Читать книгу Unsought Adventure - Howard Angus Kennedy - Страница 10

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The happy husband stepped up to the door, agog to share the good news with his wife. She could go south after all. His hand was in his pocket, for the key,—but Fiona had heard his step and rushed out to meet him, horror on her face. His smile vanished.

“Oh, Sam, the store’s on fire,—they’ve just ’phoned.”

One kiss, one word,—“Don’t worry, we’re well insured,”—and he was rushing back to the station....

Insured, indeed! His own stuff, yes,—but his whole stock in trade would not equal that one book, and there was not a penny of insurance on that. He should have seen to it, of course, if only for the one night.

It might not be much of a fire after all, he tried to comfort himself. All the way down, he was forcing himself to hope it was out already. If not—in agony of mind he prayed God to stop the flames before they could reach the tin box. Poor young Galt!

He scarcely thought of the fat commission snatched away,—but the destruction of the priceless gem that all the wealth of the world could not replace,—and that belonging to another man, who had only brought it because he “knew he could trust Sam Johnson.” Intolerable!

The red glow in the sky as he left the train shrivelled up his last hope. He struggled through the gaping crowd—it was just a show, to them. The firemen were as cool as the crowd. They stood there calmly holding the hose, as if they were watering a rose garden. Such roses! The water itself seemed shockingly, inhumanly calm,—a dozen hard white streaks pouring steadily in through broken windows to the red raging furnace.

“There was no rescuing to be done,” the captain assured him. The caretaker and his wife had come down the fire-escape behind.

No rescuing, indeed! There was the World’s Desire to be saved, if only they had known. And now it was beyond salvation. The floor had fallen in. He shuddered to think what might be happening in the basement at that moment. He almost imagined he could hear old Gutenberg shriek in the torment.

Helpless and hopeless, Sam stood there beside the firemen all night. He had rung up Fiona from a neighboring store as soon as he arrived, telling her not to wait up,—the store was gone, and there was no use worrying about it, but he must stay down town.

Now and then at first he looked round anxiously at the crowd, for the one face he dreaded to see. No, it was not there. With some relief he pictured young Galt sitting tranquil at home before a cheerful fire, while the same unfeeling element devoured his last remaining hope.

The glaring flames died out early in the night, the drizzling rain came down, the crowd faded away. A few firemen stayed on, pouring water in on the smouldering mass, and Sam just stayed with them.

It was dawn before they quit, leaving a policeman on guard. Sam turned away, worn out and dazed. He told himself he must go home.

No, no, no—he could not go till he knew the worst, till he had seen for himself. It would be horrible. He had been on a coroner’s jury once, when a human being had been destroyed by fire,—even the doctor could not say whether man or woman. This would be almost as bad, a handful of ashes mixed with blobs of melted tin. Kept perfect through volcanic centuries in war-swept Europe, to be tortured out of existence in an hour of American peace.

He must search that basement, at any cost.

THE WINDOW IN THE LANE

The policeman gently refused him admission. “What’s the use, anyway?” he said, pointing in and downward. What indeed, in that black gulf? Sam turned away again. Then an idea struck him,—how was it possible he had not thought of it before? There was a back entrance, from a lane. He went around, without saying a word.

The firemen had been at work here too, but they had all gone, leaving not even a policeman. The windows were broken, but barred, so it had looked as if no thief could get in.

Sam pulled and pushed at the bars. One of them gave, where the woodwork inside had burned away. He scrambled in.

The fire had not raged so fiercely at the back as at the front. The floor was nearly all gone, but an edge remained jutting out from the wall,—the water had reached it just before the flames. He crept along this edge to where the stair had been, and clambered down a slope of debris.

The street light shining in through the gaping front revealed a black monotony of ruin. A landscape devastated by earthquakes and forest fires combined would look like that. Charred beams fantastically rose at all angles from hills of black sodden pulp,—the wisdom and folly of a thousand minds resolved into their common element of carbon.

One glance was enough for all that. He turned quickly towards the strip beneath the unburnt edge of floor. Looming in the shadow he spied the safe, and hurried towards it.

His feet crunched on the charcoal, and he trod more lightly,—the policeman outside might hear and call him back. There was danger still. The floor of an office above had been nearly burnt through, and might give way at any moment. Listen! A little crackling sound. He shivered with sudden fear, then hurried on. So near the goal, he would take any risk rather than turn back....

Wonder of wonders! The tin box beamed upon him as the rising sun upon the Eskimo after a six months’ night. With trembling hands he reached up for it.

The shrine was inviolate. But for a trifling heat blister here and there, the very lacquer of its surface was untouched.

The happy man opened the lid. The brown paper smiled up at him with its black eyes of sealing-wax as the three children of Israel must have smiled stepping out of Nebuchadnezzar’s burning fiery furnace, their very hair unsinged.