Lawrence went through the secret manoeuvers but there was no response and he found his anxiety growing.
DANGEROUS DEEDS
CHAPTER I
A heavy fog pressed down upon the city ofWashington. To the boy watching it from thevantage point of the window in the top floor of theapartment in which he stood, it spread as mysteriousand as sodden as a flood, enveloping streets,parks, houses, indeed all but the tops of the higheststructures, the domes and roofs of public buildingsand spires of churches, and here and there a dark,drowned mass of foliage.
The apartment stood on a height and as the boylooked he saw a glow in the east, followed quicklyby thin banners of red and orange. Then the Sunrose and turned the domes and spires swimming onthe sea of mist into fairy flotillas wrought of pearland gold.
Just as a churned and angry tide swirls intosome still cove and seems to melt and dissolve intotransparency, the opaque-fog slowly vanished.Buildings and statues seemed to lift themselves outof it and finally, broad and placid in the desertionof dawn, the streets themselves appeared, windinghere and there in the wonderful curves designed bythe master-mind which make Washington one ofthe beauty spots of the world.
Because he had looked down on most of the citiesof the world, because, young as he was, he had seenthrilling shy views of towers and spires andmosques and temples lifting under many skies, theboy stood looking at the beautiful Capitol of hisnative land with a swelling heart.
Suddenly from somewhere, everywhere, nowherecame a faint, peculiar humming. Louder andlouder it grew. The boy flung open the windowand, leaning far out, scanned the cloudless sky withpracticed gaze. Far away in the west appeared athing of wings and sound flying far above