Jack and Susan in 1913 Read Online Free

area, there were still a number of brownstone houses that remained private residences. Despite the pleasure of the tall gentleman’s company, Susan was pleased that they were now quite close to her home—it was nearly one in the morning, the snow showed no sign of letting up, and the dog in her arms had not ceased his efforts to fly at Mr. Austin’s aching throat. She’d tried to put him down once, but snatched him up again as quickly as he’d torn the cuff from Mr. Austin’s right trouser leg.
    Despite the lateness of the hour, there was more traffic in this area of the city, and several taxicabs now passed, making their cautious slow way through the slippery streets. Mr. Austin offered to fetch one of these for Susan, but she had declined: “I’m so near home…”
    They were about to cross Fifty-eighth Street, when a long covered touring car came crunching toward them through the snow, its yellow headlamps creating cones of yellow light through the swirling precipitation. The automobile stopped near them and for several moments Mr. Austin and Susan were caught in the yellow glare. A chauffeur emerged, opened the rear door of the car, and a large man, wrapped in a vast dark fur coat, got out and started up the steps of the house on the corner.
    â€œThe Russian consul’s home,” said Mr. Austin, stopping at the curb, “and unless I am very much mistaken, that is the consul himself. I imagine he is quite used to weather like this.”
    â€œHow do you know—” began Susan, but her speech was abruptly cut off in surprise. For from around the corner lurched a scrawny, bearded man wearing a thin overcoat and heavy boots. Staggering forward through the snow, he shouted something in a strange language.
    Coming to a stop almost next to Mr. Austin and Susan, the man produced from beneath his overcoat an object about the shape and size of a large melon, which he appeared to be ready to hurl at the man Mr. Austin had identified as the Russian consul.
    At that moment, the dog made another lunge at Mr. Austin, and Susan’s companion lost his footing.
    His legs flew out from beneath him, and he slid forward, colliding heavily with the bearded man.
    The melonlike object flew straight up in the air, hovered there a moment, and then began to drop straight down.
    Two things occurred to Susan as this was happening.
    The first: The bearded man in the thin coat and the boots was an anarchist.
    The second: The melonlike object that was spinning down through the air toward her was a bomb.
    Its glowing fuse described a perfect parabolic spiral through the snow-laden air.

CHAPTER THREE
    J AY AUSTIN HAD barely regained his footing on the sidewalk, when he saw the danger presented by the bomb. Without a moment’s hesitation, he threw himself bodily on to Susan, crushing her down into a soft bank of snow at the curb.
    Protecting me , she thought, and then all thought—of the anarchist, of the falling bomb, of the dog squeezing out of her grasp, and of Mr. Austin’s selfless behavior—were flashed away by an explosion—an explosion of pain in her right leg, a pain of an intensity she’d never felt before.
    Mr. Austin had completely covered her body with his, pressing her into the cold snow.
    â€œOooooff,” he said, and she felt him flinch when the anarchist’s bomb struck him a glancing blow in the small of the back.
    She turned her head, brushing one cheek against the snow, and the other against the rough wool of her protector’s overcoat. She saw the sinister black device roll into the snow, where the fuse fizzled into nothing more than a stub of black charcoal.
    â€œPlease let me up,” Susan whispered—whispered because he was so heavy atop her, it was hard to get breath into her lungs. “The bomb didn’t go off.”
    Mr. Austin raised himself and rolled over on his side away from Susan. He stood up, grabbed the bomb, and