On he sped with redoubled speed, and turned into the main street. Then his alarm became genuine. Lurid flames were licking over the tree-tops directly ahead of him—in the direction of the store! A moment later a cry of horror broke from him. It was indeed the store block!
But his own personal alarm was quickly lost in a greater. Suppose the telegraph office also should be in flames, and he unable to reach it? He ran on madly.
He neared the store, and with hope saw that so far the flames were only in the second story. Men were hurrying in and out, and from the hardware-store adjoining. But as he rushed to the drug-store door a cloud of heavy smoke rolled forth, driving a group of men before it.
Among them he recognized his father.
“Dad,” he cried, “can’t I reach the instruments? I’ve a message for help to Hammerton and Zeisler from the mayor! The ’phone office and the station are burned. There is no other way of getting word out.”
Mr. Orr had halted in consternation. “No; you couldn’t get to them. The telegraph room is a furnace. The fire came in through the office windows from the outhouse, and I closed the door from the store.”
Through the haze of smoke within burst a lurid fork of flame.
“There! The fire is out through the telegraph-room door,” said the druggist. “You couldn’t get near the table. And anyway, Jack, the instruments would be useless by this time.”
It was this remark that aroused Jack. “If I could rip them from the table in any kind of shape, perhaps I could fix them up quickly so I could use them,” he thought.
To his father he said with sudden determination, “Dad, I’m going to make a try for the key and relay.”