There was always hot water, and within five minutes Jones had drunk two cups of raw strong coffee.
"Drugged!" he murmured. "Some one in the house! I'll attend to that later. Now, the chauffeur."
But the chauffeur swore on his oath that he had left Jim and Florence on the steps of the porte-cochère.
"Get in!" said Jones to Norton, now fully alive. He could not get it out of his head that some one in the house had drugged him.
The events which followed were to both Jones and Norton something like a series of nightmares. In the new home of the Princess Parlova a bomb had exploded and fire followed the explosion. From pleasure to terror is only a step. The wildest confusion imaginable ensued. Most of the guests were of the opinion that some anarchist had attempted to blow up the house of the rich Pole. Jones and Norton arrived just as the smoke began to pour out from the windows. A crowd had already collected.
Then Jim overheard a woman masquerader say: "The fool made the bomb too strong. She is in the room on the second floor. The game is up if she suffocates——" The voice trailed off and the woman became lost in the crowd. But it was enough for the reporter, who pushed his way roughly through the excited masqueraders and entered the house. The rescue was one of the most exciting to be found in the newspaper files of the day.
So Braine in his effort to scare everybody from the house had overreached himself once more.
CHAPTER XIX
Florence was a fortnight in recovering from the shock of her experience at the masked ball of the Princess Parlova, who, by the way, disappeared from New York shortly after the fire, no doubt because of her fear of the Black Hundred. The fire did not destroy the house, but most of the furnishings were so thoroughly drenched by water that they were practically ruined. Her coming and going were a nine-days' wonder, and then the public found something else to talk about.