It was nearing twelve o’clock when a ’phone message came through from police headquarters, and Carver went to the instrument.
“Is that you, Mr. Carver—Mayfield is burning—the brigade have just had a call.”
Carver dropped the receiver as if it were red-hot and flew to the door. A cab had just set down some guests at the hotel and he pushed unceremoniously past them.
“Peak Avenue,” he said.
What a fool not to have thought of Mayfield before! He cursed volubly in the darkness of the taxi. And after he knew that Rex Lander had called Tab on the ’phone, and that Tab had gone out! Of course, that was where he would have taken Tab—to Mayfield. Tab would have gone cheerfully, having no suspicion of his friend, and—Carver shuddered.
He had read only too clearly the significance of the torn photographs. The man was insanely jealous; would stop at nothing. With two murders to his credit, a third would be simple.
Long before he reached Peak Avenue, he saw the red glow in the sky and groaned. Amidst that blazing hell Rex Lander had destroyed not only his rival but half the evidence of his crime.
The cab dashed through the police line into the Avenue, crowded now with half-dressed inhabitants, and brightly lit by the flames that mounted above the doomed house. The roof fell in as he sprang from the cab; a crowd of sparks leapt into the dark sky and Carver could only stand speechless and sorrowful beyond expression.
Then it was that somebody tapped his elbow, and looking round he saw a man in a soaked and bedraggled dressing-gown. At first he did not recognise him, for the little man’s face was blackened and scorched, his eyes were red and wild.
“My father was a fireman,” said Mr. Stott solemnly. “We Stotts are a hard bit’n race. Heroes all of us!”