The Diamond Master
Page 7
CHAPTER VII
A WINGED MESSENGER
A snow-white pigeon dropped down out of an azure sky and settled ona top-most girder of the great Singer Building. For a time it restedthere, with folded pinions, in a din of clanging hammers; and aworkman far out on a delicately balanced beam of steel paused in hislabors to regard the bird with friendly eyes. The pigeon returnedhis gaze unafraid.
"Well, old chap, if I had as little trouble getting up here and downagain as you do I wouldn't mind the job," the workman remarkedcheerfully.
The pigeon cooed an answer. The steel worker extended a caressinghand, whereupon the bird rose swiftly, surely, with white wingswidely stretched, circled once over the vast steel structure, thendarted away to the north. The workman watched the snow-white speckuntil it was lost against the blue sky, then returned to his labors.
Some ten minutes later Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne, sitting at a deskin his Thirty-seventh Street house, was aroused from his meditationsby the gentle tinkle of a bell. He glanced up, arose, and went upthe three flights of stairs to the roof. Half a dozen birds rose andfluttered around him as he opened the trap; one door in their cote atthe rear of the building was closed. Mr. Wynne opened this door,reached in and detached a strip of tissue paper from the leg of asnow-white pigeon. He unfolded it eagerly; on it was written: Safe.I love you. D.