Raiders Of The Red Death

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. And nearly two thousand years later,
in the City of Washington, D. C., distinguished guests at the
brilliant reception given by Mrs. Glenna Hawkins, dances to soft music
and chatted idly of trivial things. And even while they laughed and
chatted, newspapers were being hawked in the streets; newspapers
carrying strange, black, disturbing headlines:

AZTEC REVOLUTION OVERTURNS MEXICAN

GOVERNMENT! SELF-STYLED DESCENDENT

OF MONTEZUMA MAKES SELF EMPEROR!

The voices crying extras did not penetrate to gay guests in the home
of Mrs. Hawkins. Indeed, few except two of the guests concerned
themselves much with what was happening in little Mexico. The two who
were interested were none other than the American Secretaries of War
and of State, whose limousines were conspicuous among those parked
outside Mrs. Hawkins' home.

But those two gentlemen were not in evidence in the huge reception
room, and the other guests naturally assumed that they were closeted
somewhere, discussing weighty matters.

So the gay reception went on. . .

IN New York City, a furtive man slunk out of the Times Square subway
station, lingered a moment at the corner of Forty-second Street and
Times Square, glancing behind him frequently as if he were fearful of
being followed.

He was a thin man; his hands were small, almost effeminate. His face
was long, his features sharp, pinched with some sort of inward terror.
He belonged, obviously, to one of the Latin races.

His eyes strayed upward and across Forty--second Street, to the Times
Building. There, high above the heads of the passing crowds, was the
ingenious news strip consisting of an arrangement of electric light
bulbs, by which the latest happenings all over the world were flashed
before the eyes of passing New Yorkers. The electric--light bulbs
carried the illuminated words clear around the building, and the
effect was that of a continuous sentence which could be read by anyone
walking on any side of the tall Times Building.