"Where's the fire?" he called, and made his way inside.
"Well, you boys are dandies!" remarked the chief grimly. Then he ran out to the front door.
"Shut that stream off!" the chief bellowed hoarsely. "A lot of Grammar School boys have put the fire out with a lawn hose."
Two or three minutes later the policeman whom Prescott had summoned arrived, out of breath. Two minutes after that Dr. Bentley's auto stopped at the door.
Both unconscious women were revived, and Myra, who had not once awakened in all the excitement, was taken up and tucked in bed.
"How did you get into the house, Dick?" Mrs. Dexter at last found time to inquire.
"Why, the door was open just a crack, ma'am, when I got here. I heard Dexter threatening you, and realized that you must be alone. I knew I couldn't do much alone, so I sneaked in as softly as I could and got to the telephone."
As soon as he found himself with only his boy friends about, Dick demanded to know how they had arrived so opportunely.
"That's easy enough," Dave Darrin explained. "Just after you left me I ran into Greg, Tom, Dan and Harry. I told them where you'd gone, and what the business would probably turn out to be. Then—then—well, we got so awfully curious that we made up our minds to stroll up here to the corner and wait until you came out. Then we ran into four other fellows from our school, and there was a mob of us. To kill time we walked down past. As we went past we saw smoke coming out of one of the open windows on the ground floor. Then Bert Johnson remembered that he had seen Ab. Dexter come out and hurry away. It didn't take us long, then, to make up our minds to get into the house. We found the front door unlocked, and the rest was easy."
"We'll get out of here as soon as we can now," hinted Dick.