On the instant, before even Vixley could move, Dougal had jumped up and run forward. As he dashed up the aisle he pressed the key of his electric torch and cast a bright light upon the group by the cabinet. The draped form had started back, Payson faced her, Vixley had risen from his chair fiercely, Flora Flint's startled face peered through the curtains.
"Come on, Max!" Dougal shouted, and threw himself bodily upon the person wrapped in the sheet. Maxim grappled at almost the same time, but before him Vixley sprang in and rained blow after blow upon Dougal, who fell, dropping his torch. Vixley then locked with Maxim. Starr and Benton had run up, hurtling past Spoll, who had risen to block the way. They were just too late to save Dougal, who had fallen, still holding his captive fast. It was too dark to see what was happening, but Vixley's oaths led them on, crashing over chairs, creeping and fighting through the now terrified crowd. A match was struck somewhere behind them, and, before it flared out, Starr and Benton fell on Vixley together and bore him to the floor.
The room was now horrid with confusion. A racket of moving chairs told that every one had arisen in panic. Women screamed, and there was a rush for the door. It seemed hours before there was a light, then Madam Spoll reached up and turned up the light. At that moment Ringa flew past her—she was thrown down and the lamp fell crashing upon the seat of a chair beside her. There was an explosion on the instant. She was drenched with blazing oil, and the flames enveloped her.
Her screams rose over the tumult so piercingly that every one turned, saw her, and fell back in fear and terror. She clambered to her feet clumsily, shrieking in agony, ran for the door, tore it open and fled down-stairs, to fall heavily at the bottom, writhing.
Benton was that moment free, and the only man to keep his senses. He burst right through the room, throwing men and women to right and left and broke out the door after her, and down the stairs, tearing a table-cloth from a table as he ran through the hall. He wrapped it about her, the flames scorching his face and hands as he did so. The woman was struggling so in her blind terror and torture that it was for a moment impossible to help her. Then, in a few heroic moments he conquered the fire. At last he called to the crowd above for help, and they carried her up into a small side room and laid her upon a bed.
Starr, meanwhile, still clung to Vixley while Maxim had held Ringa off. Spoll was busy extinguishing the fire on the carpet. Then some one at last lighted the chandelier, showing a score of white, frenzied faces, men and women in wild disarray, chairs broken and strewn upon the floor, a smoking, blackened place on the carpet where the remains of the lamp had fallen. The room smelled horribly.
Vixley lay in a welter of ornaments that had been swept from the mantel in his struggle. He was still cursing.
Dougal had held his captive fast through all that turmoil, yelling continuously for a light. Now Mabel and Elsie, who had flattened themselves against the wall, joining their screams to the din, crept trembling up to him to see what he had caught. He turned the limp figure in his arms and sought amongst the folds of the sheet, and turned them away at the face. Elsie gave a little cry.
He sought amongst the folds of the sheet