“The house is on fire,” said Carpentaria, meeting her.
“Is it?” she answered calmly. “Are the firemen come? where’s the fire?”—She sniffed—“Yes,” she said, “I can smell it.”
She was amazingly calm. “No woman with a man concealed in her sitting-room,” said Carpentaria to himself, “could behave so calmly upon being informed that the house was on fire. Her first thought would have been to secure the hidden man’s safety.” And Carpentaria ran downstairs with a great show of activity. He was baffled, disappointed, for he had deliberately set fire to his own house in order to drive Ilam from the sitting-room, where he felt sure Ilam was. And the trick had failed. After all, he had been mistaken. He had been convinced of his sister’s deception, and lo! she had not deceived him. Carpentaria could have killed himself.
Happily the fire was of no importance, and it was extinguished before it had done more than about five pounds’ worth of damage and alarmed more than about five thousand visitors to the City.
CHAPTER XIX—The Heart of the City
The situation of the heart of the City was one of the secrets of the City. It was not located, perhaps, exactly where you might have expected it to be, and for a very good reason. The magnificent building which housed the managerial, clerical, and inspectorial staff of the City was near the south end of the Central Way. It comprised four floors, and more than a hundred clerks spent seven hours a day there. On the first floor was the President’s Parlour, where Ilam held consultations with Carpentaria and with the heads of departments, from the department of catering to the department of road-cleaning. On the floor above was the Manager’s and Musical Director’s Parlour, where the august Carpentaria held consultations with Ilam and with the heads of other departments, from that of music, with its subsections (a) open-air bands, (b) theatre and other bands, (c) restaurant bands, (d) vocal music, (e) pianolas, gramophones, and mechanical orchestras, to the procession and fêtes department. But the heart of the City was nowhere in this building.
There were also scattered about the immense grounds, various other executive buildings of a smaller size, where sectional managers, viceroys of Ilam and Carpentaria, held their mimic sway. But the heart of the City was not in any of these, either.
Very few persons, even among those on the salary-list of the City, did know where the heart was; for it was not talked about. Talking about it was discouraged; the hearts of such places are never talked about. And it is a most singular thing that visitors to the City scarcely gave a thought to the question of the situation of the heart of the City. The most interesting of all the many secrets of the City seldom aroused public curiosity, so strange is the public.