Part 6 (2/2)

”It's across the street! Across the street!” shouted the crowd.

A hose cart rumbled up. The men on the curb grew frantic, yelling and pointing to the smoke. The hose cart was stopped.

A little later the chief's automobile came. Then the apparatus that had pa.s.sed down the street came back. Flames and smoke were bursting from three windows now. The street and the sidewalk were filled with the crowd.

Hiram had not moved a muscle. People elbowed him on both sides, but he paid no attention. The rapid operations of the fire fighters held him spell-bound.

”Oo-oo-oo! Look there!” suddenly came a shrill familiar voice at his side.

A sputter of sparks had shot from the roof of the building, and a man had emerged from a trap-door, it seemed, and darted from sight. But the fire and every new phase of it had lost all holding power over Hiram Hooker. Pressed to his elbow, wedged in by the crowd, stood Lucy.

”Oh, I love a fire!” she was ecstatically informing some one on her other side--a waitress.

Hiram stood there sick with her proximity. She had not recognized him--she was engrossed with the clouds of black smoke, the intermittent red gleam of blaze, and the crackling streams of water. Her tongue was wagging rapidly, and she seemed not to care to whom she spoke or whether that fortunate person were listening.

Suddenly, through the scurrying firemen in the street, a big red automobile came slowly. It was filled with men and women. Its horn was honking perpetually. Besides the fire apparatus, no other vehicles were allowed in the street, yet no one seemed to interfere with this machine.

”Oh, it's the Samax Company!” exclaimed Lucy, dancing up and down.

”They're going to take a fire picture. Look, Minnie! There's Mr.

Kenoke--the director! I never thought of it--right here at my very door, too! If I only could see him, Minnie. What a chance for the fire scene in 'The Crowning Defeat!' Oh, why didn't I think of it, Minnie? Mr. Kenoke! Mr. Kenoke! Oh, dear, he wouldn't hear me in a thousand years!”

She was waving over the heads of the crowd at some one in the red automobile, it seemed. There seemed even less likelihood now of her taking note of Hiram. He watched her furtively and wondered.

”Oh, I must see him!” she went on excitedly. ”Say, mister”--she suddenly turned a flushed face to Hiram--”won't you---- Why, h.e.l.lo!”

she broke off. ”I didn't know it was you. Oh, you will, I know!

You're big--you can do it! Won't you try to get to that heavy-set man in the machine for me? Please--won't you?”

She was looking eagerly up at him. Hiram rose to the situation like a man. For her he felt he would have cheerfully entered a beehive should she command him. Was not this the adventure girl of whom he had dreamed?

”What'll I do?”

”Oh, will you? Good! Listen: Tell him to have Mr. Blair carry Miss Worthington out the door. And listen: Miss Worthington has fainted--see? Mr. Blair faints then, and staggers and falls down with her. Then Mr. Speed rushes up and takes a letter from Mr. Blair's pocket and runs out of the picture. And listen: Mr. Blair and Miss Worthington still lie there. Tell him there's no makeup. And tell him Miss Lucy Dalles wants him to do that, and that he won't regret it.

Tell him I said it was a peach--see? But listen: Don't say anything about me being in a restaurant, though. Oh, can you? Will you?”

Hiram was stunned. Had the girl gone crazy?

”Go on, please, before the fire's out! I can't explain now--wait.

I'll tell you later. He'll know, though. Go on, now--try!”

Without the faintest notion of what it was all about--with only the thrilling thought that he was serving her--Hiram's big figure began pus.h.i.+ng through the crowd, dazedly repeating her queer message and the names.

He was tall, strong, and angular. Shoving this way and that, he fought his way to the curb. Here he encountered a rope stretched lengthwise of the street. The crowd was now confined to the sidewalk. Hiram crawled under the rope. A policeman shouted at him and started toward him. Hiram ran, tripped over a slippery hose, caught himself, and plunged on through the knots of struggling, dripping firemen.

The automobile had stopped. The occupants were clambering to the wet pavement. One man was hurriedly setting up a peculiar-shaped camera directly opposite the entrance of the burning building. Another, a heavy-set man, was bobbing about, shouting orders to men and women, who listened, then ran toward the door.

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