“Oh, thank you!” said the young woman. “He’s there at the west end of the house. Please don’t let him climb in again. He’s strained his ankle.”
A ladder had been placed against the low porch at the end of the west wing. Stacey scrambled up to the roof of the porch, where he found Mr. Langdon and others among a heterogeneous collection of household goods that had been carried out through an open second-story window. The tin roof was uncomfortably hot, and there was a good deal of smoke. Mr. Langdon was directing the lowering to the ground of a sofa and pausing between times to toss down less fragile belongings as they were brought out to him through the window. He appeared quite calm and greeted Stacey courteously.
“Mrs. Langdon told me you had strained your ankle,” Stacey remarked. “Hadn’t you better go back down and let me tend to this for you?”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” Mr. Langdon replied, “but I am all right. I regret that I cannot go inside with the others.”
“Well, I can do that, anyway,” said Stacey curtly, and, disregarding the other’s protests, went quickly over to the window and through it.
The room beyond was very hot but not yet burning, and there was not even much smoke. Three or four men were gathering up the few objects still remaining in it, and a frightened negro servant was standing very close to the window and directing their efforts. No one paid the least attention to his instructions, but a youth, coming in with a mattress from a room beyond, called: “Come on in theah, Joe!” at which the negro shook his head vigorously and the others laughed. Stacey went through another door.
This room was smoky and also nearly emptied of its furnishings. But three doors opened out of it and beyond one of these Stacey found himself at once in a hot choking mist. Here he was alone. He drew out his flash-light, and, his eyes smarting, explored the room. It was a sitting-room, he saw,—Mrs. Langdon’s probably,—and he could be of some use after all; for here hung a small Meissonier and there on a table was a vase—“Sèvres,” he remarked hoarsely. “Better than—mattresses.” He gathered up the vase, jerked the picture from the wall, and stumbled, coughing, from the room.
Just outside the door he ran into the young man of the mattress. “Here!” said Stacey wheezing, “take this—carefully—to Mr. Langdon, will you?”
“Shuah!” said the young man, who was chewing tobacco steadily. “You be’n in theah?” he inquired, waving his hand at the door.
Stacey nodded.