But one cloud rested upon her horizon. Mrs. Bean was afraid of fire. She considered that because the inmates could not dwell upon the ground floor of the Home, the place was a fire trap and the most horrible holocaust, not only possible but probable. To inure herself to the inevitable, she read the harrowing details of every fire involving fatalities.
Having enjoyed refreshments, Mrs. Bean had retired to the porch that she might listen to the music in the peace of her own thoughts. She sniffed. It was but a tentative sniff. Not a full, deep whiff. Such sniffs she gave many times each day. “Somethin’s burnin’,” said Mrs. Comfort Bean. Hearers being absent, there was no sympathetic response. “I smell fire,” she announced in louder tones. A phenomenon puzzled Mrs. Bean’s highly developed olfactory nerves. Her nostrils were assailed by the odor of ignited hay instead of the fateful smell of burning wood.
The fire smouldered and spread. A gust of wind came. Mrs. Comfort Bean, sniffing expectantly, was enveloped in a thin cloud of smoke. It caught her when, dissatisfied by preliminary investigations, she had taken a full, deep whiff. Mrs. Bean was almost asphyxiated. Gasping and choking she strangled in the efficient smudge of Ike’s preparing. A change in the wind relieved her. “Fire!” she screamed.
As this fateful cry, anguish-toned, rang over the festive throng, many an aged heart stood still. Shrieks arose as well as answering alarms. For the moment terror held them, and then certain women rushed for the building that they might ascend to their apartments and rescue choice possessions. Other more hardened spirits removed their chairs to positions of advantage that in greater comfort, they might “Watch the blamed old thing burn down.”
The coolness of military men was well exemplified by Colonel Ryan. He arose from his chair at the first alarm and shouted, “Sit down,” in a voice which had arisen above the roar of cannon. Perceiving the stampede towards the building, he thundered, “Two of you waiters keep those women out of there.” In utter disregard of the high cost of shoes, he roared, “Stamp that fire out!” In searching tones, he demanded, “Who set it?” No guilty man confessed, but Ike became ill at ease and sought retirement in the crowd.
The Colonel turned to the leader of the band which rested between numbers. “Play!” he commanded. These ancient musicians had little regard for modern music. They loved the tuneful airs of the past and were about to render some selections from “The Serenade.” At the word of the leader, the chorus from “Don Jose of Seville,” the words of which run, “Let her go, piff, paff,” pealed forth.
To avert impending peril, Mrs. Comfort Bean had remained upon the porch emitting loud screams at intervals as if they were minute guns. She disappeared into the hall. She was back in a moment. Kelly was gazing beneath the porch at the smouldering leaves. She called to him, “You big red-headed feller,” and when he looked up, she screamed, “Fire extinguisher.”
He nodded understandingly and in a moment had procured the apparatus from the hall and carried it to the end of the porch where a group of waiters, assisted by their late enemy, Mr. Jones, were endeavoring to stamp the fire out.
For an instant Kelly perused the directions. Then he inverted the extinguisher. There was a hissing as of a monstrous snake. From the nozzle gushed a fizzing, sizzling jet like a soda fountain in action. Kelly whirled about to bring the stream to bear upon the conflagration. As he turned, the frothing liquid circled with him and cut the check suit of Mr. Jones, the white coats of the waiters, and the Norfolk jacket of Ike, at the waist line. Now arose the protests and violent language of angry men.
“You big chump, ain’t you got no sense?” gasped Mr. Jones, ungrammatically.