On the third floor he found a hallway leading to a back window. The window looked down upon the roof of a two-story building.
“One could reach that roof at a leap if he found it necessary,” he told himself.
He had not expected to find the Novelty Company open for business. They weren’t.
“Guess that’s about all I can discover for this time,” he concluded as he once more entered the elevator and dropped to the ground floor.
The Chief was well pleased with his report. “Johnny,” he said, “you’d make an inspector, give you time. There’s one thing you wouldn’t know, though, so I’ll tell you. A chemist’s establishment or a drug store is one of the most dangerous risks an insurance company can take. That’s because if it gets on fire it goes up like a flash. There are likely to be dangerous fumes that drive the firemen back, and perhaps an explosion; too many chemicals about and in time of fire they raise the very deuce!
“You don’t understand why that is, eh? Well, that’s because you’re no chemist. I’ve dabbled into it a bit, and you’d better when you get time. It pays to know a little about many things, and a lot about one thing. That’s what makes a useful citizen out of a man.
“I’ll tell you about those chemicals. There’s always lots of chlorides and sulphur about a chemist’s shop. If the chlorides are heated at all they give up oxygen, and oxygen will make anything burn—a wrought-iron pipe or a steel crowbar. The sulphur mixes in and that makes a fire that nothing can stop. It laughs at water. As for chemical engines, it gives them the roaring Ha! Ha! When a fire like that burns out it don’t much matter what you had in the beginning; all you’ve got in the end is ashes, and mighty fine ashes at that.”
Johnny listened to this lecture with intense interest. When it was over he sat in a brown study from which he emerged to exclaim:
“That’s queer!”
“Nothing queer about it,” protested the Chief, “just nature takin’ her course, that’s all.”