  It was midnight. The room in which Johnny Thompson sat was a place of odd noises and strange flashes of light. Here in the corner a tick-ticking was followed by a yellow light that curved upward, over, then down; upward, over and down again. A gong sounded from overhead. A shadowy form moved across the floor. Instantly came the clatter of a score of instruments sounding as one and a score of yellow lights curved up, over and down; up, over and down again. After that a voice said: “Cross and Fifty-fifth Streets. The Arlington Flats. The Arlington Flats. Cross and Fifty-fifth Streets.” There followed twenty seconds of silence; then in a hollow tone, as if coming from the heart of a tree, there sounded the repeated words: “Cross and Fifty-fifth Streets. The Arlington Flats. Cross and Fifty-fifth Streets.” Then again there was silence. All this while, on a great board above and before him, Johnny saw a hundred and fifty glowing spots of light. The spots of light seemed like eyes—red, white and green eyes that stared and blinked at him. Even as he looked, two of them blinked out—a red one and a white one. As he read the meaning of those extinguished lights he again caught the click-click from the corner and saw again the yellow light shoot up and over and down. This time, however, he heard a voice from another corner say: “Johnny, that’s one of yours. School at Fourteenth and Van Buren.” With one bound Johnny was out of his chair and across the room. The next second found him aboard an elevator, dropping through space. Ten seconds from the time the alarm had sounded he was in a long, low built, powerful car, speeding westward. It would have been difficult to guess Johnny’s age as he sat erect in the car which the city’s Fire Chief drove like mad. He might have been in his late teens. His small stature suggested that. He might have been twenty-two; his blue fireman’s uniform with its brass buttons would have seemed to prove this. But for all his uniform Johnny was not a fireman. The Chief had a very special reason for allowing him to wear that uniform. For a week, night and day, Johnny had haunted the room he had just left. During all that time the powerful red car had waited below, parked outside the door. That room of many odd noises and strange lights was the central fire station of a great city. Every fire alarm turned in night or day in this city of three million people came to this central station. The tickers told of fire-box calls. The telephone was ever ready for the call of some woman who had upset her grease can on the stove, or some person who had discovered a blaze coming from the sixteenth floor of a skyscraper. Tens of thousands of calls a year; yet this untiring ear, listening by day and night, hears and passes on every one. And it was in this central station that Johnny had waited so long. More than a thousand calls had come ticking and ringing in, yet he had turned a deaf ear to them all until the man at the phone had said quietly: “That’s one of yours. School at Fourteenth and Van Buren.” Then he had leaped to his duty. And now he was speeding westward. Johnny was after a firebug. A firebug is a person who willfully sets fire to property, whether his own or another’s. They’re a desperate lot, these firebugs. Some are hired for a fee. Some work for themselves. All are bad, for who could be good who would willfully destroy that which cost men hundreds, perhaps thousands, of days of toil? Yet some are worse than others. Some burn for greed or gain, while others light the torch in the name of some mistaken idea of principle. The firebug Johnny had been sent out to catch certainly had some strange bent to his nature. Two schools, a recreation center and a bathhouse had been destroyed, and here was another school fire at night. And in all these fires the firebug had neither been seen nor traced. The police, fire inspectors and insurance detectives were all on his trail, yet all were baffled. And now the Fire Chief had called Johnny to his aid. “For,” he had said, “sometimes a youngster discovers things which we elders are blind to.” So, with their clanging gong waking echoes in the deserted midnight streets, they sped westward to Fourteenth, then southward. Before they had gone two blocks in this direction they caught the light of the fire against the sky. “It’s going to be a bad one,” said the Chief, increasing his speed. “In the very heart of the poorest tenement section—have to turn in the second alarm at once. We can’t afford to fool around with this one.” These words were scarcely out of his mouth when they reached the edge of a throng drawn there by the fire. The car came to a sudden stop. The Chief sprang to a fire-box and instantly in that room Johnny had so recently left a ticker sounded and a yellow light rose up and over. The second alarm had been sent. Ten seconds later, on the wall of that strange room, two red spots and two white ones blinked out, then one that was half red and half white, and then a green one. At the same instant three fire engines, three truck and ladder companies and an emergency squad made the night hideous with their clanging bells and screaming sirens. The second alarm had been heard. Reinforcements were on the way. Johnny thrilled to it all. It was, he told himself, like a great battle; only instead of fighting fellow human beings, men were fighting the enemy of all—fire. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” rang up and down the streets. In Johnny’s whirling brain one fact remained fixed; this fire had been set. By whom? How? These were the questions he had pledged to answer. To Johnny, battle with a fire was always fascinating and inspiring. He knew well enough how this one would be waged. The enemy was within, and must be rushed, beaten back, defeated. There were three entrances. These would be stormed with men and water. There was a great central stairway to the very top of the six story building. The fire, if freed from the room in which it had its origin, would go leaping and laughing up those stairs. The top of the building must be reached at once. The poisonous fumes of the fire must be freed there and its flames beaten back. The roof might be reached from the fire escape. Already a line of rubber-coated men were toiling upward. Ah yes, it was all very fascinating, but Johnny had his part to do. How had the fire started, and where? This he must discover if possible. One more thing; if the fire had been set, was the firebug still about the place? It is a well known fact that these men frequently linger about the scene of the fire. “If he’s here mingling with the throng could I recognize him?” As Johnny asked himself this question, he realized that the answer must almost certainly be “No.” And yet there was a chance. An expression of the face, a movement of muscles, might give the man away. “But first the fire,” Johnny exclaimed as, leaping from the car, he sprang for the already battered down door of the front entrance. Gripping a hose that was being slowly dragged forward by the line of plucky firemen, he struggled forward with the rest. Beating back smoke and flames, they battled their way forward against the red enemy who even now might be seen leaping madly up the stairs. Unaccustomed as he was to the smoky fumes, half suffocated, eyes smarting, Johnny found himself all but overcome; yet he fought his way forward. When the line of firemen halted he battled his way to the side of the foremost man. To go farther would be foolhardy. He could but pause here to study with burning eyes the location of the fire, to imprint upon the cells of his brain a mental sketch of the building, then to back slowly away. As he staggered blindly into the outer air he all but fell over a boy who, as boys will, had escaped the guard and was at the very door. “See here,” said Johnny, collaring him. “You leave me be,” said the boy, struggling to free himself. “Tell me,” said Johnny, tightening his grip, “how did the fire start?” “How’d I know?” Another yank. “Where did it start?” A tighter grip. “You could see if you had eyes.” “Where?” with a shake. “In the office, of course.” “In the office, huh,” Johnny loosed his hold a trifle. “Come on back out of the way of the firemen.” The boy obeyed reluctantly. The moment he was released he darted from sight. “So much, so good,” Johnny murmured. “Only thing I can do now is to watch faces; see if I can spot the man or the woman. Lots of women firebugs they say, but not on a thing like this I guess. Takes a man to burn a school, and such a school, in such a place.” Even as his gaze swept the circle he caught sight of hundreds of white, frightened faces peering from windows of rickety tenements—veritable tinder boxes waiting the red, hungry flames. “And yet,” Johnny muttered, “poor as they are, they are homes, the best these people can afford. And this is their school, the hope of their children, the thing that promises to lift them to better places in the future. Who could have set a fire like that?” The fire was gaining headway. It burned red from the fourth floor windows; sent partitions crashing dismally within and belched forth great showers of sparks from the roof. Reinforcements were coming. Bells jangled, hose uncoiled on the hot pavement; a water screen from a dozen nozzles poured upon the steaming homes to the lee of the fire. And all this time Johnny Thompson wandered back and forth in front of the line of staring and frightened men, women and children held back by a rope line hastily established by the police. When his eyes were tired and he had told himself there was no hope of finding his man, he drifted wearily back through the line and into a small shop that stood open. There on the top of a barrel he sat down to think. For a moment or two he was entirely unconscious of the other occupants of the room. When at last he cast a glance about him it was to give a great start that all but threw him from his seat. Before him, staring out of the window at the fire, was one of the most peculiar men he had ever seen. An albino, men would have called him, yet of unmistakable white blood. His hair was white and soft as a baby’s. His face was quite innocent of beard and, what startled Johnny most, the eyes of the man were pink as a white rabbit’s. To accurately judge the age of such a man was impossible. Johnny told himself that the man might be twenty-five or he might be forty. Most astonishing of all was the expression on the man’s face. Johnny had seen just such an expression on the face of a boy when he had done something he thought of as extraordinarily clever. Even as Johnny looked at him the expression changed to one of fear and dismay. “Look!” the man exclaimed. “A child! There at the window on the sixth floor!” It was true. At a window, staring wild-eyed at the throng below her, was a girl of some twelve years. “A child in the school house at midnight, and on the attic floor!” Johnny exclaimed. “What can it mean?” The next instant his mind was on fire. Two thoughts fought for occupation of his brain. The child must be saved. All escape from within was shut off by flames; yet she must be saved; yes, she must be saved, and after that she must be questioned. “It may be,” he told himself, “that she knows something regarding the origin of the fire.” In this he was not entirely wrong. |
|
