“The messenger," a man named Jim, descends into the lower vaults of the bank where he works to complete a task for the president. Jim silently considers his frustration with the task while the conversation of his superiors revolves around discussion of "the comet” which is to pass near the Earth soon.[5]
While Jim is completing his assignment, the great stone door of the vault mysteriously closes shut. When Jim finds his way out and returns to street level, he discovers that the vault clerk and everyone else he encounters is dead. Jim walks up Fifth Avenue, enters a restaurant where he previously would not have been allowed to eat, and eventually finds a car and drives around the city but still finds no other living person.[6]
Near 72nd Street, Jim hears a woman's voice crying out from the upper window of a home. The survivor is a wealthy, young white woman who is surprised to discover the only other survivor, her would-be hero, is a Black man. The two travel to Harlem, where Jim searches for his family, and the bank where the woman's father works, but find no more living people and only a note at the bank from the woman's father. They attempt to contact the outside world by placing a call on a long-distance telephone but receive no response.
The two grow less uneasy with each other and return to the bank. They seem on the verge of overcoming their racial barriers in an act of procreation for the survival of the human race, when suddenly a group of men arrive, revealing that only New York was affected by the comet. The woman’s father and fiancé have returned; the woman, Julia, leaves Jim to join them. The men question if Jim has acted inappropriately to Julia and suggest lynching him, but Julia says that Jim saved her, though she is unable to look at him anymore. Her father gives Jim a cash reward. At the very end, a Black woman parts from the group and rushes into Jim's arms after calling out his name.[7]
