But when all was done that a brave and energetic man could do Mr.
Rodney found that his efforts had been spent in vain.
The maniac fire-fiend had fired the filmy lace curtains and the blaze
ran along the inflammable material, licking it up with a fiery tongue
of flame and mounting to the ceiling where it ignited the curtain-rods
and then the ceiling. The lawyer gazed at it an instant, and seeing the
leaping tongues of flame spurting out he realized that he could do no
more toward stopping the fire. He ran out of the smoking-room to give
the alarm in the street, forgetting for a moment the terrible deed he
had done and that his own safety demanded instant flight.
Rushing wildly down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Griffin coming up at
a pace as headlong as his own.
She caught him entreatingly by the arm.
“Oh, sir,” she cried “you have not quite killed him! He breathes
yet--he can talk a little. Oh for pity’s sake bring some one to him. I
cannot leave him alone to go myself.”
Her words recalled him to himself. In the excitement of the past few
moments he had momently forgotten that down-stairs in the wide hall lay
a man whom he had ruthlessly slain. It rushed over him now with a keen
pang of remorse.
“He lives!” he exclaimed and there was a keen note of relief in his
voice. Already the thought of murder had begun to lie heavily on his
hitherto unspotted soul.
“Yes, and you must bring a doctor quick,” Mrs. Griffin said imploringly.
He glanced back up the wide stairway into the hall. It was already
filled with a volume of thick smoke that was pouring out from the
doorway of the room he had just quitted.
“Look!” he said.
Her glance followed his.
“My God! have you fired the house?” she cried, in a terrified tone.
“No; but it was fired by the hand of a deformed maniac in that room you
quitted,” he answered.
“And she?” cried Mrs. Griffin.
“Has escaped!” he answered.
“Oh, I always thought it would come to this!” cried the housekeeper,
wringing her plump hands. “I thought she would murder us all in our
beds, or set fire to the house; and she has done it, just as I thought
she would. And where is she, Mr. Rodney--not in that room, surely?”
“No; she ran away after she had half strangled me!” he replied, with a
shudder at the remembrance of the uncanny creature.
“My God, then she has escaped! Oh, what will Mr. Delaney say? I must
go and find her! She must not leave the house!” cried Mrs. Griffin,
breaking from him and continuing her flight up the stairs.
He followed and overtook her.
“Woman, are you mad?” he cried to her. “Of course she must leave
the house. Every one must leave it. It will be burned to the ground
presently! And hark you, if my erring child is here--if she perishes in
this holocaust of flame--her blood will be upon your head!”
“Oh, Mr. Rodney, she is not here!” Mrs. Griffin answered, so earnestly
that he could not but believe her. “She was here a little while ago,
but she went away. I let her out of the kitchen door myself. I saw her
go away.”
“Then, where can she have gone?” he cried distractedly.
“I do not know; but I must find that poor crazy soul!” she cried,
again breaking from him and fearlessly rushing into the smoke filled
hall.
Mr. Rodney ran down the steps, flung wide the front door, and sent his
voice ringing out into the snowy night:
“Fire! fire! fire!”
A distant shout answered him from some belated wayfarer whose ear had
been caught by the ominous words. He waited for no more, but, leaving
the door ajar, ran back into the hall, and knelt down by the side of
the man whom, in his murderous wrath, he had tried to murder just now.
Mr. Delaney lay quite still and motionless in the spot where he had
fallen, save that Mrs. Griffin had turned him over upon his back,
giving him better facilities for breathing. The long fringe of the
lashes lay dark and stirless, against his cheeks, but his chest heaved
faintly, showing that life was not quite extinct. Strange to say, Mr.
Rodney was overjoyed to find that he lived.
“I am glad I did not kill him,” he muttered. “For deeply as I have been
wronged, it was terrible to feel myself a murderer.”
He examined the wound, and found that his bullet had entered Mr.
Delaney’s shoulder near the breast, but not necessarily in a vital
part. With care he might, perhaps, recover.
“But what shall I do with him now?” he thought, in perplexity, hearing
a babel of voices outside. “He cannot remain here, and it would be too
dangerous to remove him far.”
He decided rapidly that he could not do less than to remove him to the
cottage.
By some strange revulsion of feeling, he was now most anxious to save
the life of the man whom but a little while ago he had been tempted to
kill.
A score of men came hurrying over the threshold of the open door just
then. By the help of some of these the wounded man was carefully
removed to Mr. Rodney’s house, a physician was hastily summoned, and
the men returned to the scene of the fire. The only fire-engine the
small town afforded was quickly upon the spot, and every effort was
made to save the burning house.
But all in vain. The devouring element had obtained too deadly a
headway. It was impossible to beat back the swiftly encroaching
flames. They leaped into the air like hydra-headed serpents, coiling
and twisting in mad delight over their doomed prey; they lighted the
darkness of the snowy night into fierce and lurid grandeur; they licked
up at a breath the beautiful articles of _virtu_ that generations of
dead and gone Delaneys had gathered in their ancestral home at the
cost of many thousands of dollars. They spared naught that came in
their way, and when the gray dawn looked with dim eyes at the scene of
desolation, nothing remained of the Delaney House but a huge black pile
of smoking ruins.