Belleville seemed to know at once. "Pinsent!" he cried, "where are you?"
"Here," said I.
"Go and wake her, my wife!" he muttered suddenly. "I have something to tell you both before I go. I am dying fast."
I hastened to do his bidding, but before I reached Miss Ottley's side I was arrested by a loud thudding crash. Turning swiftly, I saw that Belleville had overturned the jar. Its contents had already flooded the floor. He hovered over with a lighted vesta in one of his black hands.
"What are you doing?" I demanded.
He stooped floorwards with the match and instantly a mighty flame shot up that licked the very roof. "Revenge!" he shrieked. "Revenge! I've fooled you, Pinsent, fooled you. Now we all shall die together. Look!" With that, he steeped both hands in the burning fluid and, flitting like a salamander through the flames, he made for the sarcophagus. I could not have stayed him had I wished, for there was a sea of fire between us. But in good truth I was too dazed for the while, at least, to move a muscle. Reaching the great lead tomb, the dreadful flaming object that had once been Belleville thrust his lambent hands into the coffin. There followed an explosion of appalling fury. A mass of brilliant, white, combustible shot up with a mighty roar from the sarcophagus to the ceiling. It pierced the padded lining like a thunderbolt and flashed into the room above. But on its impact with the ceiling it also splashed a rain of fire about the great laboratory. In two seconds the whole place ran with flames. By a miracle I was not touched. But it was not so with Miss Ottley. Her skirt was ablaze. I rushed forward and tore the thing off in strips before it burnt her—then seizing her in my arms, I made like a madman to the door. A hideous burning object lay before it shrieking sulphurous curses. It was Belleville. But he had come to the end of his strength and he could not stay me. The catch yielded to my hand and I dashed into the passage half blinded with fire and smoke, but safe. I did not rest until I had reached the staircase. Miss Ottley was then awake. She struggled in my arms, so I set her down and faced her. But she did not see me. Her dress was smouldering in places. She seemed utterly bewildered. A woman ran up to her and began to put out the burning patches with her hands. The house was in an uproar. Servants—they were all either Arabs or Nubians—ran hither and thither shouting and screaming in a panic. The woman, evidently a nurse, who attended to Miss Ottley, was the only white person to be seen. She was evidently terrified, but she did not lose her head. She kept asking Miss Ottley in French to explain what had happened. Nobody seemed aware that the house was on fire. They had all been merely alarmed by the noises they had heard. Miss Ottley in the middle of it all began to weep. She was thoroughly upset and ill, and I perceived at once that she was on the verge of a mental and physical collapse. In the circumstances, I judged it best to remain a silent onlooker of events and not to take any action unless there arose a real necessity. It was plain that I was still invisible. And as for the house being on fire, I deemed it utterly desirable that it should burn down to the last shaving and thus fittingly entomb in its destruction the ghastly tragedy of the laboratory. The issue tallied largely with my wishes. The fire was seen first from the street. There followed a veritable pandemonium. The coloured servants fled like cowards for their lives, and in an incredibly short space of time the house was in the hands of firemen and police. Miss Ottley was taken by the nurse out into the street and there questioned by a sergeant. But she was quite unable to answer his insistent queries satisfactorily. All she could say was that she had been a long time ill. She had fainted in her room that afternoon, and Dr. Belleville or someone had carried her to the laboratory. When she woke up she had heard a frightful noise. She supposed it was one of the Doctor's experiments. She thought she had fainted again, but she remembered nothing more until she found herself with her dress on fire at the foot of the staircase. She could not explain how she got there. The sergeant was civil enough to her, but the fool, in his fussy officiousness, overlooked her weak condition, and the girl broke down and utterly collapsed before he realised his quite unnecessary cruelty. The worst of it was that the French nurse had disappeared during the colloquy. There was, therefore, no woman at hand to attend to my poor sweetheart. Fortunately, however, a physician appeared opportunely on the scene, and at his direction she was immediately conveyed to a hospital. After she had gone, I did not tarry very long. Choosing a place where the cordoned crowd was thinnest, I slipped back through the park railings, over which I climbed and dropped into the park, feeling the weight of my invisibility acutely. From this vantage point I watched the conflagration for a while. The house was manifestly doomed. Indeed, the efforts of the firemen were entirely directed to save adjoining buildings. A hundred jets of water played upon the walls of these in thin continuous streams. Men about me were talking the matter over as if it personally appealed to them. They mostly viewed it with a sort of half-secret satisfaction. The misfortunes of millionaires do not excite much sympathy in the hearts of the mob.
One man glibly quoted, "Lay not up unto yourselves treasures in this world!" on the occasion of a grimy fireman bringing out a magnificent but half-destroyed silver-framed canvas of Velasquez. But the crowd cheered the fireman for his pluck all the same. At length I realised that I was very tired, and hungry, too, so I slunk off and made my way to Dixon Hubbard's rooms. They were locked, of course, and I had not the key. I had left it with the porter of the building. But I could not go to him and ask him to give it up to an apparently fleshless voice. Wondering what to do, I crept into the passage, sat down in a corner underneath the stairs and waited for an inspiration. Waiting there, I fell asleep.