"Hello, hello!" he shouted frantically over the wire. "The fire
department! This is eight hundred Seventy-second--on the corner;
yes, yes--northeast. I want to turn in an alarm. Yes--quick! There
is a fire--a bad one--incendiary--top floor. No, no--I'm not
there. I can see it. Hurry!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE ESCAPE
He had dropped the telephone receiver without waiting to replace
it on the hook and was now dashing madly out of the empty
apartment and down the street.
The hall-boy at Warrington's had done exactly as I had ordered
him. There was the elevator waiting as Garrick gave the five short
rings at the nightbell and the outside door was unlocked. No one
had yet discovered the fire which we knew was now raging on the
top floor of the apartment.
We were whirled up there swiftly, just as we heard echoing through
the hall and the elevator shaft from someone who had an apartment
on the same floor the shrill cry of, "Fire, fire!"
Tenants all the way up were now beginning to throw open their
doors and run breathlessly about in various states of undress.
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