CHAPTER XVTHE FATAL REQUEST
Therewas a breathless pause as host and guests alike sat stupefied. In the pantry frightened servants echoed the cry of “Fire,” while from outside came the hoarse shouts of men, the clang of fire bells, the rush and roar of the arriving engines. Swiftly the spell in the dining room was broken, and bounding to their feet men and women crowded about Ogden.
“Who closed these folding doors?” stormed Ogden, tearing apart the portières and tugging at the doors concealed behind them. “My God!” He fell back as a volume of smoke drifted through the hall door thrown open by one of the guests. The electric lights in the hall beyond resembled glow worms in the smoky atmosphere, and the men hesitated for a second.
“The smoke is coming downward,” cried Barclay. “The fire must be upstairs,” and darting across the broad hall he made for the front door, on whichblows resounded, and tore it open. In raced firemen, axes and chemical apparatus in hand.
“Fire’s on the second floor,” shouted the foremost fireman. “Get everyone out on the sidewalk,” catching sight of the frightened women streaming into the hall.
“Don’t stop for your wraps,” warned Patterson, grasping Mrs. Ogden and Ethel, and hurrying them out of doors. McLane, one hand on Lois, and the other steering little Madame Takasaki, was at their heels. Professor Norcross followed with the bishop’s wife, while the bishop, no show of haste in his calm demeanor, assisted the ambassador’s wife and two other guests to pilot their way down the front steps. Takasaki, seeing his wife and the other women were safely in the street, turned back and stood with Walter Ogden in the hall.
Outside the house ladders had been placed and a stream of water turned on the windows through which flames were bursting.
“Oh! Oh!” Mrs. Ogden clutched Ethel. “I do believe the fire’s in the den.”
“Go back, Ethel,” Patterson commanded. “The fire is spreading and you may be injured.”
“Go back, Ethel,” Patterson commanded. “The fire isspreading and you may be injured.”
“The den!” Ethel studied the position of the flaming windows, and in the glare recognized the outlines of familiar furniture inside the burning room. With a smothered exclamation she started toward the front door, but at the bottom step ProfessorNorcross laid a detaining hand on her scarf, which floated loose as she continued upward. James Patterson caught up to her in the hall.
“Go back, Ethel,” he commanded. “The fire is spreading and you may be injured.”
“I won’t,” she panted. “Let go, Jim. There is something I must get out of the top drawer of my typewriting desk; it stands by the door leading into Walter Ogden’s bedroom. The fire is in the other part of the room—I can reach my desk.”
“I’ll go for you,” noting her agonized expression. “What is it you want out of your desk?”
“My miniature and a ring”—she blurted out, and would have followed Patterson, but a strong hand pushed her back from the staircase.
“Please leave, lady,” exclaimed one of the firemen, and Ethel turning reluctantly, protestingly away, saw Patterson bounding up the staircase. A second more and he was lost to sight in the dense smoke.
On the third floor Julian Barclay hurried swiftly from room to room peering into closets, under beds, then upward, through the servants’ quarters, to the attic, but his search was unavailing. Yoshida Ito had vanished into thin air. Reluctantly he gave up his search, and paused on the landing of the third floor stairs to glance out of the window. In thelurid glare of firelight he made out the group of shivering women standing well back in the crowd which grows, Aladdin-like, at the cry of “Fire.” From the dense volume of smoke rolling through the hall beneath, and the added glare in the street, he judged the firemen had not gained control as quickly as he had imagined they would when first starting on his search for the Japanese.
Barclay continued his way down the staircase with added haste; he had no desire to be caught in a fire trap. The dense smoke ahead drifted aside for a moment, and he caught sight of a man advancing half-crouching near the still lighted electric hall lamp. Barclay crooked his finger on the trigger of his revolver and measured the distance.
Outside in the street the imperative clang, clang of the gong on a speeding automobile scattered the ever increasing crowd. The fire chief had arrived. His appearance in the house was hailed by the crack of a shot, followed by another and another. The firemen in the second story gave back. Bullets were whistling uncomfortably near.
“Good God!” Walter Ogden, upstairs with the firemen, turned a ghastly face to the shadowy form nearest him. “The boxes of cartridges which I kept in my desk have ignited.”
Mrs. Ogden, shivering partly from cold and partlyfrom shock and excitement, stood with her guests, begging each fireman who approached within hailing distance, to get her guests’ wraps from the cloak room, and finally the bishop and the ambassador brought out a heap of costly cloaks and coats and passed them indiscriminately among the women who were only too thankful to cover their bare shoulders and hide their handsome jewelry from the curious glances of the crowd.
Firemen had gained admission to the house next door to the Ogdens’ and from windows overlooking the fire, poured a stream of water into the burning rooms, for the fire had spread to Mrs. Ogden’s bedroom. Bullets zipping by their ears, caused the firemen to drop their hose in consternation, and the men on the ladders likewise ducked out of range.
“Are we to burn up entirely?” groaned Mrs. Ogden. “My beautiful things. Oh, oh, what’s that!” and she clutched Ethel despairingly. “Are they shooting each other in the house?”
Ethel listened to the fusillade in horrified silence, while straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of James Patterson among the men clustered in the Ogdens’ entrance hall. He had had plenty of time to secure her miniature and ring and return. Fear chilled her at the thought that he might have been overcome by the smoke. Why, why had she let him go? Sheshould have recollected that her desk was of metal and supposedly fireproof. Mrs. Ogden’s grasp on her arm tightened, and Ethel turned to remonstrate, but she found her cousin in no condition to listen to reason or release her clasp.
“Ethel, do tell me what is going on?” she implored distractedly. “There, listen!”
“It sounds like cartridges exploding,” gasped Ethel.
“Cartridges?” Mrs. Ogden forgot everything in sudden fury. “Walter left two boxes of them in his desk—oh, the rascal—the fool!”
“Hush!” Professor Norcross shook her roughly. “I came out to tell you, Mrs. Ogden, that the fire is almost under control, and as soon as the cartridges are all discharged the firemen will get into the room. There, they are resuming work now.”
The professor proved a true prophet. With the arrival of another engine and the additional force of water, the firemen stamped out the last spark of fire. Mrs. Ogden and her guests again gathered in her drawing room, and the crowded street was once more empty, the spectators drifting away in the wake of the departing firemen, a few of whom remained behind.
The rooms and corridors of the house were still filled with smoke, when Leonard McLane, his eyessmarting, stopped to fling open first one window and then another as he made his way through the house. Turning from the back stairs into the front corridor on the second floor he stopped abruptly at sight of Julian Barclay bending over a figure stretched on the floor.
Barclay lifted a relieved face as McLane touched him on the shoulder.
“I’ve just found James Patterson,” he said. “I fear he is overcome by the smoke,” rising to make place for the surgeon. “Is the fire out?”
McLane did not answer at once; his skillful fingers making swift examination, and his expression grew grimmer and more grim.
“The fire is out,” he announced, in answer to Barclay’s repeated question, and slipping one hand under the recumbent man turned him over. “And Jim Patterson is dead,” he added, pointing to a small hole through which blood was ebbing slowly.
Midnight was long past when Julian Barclay reached his bedroom. He carefully locked the door behind him and drew down the blinds to his windows, then stopped before his mirror, but a glimpse of his face caused him to draw back and glance over his shoulder. Pshaw! the occurrences of the night were getting on his nerves. Other men had looked whiteand weary; Ethel, even, had fainted away at news of James Patterson’s tragic death, and Walter Ogden had groaned in bitter horror at the havoc wrought by his careless keeping of the cartridges in his den.
Before undressing Barclay took from his trousers’ pocket a small chamois-covered miniature and uncovering it, gazed long and thoughtfully at the painted likeness of Ethel Ogden. Suddenly, with a gesture almost of horror, he laid the portrait on the dressing table, and again inserting his hand in his pocket, drew out a crumpled piece of cardboard and applied a match to it. The match caught, and the cardboard twisted and turned like some living thing writhing in pain, disclosing amidst the flames the lower half of a torn photograph.