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THE INCENDIARY
A Story of Mystery.
BY W. A. LEAHY.
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, MDCCCXCVII.
A PRIZE STORY In THE CHICAGO RECORD series of "Stories of Mystery."
THE INCENDIARY
BY W. A. LEAHY.
(This story--out of 816 competing--was awarded the fourth prize in the CHICAGO RECORD'S "$30,000 to Authors" competition.)
Copyright, 1896, by W. A. Leahy.
THE INCENDIARY.
CHAPTER I.
FANFARE: THE PLAY BEGINS.
It was about half-past three in the afternoon when Bertha, thehousemaid, came running down the steps, with a shrill cry of "Fire!" andfell plump into the arms of the bake-shop girl, who had seen the smokecurling from Prof. Arnold's window and was hastening across to warn theoccupants of his house. The deep bark of a dog was heard within andpresently Sire, the professor's old St. Bernard, rushed by the two youngwomen and darted hither and thither, accosting the bystandersdistractedly, as if burdened with a message he could not communicate.
"Ring the alarm!" cried Bertha and the bake-shop girl in a breath, assoon as they had recovered from the shock of their collision. Their crywas taken up by a knot of three boys, who, as usual, were the first onthe spot; passed along till it reached some loungers on the corner,whose inertia was more gradually overcome; and presently half theneighborhood, as if by a spontaneous impulse, came thronging intoCazenove street, each following his leader, like a flock of startledewes. Bertha, caught in the middle of this ring of sight-seers, stoodparalyzed a moment; then singling out the one man of action, she brokethrough the crowd and stopped him midway in his advance.
"For the love of heaven, will you ring the alarm?"
The postman turned and scudded to the box. There was an interval ofsuspense that seemed an age.
"Is there any one in the house?" was the first question of PatrolmanChandler, when he galloped up to the scene. He had been attracted atonce by the barking of Sire.
"Mr. Robert," cried Bertha, wringing her hands. "Mr. Robert was in thestudy." The crowd looked up and measured the swift gains of thedestructive element.
"Young Floyd?" said Chandler. Then he rushed into the house and up thefirst flight of winding stairs, the dog, as he did so, following himwith a great fusillade of delighted barks.
"There's some one inside," said the crowd, and the rumor passed frommouth to mouth.
"Fire! Fire!" called Chandler from the corridor window above. "Yell, youfellows, as you never yelled before!"
In response a cry of "Fire!" went up from man, woman and child, bass andtreble intermingling, loud enough to have waked the seven sleepers fromtheir trance. But no one stirred inside. Just at this moment the tardybells rang out the number of the box, and almost immediately, as anengine came rounding a distant corner and the great gray horses boundedup the grade, the uproar began to subside. On, on, past the doomedhouse, now enveloped in flames, to the nearest hydrant, the driverlashed his pair. The hydrant cover had been thrown off and the firstblock of coal flung into the engine's furnace before Patrolman Chandlerreissued from the door which he had entered.
"There is no one there," he gasped, as if choking with the smoke. Butthe dog continued to leap about, accosting the bystanders appealingly,until his barks and pawing became a nuisance to several and they spurnedhim pettishly away.
Now engines from many directions came clattering by and the air was fullof clangor. Lines of hose were unraveled, ladders hoisted against thewalls, and finally, amid hoarse shouts that pierced the deep sighing ofthe flames within, a rubber-clad, helmeted fellow, with a nozzlestrapped to his body, slowly led a line up to the second-story window,where the fire had apparently started. There was another interval ofsuspense, orders to and fro, and then a helpless pause. Somethingrefused to work.
But the fire met no such impediment. Suddenly an explosion of uncertainorigin shook the air, and the onlookers retreated in terror, as if theground were yawning beneath them. Of a sudden one, two, three slack,snaky hose lines rounded out, and a burst of foam, battering inwindow-panes and sashes, inaugurated the great combat of elements--oneangry, vindictive, as if ravening to sunder the bonds of control castabout it by the pigmy, its master, the other docile and benignant, butin the end the more puissant of the two.
"Exactly nine minutes from the start before a drop of water fell on thatfire," said the bake-shop girl, who was noted for her accurateobservation of time. By the "start" she meant the moment when Bertha andshe collided on the doorsteps, but the fire must have gained a strongheadway before that. For every timber in the house was flaming now. Theheat scorched the firemen's cheeks and made frightened children in thewindows opposite turn away. All the neighbors were packing up theirvaluables, preparing for the worst. Singed and blinded, the firemen hadbeen driven back down their ladders and compelled to fight from thestreet. At 3:40 the district chief ordered a second alarm rung in, and,as this was followed by another explosion, a third alarm immediatelyafter. Amid a great clanging of bells, engine after engine, with driversstanding at the reins and firemen riding backward, drove up and soughtout positions of vantage.
With the arrival of Chief Federhen their plan of attack seemed to assumea definite shape at once. The ding, ding, ding, of his light carriage,riding over distended and bedraggled hose, told the impatience of theman on the seat. A tall, gaunt figure, wrapped in a cloak, which hethrew off as the excitement grew on him, he first turned his attentionto the police and the crowd.
"We want room to do this work in," he cried in a loud voice, and thebluecoats began vigorously routing the onlookers back until the fire wasto them like something seen through an inverted opera glass, and thesagging ropes nearly broke under the black weight of humanity which theyfended off.
Federhen's practiced eye saw the doom of the dwelling-house. So hecalled off his engines and threw up ladders against the great mercantilebuildings to leeward and in the rear. It was from one of these,presumably the fireworks-room of Schnitzler Bros., that the secondexplosion, scattered and prolonged like an enfilading volley ofmusketry, had come, and already a thatch of flame had run around underthe projecting roof of the structure. Against this the fire tower wasslowly brought into position and sloped over, its tip just topping theeaves, but the axes of the squad sent up failed to make any impressionon the solid sheathing of the roof. When the tower ladder itself beganto take fire, and a stream had to be played on it constantly, the orderwas given, none too early, "Come down!" and the firemen's firstambition, to get above the enemy, had to be abandoned for lessefficacious measures. Fountain jets, rising from the street, and levelstreams from the roofs of the dwelling-houses opposite, did theirineffectual best to quench the red thirst of the triumphing element.
"This is glorious!"
"Tristram!"
The girl pulled a dolman over her shoulders, fear simulating cold,before the savage dance of the flames. Their carriage had passed throughBroad street, in the rear of Cazenove, a few minutes before, and whenthe alarm sounded Tristram had ordered the coachman to turn and drivethem back.
"Glorious, Rosalie!" he repeated, looking up at the red streamers andthe swirling smoke.
"It was just here we met your friend, Harry Arnold," murmured Rosalie."Did you notice he had only one glove on?"
"Glorious!" echoed her enraptured brother, as a section of
the wallfell in, disclosing an oven view like the interior of a Bessemer blastfurnace.
"See the horses pawing. The sparks will fall on them. Let us driveaway."
"My palette!" was Tristram's answer. "Brush! Easel! Canvas! Oh, the lostchance of a lifetime!"
"Doesn't it make you shudder?"
"Certainly, my dear. That is the very deliciousness of it"
"But the danger!"
"Ah, you know I'm a perfect Bluebeard in the taste for horrors. I reallyenvy Parrhasius his enjoyment in flaying the old slave--or did he floghim? But it's of no consequence which. He tortured him somehow, youremember, and chained him to a stake in his studio, so that he mightpaint Prometheus' writhings to the life."
But just here something happened which cut short his tirade of irony.
It was on the Broad street side of the Harmon building (such the greatsix-story structure was called), just where the Marches' coachman hadhalted their span, that the most pitiful incident of this memorable firetook place. By 4 o'clock everybody conceded that the Harmon building waslost. Occupied principally by dry-goods firms, whose light wares, spreadover the counters, were like so much hay to the flames, it neededscarcely more than the touch of a match to convert it into smoke. At thesound of the second explosion hundreds of salesgirls and male employeshad rushed to the exits, barely outstripping the fire. It was supposedthat all had been warned and escaped, and only a signal shriek from thetop story in the rear notified the beholders that human lives were inperil. Looking up, they saw at the windows a dozen girls and half asmany youths huddling together with the blanched faces of deadly fear.Thick smoke was already curling up and enveloping them and reflectionsof the flames, like an aurora rising in the north, were visible behind.The cries they made could not be understood, but their gestures weredumbly eloquent.
"Jump!" came the cry from a hundred throats below. A teamster pulledthe rubber covers off the Protective company's wagon. Firemen andpolicemen improvised nets of canvas, which they tore from the awningsnear by and spread under the shrinking group. Two or three of the girls,who leaped for a telegraph pole on the outer edge of the sidewalk,almost miraculously succeeded in scrambling down. Others climbed out onthe ledge and made as if to jump, but drew back from the awful plunge.The fire was upon them now, and one could weep to see the men, bravefellows, coaxing their timid companions to take the leap. One woman ofcoarser build ran along the dizzy ledge, which scarcely yielded footingfor a sparrow, and sprang into the branches of a tree on the corner, herdress saving her at the cost of fearful laceration. Then a form camecrashing down into the outspread nets, another and another, withoutpause, without certainty of aim. Two struck the sidewalk and werecarried off shapeless and silent. One young girl's fall was broken by apoliceman's brawny arms--no other than Patrolman Chandler. She pickedherself up laughing, only to faint away, while her rescuer was borne offgroaning. It was all over soon--a tragedy of five minutes--but those whowitnessed it felt as if their hearts had been standing still for acentury.
"Let us drive away," said Rosalie, a sickness seizing her.
"Yes," answered Tristram; "the people are beginning to stare at you."His sensitive lips were pale and he shut his eyes lest their film ofpity should be seen. It was true, some of the bystanders had pointed outhis companion to one another as Rosalie March. The face of thisbeautiful girl had become familiar since Manager Mapletree the seasonbefore had persuaded her to come out from the privacy of her home andassume two or three roles in his revival of Shakespeare's comedies.Perhaps they wondered who the gentleman beside her might be. Brother andsister bore each other little specific resemblance.
"What's that carriage halting here for? Do you think this is aprocession? Pass on!" cried Federhen to the coachman, who whipped up hishorses in a hurry. The police had not yet got around to this side ofthe block, but the fire chief seemed at all times to be where the crisiswas. At a word from him ambulances arose from the very ground and thedead and injured were carried off to the hospital. His straggly graybeard confronted the fire-fighters everywhere, goading on the laggards,cheering the valiant. Indomitable, tireless, he sent them again andagain at the ruined shell, drowning the neighboring dwelling-housesmeanwhile in a flood of water. The calm air favored him. People said"him," for somehow the forces of salvation seemed to be embodied andcentralized in one implacable form. But the wind created by the fire wascarrying sparks and brands to a distance of half a mile. The awedspectators winced and scattered at these hot showers. It was still aspeculation where the holocaust would end.
If the Southern depot caught, then the whole Bay quarter, a warren oftinder-box tenements, swarming densely with poor tenants, was in peril.To save the depot was to win the day. But special editions of thenewspapers, appearing at 5 o'clock, were only able to announce, underhalf-column scare-heads, that the result was still in doubt; and whentwilight came it was not the sunset glow (for a storm was gathering inthe overcast sky) which burnished the factory windows across the harbortill they shone like plates of gold.
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