“Bound in cloth,” said Eliph'. “Seven fifty if in morocco leather. So at the very minute that the fire broke out——”
“Fire!” said Skinner; “what fire? You didn't say anything about a fire.”
“The fire in the theater and museum,” said Eliph'. “It started right on the stairs between the second and third floors, and the old building flared up like dry paper. Two or three men that was trying the slot machines saw the smoke and run for the lung-testers, thinking by the look they were fire-extinguishers, which was the most natural mistake in the world. The looks of them would fool anybody, but they were lung-testers, and there that old building was, with twenty-four lung-testers in it, and not one fire-extinguisher. After that fire they passed an ordinance compelling every theater to have four fire-extinguishers.”
“And do they have them?” asked Skinner.
“Every first-class theater and opera house does, all over the United States,” said Eliph'. “But the odd thing was that at the very moment the fire broke out I had this book open at page 416, 'Fire—Its Traditions—How to Make a Fire Without Matches—Fire Fighting—Fire Extinguishers, How Made.' I was reading to those people how to make fire-extinguishers at home out of common chemicals and any suitable nickel-plated can, that would be as good as the best sold in any store, and right as I read it I thought how easy it would be for any man or child to turn those twenty-four useless lung-testers on the third floor into first-class fire-extinguishers, by following the simple directions set down on page 418, at a cost of only about twenty-six cents each——”
Skinner held out his hand for the book.
“Let me have a look at that book,” he said.
Eliph' picked up the book and tucked it under his arm.
“And at that minute came the cry of 'Fire!'” he said. “And I thought of poor Bill Rossiter up there on the third floor, shut off from all hope of rescue——-”
Skinner reached down to his cash drawer and pulled it open. He took out a dollar bill and held it toward Eliph'. The book agent ignored it.