Where There's a Will

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

"This settles it!" I panted, desperately. "It's all over."

"Not a bit of it!" he said, shoving me up the steps and into the hall. "The old teakettle is just getting 'het up' a bit. By the gods and little fishes, just listen to it singing down there!"

The help was gathered in a crowd at the head of the bath-house staircase, where a cloud of steam was coming up, and down below we could hear furious talking, and somebody shouting, "Mike! Mike!" in a voice that was choked with rage and steam.

Doctor Barnes elbowed his way through the crowd to the top of the stairs and I followed.

"There's Minnie!" Amanda King yelled. "She knows all about the place. Minnie, you can shut it off, can't you?"

"I'll try," I said, and was starting down, when Doctor Barnes jerked me back.

"You stay here," he said. "Where's Mr. Pier—where's Carter?"

"Down with the engineer," somebody replied out of the steam cloud.

"Hello there!" he called down the staircase. "How's the air?"

"Clothes! Send us some clothes!"