A bell with a deep baying note rang out in the darkness.
If you have ever heard a fire bell boom out in the stillness, you will
remember the terror which clutched your heart at the first ominous peal.
It seemed to Billie, in going over it afterward, that the boom of that
big fire bell was like the last trump on the day of judgment arousing
the spirits of the dead.
Then came the sound of voices. The corridors were filled with hurrying
footsteps. Somebody ran down the hallway calling again:
"Fire! Fire!"
Billie jumped to the floor with a bound. Her senses had returned at
last.
"Nancy, Nancy!" she cried, shaking her friend violently back to
consciousness. "The hotel is on fire. Get into your dressing gown as
quickly as you can while I wake up the others."
As she switched on the light she saw that the room was filled with
smoke, and she knew the fire must be in their wing of the hotel and that
there was no time to lose.
There is no better fire trap in the world than a wooden hotel at the
seaside. The salt from the flying spray in winter storms has seasoned
the wood into splendid burning material, and the breeze from the ocean
fans the flames like a great natural bellows.
As Billie waked the other girls Miss Campbell came into the room, with a
white, scared face. But she was not excited.
"Get into your dressing gowns, girls," she said quietly. "Don't lose a
moment's time. The boys are waiting for us outside."
Just then Ben Austen rattled on the door.
"Hurry," he called. "The elevators won't run much longer and the stairs
are burning."
Hardly two minutes had passed since the first clang of the bell when
Miss Campbell and the girls joined the boys in the corridor. There had
not been time even to snatch up a hair-pin from the bureau to catch
tumbled locks together. But nobody looked at any one else. The place was
crowded with hotel guests in exactly the same condition and all the
passages opening into the main corridor of the hotel were emptying
themselves of streams of people in every state of disarray. If it had
been less serious, the girls might have laughed at the numbers of
terrified and hysterical fat women, wrapping insufficient dressing gowns
and blankets about their large forms as they pushed their way without
ceremony toward the elevators.
But a big tongue of flame suddenly leapt up the stairwell at the end of
the hall. There was a crackling sound and clouds of black smoke poured
into the corridor.
"We must get out of this," exclaimed Ben. "The fire has reached this
floor and unless we knock a few people down, we'll never get to either
of those elevators."
"But where are the fire escapes?" demanded Miss Campbell.
"At the end of the hall," answered Charlie, "and we could never get past
that burning pit."
The two elevators had been up and down several times, packed with
people. The smoke was growing thicker each moment, and the next thing
Billie remembered was that Elinor had fainted dead away, and that some
one had screamed:
"The elevators have stopped running!"
In the stifling atmosphere she saw Ben and Charlie lift Elinor and call
to the others to follow them into a bedroom. As she staggered after
them, a grotesque figure, screaming hysterically, fought through the
crowd, almost knocking Billie down. Even in that moment of danger she
recognized Belle Rogers, every lock of whose golden hair was done up on
red rubber curlers, the ends of which stuck straight up like scores of
little devils' horns.
"Take me down! Take me down!" Billie heard her scream. "I will not die
in this horrible way! Somebody save me!"
Billie touched her on the shoulder.
"Don't scream," she said. "It only makes things worse. The people who
are left are going to get down by the windows. Come with us."
Belle, who had been separated from her friends, followed quietly enough.
In another moment the corridor was empty, and the flames which had been
fast eating their way along the hall had reached the elevator shafts. It
had all happened in much less time than it takes to tell, but in the
brief instant when Billie had paused to rescue Belle, she lost the
others. Once in a bedroom, where the air was not so stifling, it was
impossible to leave and rush again into the atmosphere outside.
The two girls dashed into the nearest room and closed the door, too
stifled to notice that the others, led by level-headed Ben and followed
by the crowd of people left standing by the elevator shafts, had rushed
into a front room at the end of the hall. In the closets of this room
and the one adjoining, they found two fire ropes which this
old-fashioned hotel provided for its guests whose rooms were not located
near the fire escapes. Those who were not able to slide down the ropes
were lowered in a chair, and the others, with a foot twisted around the
rope and grasping a wet towel to keep the palm of the hand from
blistering, slid down. In the darkness it was impossible to recognize
faces, and it was not until they were all safe on the ground that they
missed Billie Campbell.
Then poor Miss Campbell, who had been admirably calm during the whole
fearful experience, fainted away, and Elinor, now entirely restored by
the fresh air, was left to take care of her.
Nancy and Mary followed the four boys to the rescue. Tears were rolling
down Nancy's cheeks and Mary was as pale as death. Each girl had her own
peculiar way of showing how much she had come to love their new friend,
Billie.
In the meantime, Billie, herself, was looking ruefully down into the
darkness from the window of a room on the third floor and Belle was
indulging in a fit of real hysterics.
"How dare you bring me here?" she screamed hoarsely, stamping her foot.
"I might have been saved if you had let me alone, and here we are
trapped! I always hated you and now I detest you with my whole soul."
"I thought the others were in here," said Billie apologetically.
"Thought! Thought!" screamed the wretched girl. "You wanted me to die.
You wanted me to lose my beauty."
"You haven't any to lose just now," answered Billie. "You look more like
the Medusa of the snaky locks----"
"Oh, oh!" wept Belle, too angry to articulate.
"You may console yourself this much," went on Billie. "If you die, I
shall die with you, but I am going to do my best to save you and myself,
too."
"Help! Help!" screamed Belle from the window, not taking any notice. But
her voice was lost in the wild clamor which came up from below.
Then she flung herself flat on the floor in an agony of sobs.
"It's better to pray than to cry, Belle. Crying won't help and we are in
a pretty warm place. If you were only a sport, it might do a lot of
good."
Belle crawled to the window and leaned out. The air in the room was
becoming unbearable.
In the meantime, Billie's thoughts were working rapidly. There were the
sheets, but there wasn't time to tear them into strips and knot the
strips together. Besides, she didn't believe they would reach halfway to
the ground.
"I am afraid we'll have to climb it," she said.
"Climb what?"
"Climb up the side of the shutter to the roof. This is the top floor.
The flames haven't reached the roof yet."
"But what good will the roof do us?"
"I don't know yet, but it's better than this. Come on."
"I tell you I can't climb. I never did such a thing in my life."
"You'll just have to begin then," said Billie sternly. "Shall I go
first, or would you rather do it?"
"I'll go--no, you go."
"I'll help you," said Billie, hoisting herself to the window ledge.
"Now, don't look down. Just imagine you are only a few feet from the
ground and that it's a very easy stunt. If you decide beforehand that
you can't do it, why, of course, you can't. But it will be much easier
than staying here to be burned alive in the next few minutes."
Delivering herself of this boyish but unimpeachable logic, Billie kicked
off her slippers and swung herself onto the shutter. Just for one brief
instant a sickening nausea came over her as she looked down into the
darkness.
Then her fingers grasped the cornice of the roof and, pulling herself up
with her two arms, as she had learned to do on the parallel bars in the
gymnasium--only in this instance the shutter made a very uncertain elbow
rest--she scrambled onto the roof.
"All right, Belle," she called. "It's much easier than I thought. Take
off your slippers and come ahead, and don't forget to look up and not
down."
Belle obeyed in sullen silence. She was as determined as Billie not to
be burned alive, but her luxurious and self-indulgent nature revolted
against this uncomfortable and dangerous method of getting out of the
difficulty. However, there was nothing else to do, so she swung out on
the shutter as Billie had done, only this time Billie, with all the
strength in her body was holding the shutter rigid.
As Belle clung on with her hands and her little pink toes, which she had
stuck into the interstices of the shutter, she suddenly looked down. Her
grasp weakened and she gave a shriek so piercing that Billie almost
slipped headlong over the side of the roof, but she grasped Belle's
slackening wrist.
"Take a breath," she said, in a trembling voice. "You can do it, if you
only make up your mind to."
"I'll never, never forgive you," cried Belle, "and if I live through
to-night, I'll pay you back."
"All right," answered Billie calmly, seeing all at once that anger
appeared to give Belle new strength, "only I advise you to get onto this
roof first."
Another moment and Belle had clambered over the cornice and was
stretched out breathless on the roof.
"I would much rather have had a baby to look after," thought Billie, as
she looked contemptuously down at the other girl.
"We had better not lose any more time now, Belle," she said aloud. "If
you have got your breath and your nerve back, come ahead."
Belle pulled herself wearily up and followed.
"My feet are all splinters," she complained, "and my hands are torn and
bleeding."
"'Tis the voice of the lobster: I heard him declare
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair,'"
repeated Billie, half laughing and half sobbing that this foolish verse
should have flashed through her brain at this strange time.
The two girls hurried along the roof toward the front. It was plain that
in the scramble to save the lives of the hotel guests there had been no
time to save the building, and when the young girls turned the corner of
the roof and looked for a moment across the broad expanse of ocean not a
hundred yards away it seemed to them that they were alone in the whole
world.
"What are we going to do now?" demanded Belle.
"I don't know yet," answered Billie patiently.
The roof was hot under her feet and they could hear the crackling of
flames as they hastened along the edge to the other side.
The rest of that fearful adventure seemed like a dream to Billie
afterwards.
As they turned the corner of the house a voice called hoarsely:
"Who can tie a rope?"
Billie remembered to have replied vaguely and politely that she could
tie a rope. A man emerged from behind the chimney with a long rope, but
she hardly noticed at the time that he had only one arm.
"It may not be long enough," he said, "but tie it and we'll take the
risk. It's our only chance."
Billie knotted the rope around the chimney. The man examined the knot
carefully, pulled it with his one hand, and then threw it over the side
of the house.
"I'll go first," said Belle quietly, and Billie looked at her with
amazement.
"Humph!" said the man. "You are brave. Can you do it?"
"Yes," answered Belle, "I can do anything. Help me over the side."
"It's going to hurt," he observed, as he twisted the rope around her
foot and showed her how to slide down. "It's going to take all the skin
off your hands and feet and maybe cut to the bone."
Belle made no reply to this cheerful prediction. She had already started
down the rope.
As Billie watched her disappear in the dark, the man said abruptly:
"Did a number of girls and a white-haired woman in a red automobile come
here this evening?"
Billie hesitated.
"I believe so," she said.
"Do you know so?" asked the man insistently.
"Yes."
"Did you see one of them leave a rosewood box at the clerk's desk?"
Billie made a great effort to remember. Then, suddenly, the case of
jewels loomed up in her mind. She had forgotten all about them.
"Billie, Billie," called a voice from below.
"Yes," she answered, looking over the roof.
"She's here," shouted Ben, from the top of the ladder, which reached
only to the second story.
"All right," called the one-armed man on the roof. "We have a rope here.
We'll swing down to the ladder."
The next thing Billie remembered she was surrounded by a crowd of her
friends at the foot of the ladder. The girls were weeping and her Cousin
Helen was giving vent to hysterical expressions of relief and
thankfulness. The wet sand felt cool and soft to the parched soles of
her bare feet, and she tried to smile; but she really had quite
forgotten what it was all about. Some one close by her groaned and
sobbed alternately, and a sickening feeling came over her when she saw a
girl stretched on a blanket almost at her feet. The girl's hands were
torn and bleeding and her pale blue silk kimono was covered with blood.
Down one cheek was a long, bloody mark and to complete her grotesque and
terrible aspect, at least a dozen little red rubber devils' horns stood
upright all over her head.
The next thing Billie remembered was huddling into her own beloved red
motor car with the others, while some one took them somewhere, and all
the time in her ears she heard a man's voice saying:
"Where is that box of jewels?"
And her own voice replied:
"Under the ruins of the Shell Island Hotel."