“Three,” she whispered as her heart skipped a beat, “and which one was it that I came down?”
At that precise moment a fresh suggestion of horror set her knees trembling. Her delicate nostrils had detected smoke! There could be no doubt about it!
“The fire’s just across the street,” she thought, “and the wind is right this way. This building may be on fire at this very moment.”
Her only thought now was of escape. But what was the way out?
She thought of the door at the end of the hall.
“Probably opens on a stair,” she told herself.
It did, but the stair went up, not down. By this time, quite thoroughly frightened, she took the up-going stairs. She had climbed three flights before she realized her folly. At that time she found herself at a door leading down the corridor.
“Follow it to a stairway that is open all the way down,” she told herself.
She had gone a hundred feet or more when light from a room attracted her attention.
There was, she found, no lamps lit in the room. The light entered through the window—the glow of the fire.