From four of the upper windows floated thin, softly curling plumes of gray smoke. The windows were closed, but the smoke appeared to be leaking out from the surrounding frames.
"Hello!" muttered Dick, suddenly shutting off his whistle. "That looks like smoke. The janitor must be rebuilding the furnace fire. But why should smoke—I guess I'll investigate."
The puzzled boy ran up the steps, pulled the vestibule door open and eagerly pressed his nose against the plate-glass panel of the inner door, which was locked. Through the glass, however, he could plainly see that the wide corridor was thick with smoke. He could even smell it.
"Great guns!" exclaimed Dick. "There's things doing in there! That furnace never smokes as hard as all that and besides the Janitor always has Saturday afternoons off. Perhaps the basement door is unlocked."
Dick ran down the steps to find that door, too, securely fastened.
"I guess," said Dick, with another look at the curling smoke about the upper windows, "the thing for me to do is to turn in an alarm."
Dick happened to know where the alarm-box was situated, so, feeling most important, yet withal strangely shaky as to legs, the lad made for the corner, a good long block distant, smashed the glass according to directions, and sent in the alarm, a thing that he had always longed to do.
Five minutes later, the big red hosecart, with gong ringing, firemen shouting and dogs barking, was dashing up the street. The hook and ladder company followed and a meat wagon, or rather a meat-wagon horse, galloped after. The foundry whistle began to give the ward number in long, melancholy, terrifying toots and the hosehouse bell joined in with a mad clamor. People poured from the houses along the hosecart's route, for in Lakeville it was customary for private citizens to attend all fires.
Dick, feeling most important, stood on the schoolhouse steps and pointed upward. The hosecart stopped with a jerk that must have surprised the horses, firemen leaped down and in a twinkling the foremost had smashed in the big glass door.