"I told them to be seated, that everything would be all right, and to quiet down, and quite a number did. After Miss Williams fainted it attracted my attention, of course, to what was going on on the stage. I saw one of the moonlight boys pick Miss Williams up in his arms and go toward the stage entrance, other members of the octet following, except myself. I staid until they were out of sight. I left the stage by the second entrance on the prompt side. I went down stairs by the stairway beside the stage elevator.
"I came back on the stage again, made one more trip down stairs, and then I came to the stage once more. I went partly up stage, toward the stage entrance, that was all in flames. I looked to the other side of the stage and that was all in flames. I went down to the footlights, crossing again across the stage, and jumped over the footlights into the auditorium and made my way out to the first exit on my left, looking into the auditorium from the stage, into the alley. The panic was on at that time and it was a dreadful sight."
The statements of the remaining members were almost identical with those quoted.
CHAPTER XXIII.
JOIN TO AVENGE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS.
Ten days after the fire horror, while blood curdling disclosures were coming to light revealing the fate of the penned-in fire victims in a new and more ghastly aspect, and while school officials and pupils gathered to express grief for the 39 teachers and 102 pupils who were gathered in the grim harvest, an inspired movement sprang from the aftermath of woe. It was a cry for justice.
In an upper chamber in a towering sky-scraper in the heart of teeming, bustling Chicago, scores of sad visaged men and women assembled to lay aside their burden of woe and enter upon the prosecution of those whose avarice, neglect or incompetency had snuffed out all happiness and sunshine from their lives. A preliminary organization of relatives of victims of the Iroquois theater fire was effected in consequence on Saturday, January 9, for that purpose, at a meeting held in the offices of the Western Society of Engineers, in the Monadnock building.
The meeting was held in response to a call sent out by Arthur E. Hull, asking that concerted action be taken by the relatives and survivors to cause the speedy prosecution and punishment of any who were criminally responsible for the disaster and to learn those financially liable for claims. Mr. Hull lost his wife and three children in the catastrophe.