“Well, wait a minute en’ I’ll go back in with you when I’ve toted these out.”
“I’ll—have to—wait a minute,” Stacey replied, and the young man departed.
Presently he returned, and together the two went back into the sitting-room for more loot, emerging dripping with sweat and half choked. Yet Stacey was beginning to enjoy himself.
They tried the other two rooms, the doors of which Stacey had already noticed. From the first they got—with difficulty—a fine rug, slightly scorched, and a mahogany stand. The second seemed impossible—a mass of black smoke.
“What’s in there, I wonder?” said Stacey hoarsely.
“I dunno,” the young fellow replied. “We mout ask that nigger, Joe.”
Only two or three men were left now even in the room next the porch, and Joe was definitely on the point of getting out of the window. However, he paused for an instant to answer the question.
“That theah room, that’s Miss Helen’s bedroom. Don’ you go theah, suh,” he said, and vanished.
Stacey reflected, with a half smile, then hurried back, his laconic acquaintance still at his side. Voices shouted at them from the porch.
The house was a furnace now. There was a heavy roaring in the air and every little while the sound of something crashing down. Nevertheless, Stacey plunged into the bedroom, and so, too, did his companion. It was unbearable, but, at least, one could see; a vivid flickering light shot through the smoke. After a moment Stacey made out the crib, dived for a blackened, almost unrecognizable object that lay on the smoldering sheets, and leaped back just as a beam fell, with a shower of sparks, from the ceiling. Together he and his companion fled back to the room next the porch and leaned, coughing and choking, against the window. The room was empty.