It was most disconcerting, really.



CHAPTER VII

A WINGED MESSENGER

A snow-white pigeon dropped down out of an azure sky and settled on
a top-most girder of the great Singer Building. For a time it rested
there, with folded pinions, in a din of clanging hammers; and a
workman far out on a delicately balanced beam of steel paused in his
labors to regard the bird with friendly eyes. The pigeon returned
his gaze unafraid.

"Well, old chap, if I had as little trouble getting up here and down
again as you do I wouldn't mind the job," the workman remarked
cheerfully.

The pigeon cooed an answer. The steel worker extended a caressing
hand, whereupon the bird rose swiftly, surely, with white wings
widely stretched, circled once over the vast steel structure, then
darted away to the north. The workman watched the snow-white speck
until it was lost against the blue sky, then returned to his labors.

Some ten minutes later Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne, sitting at a desk
in his Thirty-seventh Street house, was aroused from his meditations
by the gentle tinkle of a bell. He glanced up, arose, and went up
the three flights of stairs to the roof. Half a dozen birds rose and