In the clearing where Jack's laboratory stood surrounded by turf and a ring of conifers, a dozen firemen were busy coiling and packing lengths of hose. The fire had been beaten; its last gasp was out; and the main building stood, smoke-stained, water-stained, with gaping sockets for windows, but with its roof apparently intact. The trees were scorched to leeward, and the turf was a trampled morass. Charred benches and desks, broken bottles, retorts, and glass cases, bestrewed it. But of Jack's sanctum—of the room in which I had been allowed to sit while he worked, because, as he put it, "I made no noise with my pipe"—nothing remained save a mound of ashes and a few sheets of iron roofing, buckled and contorted. A thin wisp of smoke coiled up from the ruin.
"Jack!" I called.
"Let's try the theatre," Sir Elkin suggested. "I left him there."
We went in.
The rostrum Jack used for his lectures was low, flat-topped and semicircular, with a high raised desk in the middle. Being isolated, it had escaped the fire; as maybe it had proved too cumbrous for removal.
Anyhow, there it was; and Jack stood beside it busy with something he was laying out on the flat desk-top. It looked like some sort of jigsaw puzzle that he was piecing together very carefully, very— what's the word?—meticulously. He had a small heap of oddments on his left, and a silk handkerchief in his right hand. His game was, he picked out an oddment from the heap, polished it, fitted it more or less into the silly puzzle, and stepped back to eye it. He looked up, annoyed-like, as if we were breaking in on a delicate experiment.
"Drop that, Foe!" Sir Elkin commanded, sharp and harsh, but with a human tremble in his voice. His nails clawed into my arm. "It's his dog," he whispered me, "or what's left. The poor brute held the door, they say… sprang at their throats right and left… till someone brained him and they threw his carcass into the fire.… Drop it, Foe—that's a good fellow!"
Jack stayed himself, stared at us dully, and put down the handkerchief after dusting the bench with it.
"Is that you, you fellows?" he asked, with a smile playing about his mouth and twisting it. "Good of you, Roddy—though almost too late for the fun! Jimmy, too?… They've made a bit of a mess here, eh?… Ah, and there's Mr. Farrell! Will somebody introduce Mr. Farrell?… Good-morning, sir! We'll—we'll talk this little matter over—you and I—later."