The Poisoned Pen Part 12

"I did," replied a night watchman on the third landing. "Saw a light in the office on the third floor back--something blazing. But it seems to be out now."

We had at last come to the office. It was dark and deserted, yet with the lanterns we could see the floor of the largest room littered with torn books and ledgers.

Kennedy caught his foot in something. It was a loose wire on the floor.

He followed it. It led to an electric-light socket, where it was attached.

"Can't you turn on the lights?" shouted McCormick to the watchman.

"Not here. They're turned on from downstairs, and they're off for the night. I'll go down if you want me to and--"

"No," roared Kennedy. "Stay where you are until I follow the wire to the other end."

At last we came to a little office part.i.tioned off from the main room.

Kennedy carefully opened the door. One whiff of the air from it was sufficient. He banged the door shut again.

"Stand back with those lanterns, boys," he ordered.

I sniffed, expecting to smell illuminating-gas. Instead, a peculiar, sweetish odour pervaded the air. For a moment it made me think of a hospital operating-room.

"Ether," exclaimed Kennedy. "Stand back farther with those lights and hold them up from the floor."

For a moment he seemed to hesitate as if at loss what to do next.

Should he open the door and let this highly inflammable gas out or should he wait patiently until the natural ventilation of the little office had dispelled it?

While he was debating he happened to glance out of the window and catch sight of a drug-store across the street.

"Walter," he said to me, "hurry across there and get all the saltpeter and sulphur the man has in the shop."

I lost no time in doing so. Kennedy dumped the two chemicals into a pan in the middle of the main office, about three-fifths saltpeter and two-fifths sulphur, I should say. Then he lighted it. The ma.s.s burned with a bright flame but without explosion. We could smell the suffocating fumes from it, and we retreated. For a moment or two we watched it curiously at a distance.

"That's very good extinguishing-powder," explained Craig as we sniffed at the odour. "It yields a large amount of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Now--before it gets any worse--I guess it's safe to open the door and let the ether out. You see this is as good a way as any to render safe a room full of inflammable vapour. Come, we'll wait outside the main office for a few minutes until the gases mix."

It seemed hours before Kennedy deemed it safe to enter the office again with a light. When we did so, we made a rush for the little cubby-hole of an office at the other end. On the floor was a little can of ether, evaporated of course, and beside it a small apparatus apparently used for producing electric sparks.

"So, that's how he does it," mused Kennedy, fingering the can contemplatively. "He lets the ether evaporate in a room for a while and then causes an explosion from a safe distance with this little electric spark. There's where your wire comes in, McCormick. Say, my man, you can switch on the lights from downstairs, now."

As we waited for the watchman to turn on the lights I exclaimed, "He failed this time because the electricity was shut off."

"Precisely, Walter," a.s.sented Kennedy.

"But the flames which the night watchman saw, what of them?" put in McCormick, considerably mystified. "He must have seen something."

Just then the lights winked up.

"Oh, that was before the fellow tried to touch off the ether vapour,"

explained Kennedy. "He had to make sure of his work of destruction first--and, judging by the charred papers about, he did it well. See, he tore leaves from the ledgers and lighted them on the floor. There was an object in all that. What was it? h.e.l.lo! Look at this ma.s.s of charred paper in the corner."

He bent down and examined it carefully.

"Memoranda of some kind, I guess. I'll save this burnt paper and look it over later. Don't disturb it. I'll take it away myself."

Search as we might, we could find no other trace of the firebug, and at last we left. Kennedy carried the charred paper carefully in a large hat-box.

"There'll be no more fires to-night, McCormick," he said. "But I'll watch with you every night until we get this incendiary. Meanwhile I'll see what I can decipher, if anything, in this burnt paper."

Next day McCormick dropped in to see us again. This time he had another note, a disguised scrawl which read:

Chief: I'm not through. Watch me get another store yet. I won't fall down this time.

A. SPARK.

Craig scowled as he read the note and handed it to me. "The man's writing this time--like the second note," was all he said. "McCormick, since we know where the lightning is going to strike, don't you think it would be wiser to make our headquarters in one of the engine-houses in that district?"

The fire marshal agreed, and that night saw us watching at the fire-house nearest the department-store region.

Kennedy and I were a.s.signed to places on the hose-cart and engine, respectively, Kennedy being in the hose-cart so that he could be with McCormick. We were taught to descend one of the four bra.s.s poles hand under elbow, from the dormitory on the second floor. They showed us how to jump into the "turn-outs"--a pair of trousers opened out over the high top boots. We were given helmets which we placed in regulation fashion on our rubber coats, turned inside out with the right armhole up. Thus it came about that Craig and I joined the Fire Department temporarily. It was a novel experience for us both.

"Now, Walter," said Kennedy, "as long as we have gone so far, we'll 'roll' to every fire, just like the regulars. We won't take any chances of missing the firebug at any time of night or day."

It proved to be a remarkably quiet evening with only one little blaze in a candy-shop on Seventh Avenue. Most of the time we sat around trying to draw the men out about their thrilling experiences at fires.

But if there is one thing the fireman doesn't know it is the English language when talking about himself. It was quite late when we turned into the neat white cots upstairs.

We had scarcely fallen into a half doze in our strange surroundings when the gong downstairs sounded. It was our signal.

We could hear the rapid clatter of the horses' hoofs as they were automatically released from their stalls and the collars and harness mechanically locked about them. All was stir, and motion, and shouts.

Craig and I had bounded awkwardly into our paraphernalia at the first sound. We slid ungracefully down the pole and were pushed and shoved into our places, for scientific management in a New York fire-house has reached one hundred per cent. efficiency, and we were not to be allowed to delay the game.

The oil-torch had been applied to the engine, and it rolled forth, belching flames. I was hanging on for dear life, now and then catching sight of the driver urging his plunging horses onward like a charioteer in a modern Ben Hur race. The tender with Craig and McCormick was lost in the clouds of smoke and sparks that trailed behind us. On we dashed until we turned into Sixth Avenue. The glare of the sky told us that this time the firebug had made good.

"I'll be hanged if it isn't the Stacey store again," shouted the man next me on the engine as the horses lunged up the avenue and stopped at the allotted hydrant. It was like a war game. Every move had been planned out by the fire-strategists, even down to the hydrants that the engines should take at a given fire.

Already several floors were aflame, the windows glowing like open-hearth furnaces, the gla.s.s bulging and cracking and the flames licking upward and shooting out in long streamers. The hose was coupled up in an instant, the water turned on, and the limp rubber and canvas became as rigid as a post with the high pressure of the water being forced through it. Company after company dashed into the blazing "fireproof" building, urged by the hoa.r.s.e profanity of the chief.

Twenty or thirty men must have disappeared into the stifle from which the police retreated. There was no haste, no hesitation. Everything moved as smoothly as if by clockwork. Yet we could not see one of the men who had disappeared into the burning building. They had been swallowed up, as it were. For that is the way with the New York firemen. They go straight to the heart of the fire. Now and then a stream of a hose spat out of a window, showing that the men were still alive and working. About the ground floors the red-helmeted salvage corps were busy covering up what they could of the goods with rubber sheets to protect them from water. Doctors with black bags and white trousers were working over the injured. Kennedy and I were busy about the engine, and there was plenty for us to do.

Above the shrill whistle for more coal I heard a voice shout, "Began with an explosion--it's the firebug, all right." I looked up. It was McCormick, dripping and grimy, in a high state of excitement, talking to Kennedy.

I had been so busy trying to make myself believe that I was really of some a.s.sistance about the engine that I had not taken time to watch the fire itself. It was now under control. The sharp and scientific attack had nipped what might have been one of New York's historic conflagrations.

"Are you game to go inside?" I heard McCormick ask.

For answer Kennedy simply nodded. As for me, where Craig went I went.

The three of us drove through the scorching door, past twisted ma.s.ses of iron still glowing dull red in the smoke and steam, while the water hissed and spattered and slopped. The smoke was still suffocating, and every once in a while we were forced to find air close to the floor and near the wall. My hands and arms and legs felt like lead, yet on we drove.

Coughing and choking, we followed McCormick to what had been the heart of the fire, the office. Men with picks and axes and all manner of cunningly devised instruments were hacking and tearing at the walls and woodwork, putting out the last smouldering sparks while a thousand gallons of water were pouring in at various parts of the building where the fire still showed spirit.

There on the floor of the office lay a charred, shapeless, unrecognisable ma.s.s. What was that gruesome odour in the room? Burned human flesh? I recoiled from what had once been the form of a woman.

McCormick uttered a cry, and as I turned my eyes away, I saw him holding a wire with the insulation burned off. He had picked it up from the wreckage of the floor. It led to a bent and blackened can--that had once been a can of ether.