sure as you're alive! It's only a few miles from here. Nothing else could have--”

“Let's go home, Ned. The children--something may have happened--you never can tell--”

“Don't get excited, Betty,” cried the man in the Morris chair. She was shaking his arm. “The children are in New York, twenty miles away. They're all right, old girl. Lord! What a smash it was!”

The group was silent, waiting with bated breath for the third and perhaps more shocks to come.

The club steward came into the room, bearing a tray of bottles and glasses. His face was ashen; there was a set expression about it, as one who controls his nerves with difficulty.

“Did you hear it, Peter?” was the innocuous inquiry of one of the men, a dapper young fellow in corduroys.

“Yes, Mr. Cribbs. I thought at first it was the roof, sir. The chef said it was the big chimney--”

“Never mind the drinks, Peter,” said a tall, greyish man as the steward placed the glasses on the table. “We've lost what little thirst we had. Where are the Reynolds Works from here?”

Peter looked surprised. “South, sir,--beyond the hills. About five miles, I should say, Mr. Carstairs.”

“And which way is south?” inquired one of the women. “I am always turned around when I am in the country.” She was a singularly pallid, clear-featured woman of perhaps forty-five. One might surmise that at twenty she had been lovely, even exquisite.

“This way, Mrs. Carstairs,” said the steward, starting toward the windows at the lower end of the lounge.

The man who had been addressed as Zimmie was already at one of the broad windows, peering out into the black, windy night.

“Can't see a thing,” he said, as the others crowded about him. “The shops are off there in a direct line with the home green, I should say.”

“I happen to know that the Allies have a fifteen million dollar contract with the Reynolds people,” said Carstairs, looking hard into the blackness.