For a moment Stacey was rather pleased at the news; then he shrugged his shoulders at feeling so childish an emotion. “All right,” he said, “I’ll go over and see if I can help.”
Running easily, he did the quarter of a mile in three minutes, and, vaulting a fence, came out upon the sloping lawn of the Langdon home. It was covered with people shouting and moving about busily—mostly workers from the factory, and strewn with such household goods as had been rescued. The east wing of the house was burning fiercely; flames lapped the roof of the central part, and black smoke curled out of its upper windows. The west wing was not yet burning, though its blistered paint was peeling off in great flakes, and little spirals of smoke rose from its roof where sparks had caught.
Glancing around him in the flickering light, Stacey perceived a young woman sitting motionless on an overturned mahogany sideboard, a child in her lap and two others clinging to her skirts. He went up to her quickly.
“Mrs. Langdon?” he said stiffly. “I’m Stacey Carroll. Please tell me what to do.” He spoke stiffly not because he was unfriendly, but because Mrs. Langdon, like all the rest of the people around him, seemed far away, unrelated, a mere distant mathematical fact about which no emotion was possible.
“Thank you, Mr. Carroll,” she said pleasantly. “I’m afraid there’s nothing. The men are getting out what they can.”
“Well, I can help with that,” he replied.
The youngest child, a girl of six, was crying bitterly in her mother’s arms. “Mitzi, I want my Mitzi!” she sobbed monotonously.
“Who’s Mitzi?” Stacey asked quickly. “Some pet—still in the house?”
Mrs. Langdon smiled. “Mitzi is only Helen’s doll,” she explained. “We forgot it in the hurry, and now it’s too late. Her room was full of smoke even when we left it.”
Stacey, too, smiled—ever so faintly touched. “I’ll go and see if I can help Mr. Langdon,” he remarked. “Where is he?”