Page:Love Insurance - Earl Biggers (1914).djvu/388

Rh the young man for whom it was intended did not miss it. Mad with the injustice of life, he swooped down on a fireman struggling with a wabbly ladder. Snatching away the ladder, he placed it against the window from which the smoke and flame poured. He ran up it.

"Here!" shouted the chief of the fire department, laying angry hands on the ladder's base. "Wot you doing? You can't go in there."

"Why the devil can't I?" bellowed Minot. "Let go of that ladder!"

He plunged into the room. The smoke filled his nostrils and choked him. His eyes burned. He staggered through the smoky dusk into another room. His hands met the brass bars of a bed—then closed over something soft and filmy that lay upon it. He seized the something close, and hurried back into the other room.

A fireman at another window sought to turn a stream of water on him. Water—on that gown!

"Cut that out, you fool!" Minot shouted. The fireman, who had suspected himself of saving a human life, looked hurt. Minot regained his window. Disheveled, smoky, but victorious, he