Clara Vance gripped the mahogany edge of the switchboard shelf with both hands.
The floor of the lobby alcove vibrated with low-frequency mechanical fury.
Through the white smoke rising from the shattered socket of Trunk Jack 14, Clara watched the far elevator lobby.
The wreckage of Otis Elevator Number Two lay crumpled against the ground-floor pit.
The bronze scissor-gates hung in twisted ribbons, dripping with black grease and boiling mineral oil.
And rising from the splintered cab, climbing upward on a massive, writhing throne of one-hundred-pair lead trunk cables, was Miss Dial-Tone.
The entity was ten feet tall, her silhouette distended by thirty years of absorbed switchboard circuits.
Her nineteen-fifties black taffeta uniform was torn and shredded, its hem trailing thick ropes of copper wire across the marble floor.
