"No," he said slowly. "No, I don't suppose they are. . . . Still, there's nothing to set the cars afire. They're safe enough in that building. Nothing can happen to them there."
"The building itself is not located on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," said his nephew, thoughtfully. "It might be exposed to a serious fire in some of the neighboring buildings—that big paper-box factory, for example, across the alley to the south. There might, in fact,"—he paused—"there might be a general fire in that part of Boston."
"A conflagration, you mean? Nonsense! Boston is safe as a church."
"Probably safer than St. Stephen's, out in Cambridge, that burned to the ground last week," returned his visitor, with a smile.
"To be sure," said Mr. Hurd, hastily. "But there'll never be a big, sweeping fire in Boston."
"Why not? There was one once."
"Forty years ago. That's no criterion. Things are very different now. This is a modern city we're talking about—half the buildings down town are fireproof or nearly so. Modern cities don't burn the way older ones did."
"Baltimore did, as you may recall; also San Francisco. And they were modern—as modern as Boston. There are people—not Bostonians, of course—who would consider them more so."
"Come now, do you mean to tell me any one honestly believes there is any danger of another really big fire here?" rejoined Mr. Hurd, almost contemptuously; but under the surface Charlie believed that his attitude of contempt was more or less assumed. He believed he had made a distinct impression, and it was therefore almost with a gambler's instinct that he brought forth his trump card.
"I tell you, sir," he said, with all the impressiveness he could command, "that the best technical engineers—not alarmists, but men who are careful students of such things—agree that the danger here is as great as in any of the big cities of the United States. The conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity."