Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/273

 “Fire!”

Fire! The one element of which all animals are instinctively afraid—the element man has harnessed to his own use, and which, sometimes escaping from the bonds, turns on man with deadly, vicious effect.

The sound shrieked through the corridors again, and was taken up here and there in different parts of the great hotel. Val was on his feet in an instant, switching on the lights with almost the same motion. From the next room came Eddie, dragging with him his trousers, a sleepy figure in pink silk pajamas and scarcely opened eyes. The room was full of smoke, and it was hard to breathe—getting harder every moment.

Val opened his door, and shut it instantly. The corridor was thick with rolling billows of choking smoke, and in the distance, at the end, he saw the dull red of flames leaping the height of the hall.

“Eddie, let’s go!” gasped Val. “This old rattletrap of a hotel’ll go up like tinder—I know this place. No chance.”

“Right, sir!” Eddie shouted back at him.

The men jumped for their suitcases, and shoveled their belongings, as many of them as they could reach, hastily into the leather receptacles. There was not a moment to be lost. The smoke was now rolling into the room, through the skylight and through the cracks around the door. The men could hardly breathe.

“By the window, Eddie!” commanded Val. He knew there was no chance through the halls, which must by now be an inferno of fire and smoke. They were only one flight up, and it would be no difficult thing to slide down one of the pillars.

“All right, sir,” said Eddie.