“In the office, of course.”
“In the office, huh,” Johnny loosed his hold a trifle. “Come on back out of the way of the firemen.”
The boy obeyed reluctantly. The moment he was released he darted from sight.
“So much, so good,” Johnny murmured. “Only thing I can do now is to watch faces; see if I can spot the man or the woman. Lots of women firebugs they say, but not on a thing like this I guess. Takes a man to burn a school, and such a school, in such a place.”
Even as his gaze swept the circle he caught sight of hundreds of white, frightened faces peering from windows of rickety tenements—veritable tinder boxes waiting the red, hungry flames.
“And yet,” Johnny muttered, “poor as they are, they are homes, the best these people can afford. And this is their school, the hope of their children, the thing that promises to lift them to better places in the future. Who could have set a fire like that?”
The fire was gaining headway. It burned red from the fourth floor windows; sent partitions crashing dismally within and belched forth great showers of sparks from the roof.
Reinforcements were coming. Bells jangled, hose uncoiled on the hot pavement; a water screen from a dozen nozzles poured upon the steaming homes to the lee of the fire.
And all this time Johnny Thompson wandered back and forth in front of the line of staring and frightened men, women and children held back by a rope line hastily established by the police.
When his eyes were tired and he had told himself there was no hope of finding his man, he drifted wearily back through the line and into a small shop that stood open. There on the top of a barrel he sat down to think.