“I’d like it!” declared Sam decidedly. “If I really could learn enough to—to be an architect——”
“Pshaw,” interrupted Mr. Hall, “it’s no trick, Craig. All the fellows in my class at college who couldn’t make a living at laying brick or driving express wagons went in for architecture. All, that is, except John York. He had so much money he didn’t have to make it, and we persuaded him to be an architect because we thought he could do as little harm in that profession as any.”
Sam smiled obligingly and Mr. York threatened his friend with a paper-weight.
“You give it a good thinking over, Sam,” he continued. “Talk to your folks about it. You don’t have to decide before you get to college. And as to college, why, you’ll just have to make it somehow, old man. We’ll keep our eyes open and see if we can’t find a scheme. John and I will get our heads together”—Mr. York was interrupted by a fit of coughing—“and work out something. Look here, John, this place is worse than Pittsburg! Why, the room is full of smoke. Close the windows if you don’t want me to choke to death!”
Mr. Hall started to comply with the request, then apparently changed his mind, and walked to the door that led to the corridor. “It certainly is smoky,” he muttered, “and it can’t all come from the railroad.” He opened the door and staggered back before the cloud of dense and acrid smoke that billowed in. The others leaped to their feet with exclamations of alarm. Mr. Hall slammed the door shut again and faced them.
“Fire,” he announced in level tones. “The flames are coming up the elevator well, Johnnie.”
“So much for your fireproof building,” replied Mr. York, seizing his hat and stick and gloves from the desk. “Which way out, please?”
“I don’t know,” was the reply. “We’re cut off from the stairs and the elevators aren’t running. Couldn’t use them if they were, I guess.”
“But the fire escape, man! Where’s that?”
“We’ll try it, but it looks bad, Johnnie. I wonder—Put your head out, Craig, and see if there’s any sign of excitement below. No? Then it hasn’t been seen.” Mr. Hall strode to the telephone and yanked the receiver off. “Fire department,” he said. “Emergency!” There was a moment’s wait. Mr. York opened the door again and once more the clouds of smoke seethed into the room, whirling and eddying as they met the air from the windows. He looked up and down the corridor, returned, closing the door again, and shook his head as his gaze met that of the man at the telephone.