I got up and looked at my watch. It was just midnight.
Off to the East I saw red tongues of angry flame streaking the sky from horizon to zenith.
“It is the Jewish Club, all right,” I said.
I pulled down the blind and went back to bed.
When I went down to breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning, I heard the newsboys in the streets crying, “All about the fire!” I bought a paper and read the headline, “Hubbard’s Lecture Hot Stuff!”
I walked out Saint Charles Avenue and viewed the smoldering ruins where only a few hours before I had spoken to more than two thousand people—where the bishop in purple vestment had cried “Bravo!” and the stout lady with feathered fan had beamed approval.
“Was anybody hurt?” I asked one of the policemen on guard.
“Only one man killed—Fass, the Secretary; I believe he lies somewhere over there to the left, beneath that toppled wall.”
The person who reasons from a false premise is always funny—to other folks.