“Mrs. Langdon?” he said stiffly. “I’m Stacey Carroll. Please tell me what to do.” He spoke stiffly not because he was unfriendly, but because Mrs. Langdon, like all the rest of the people around him, seemed far away, unrelated, a mere distant mathematical fact about which no emotion was possible.
“Thank you, Mr. Carroll,” she said pleasantly. “I’m afraid there’s nothing. The men are getting out what they can.”
“Well, I can help with that,” he replied.
The youngest child, a girl of six, was crying bitterly in her mother’s arms. “Mitzi, I want my Mitzi!” she sobbed monotonously.
“Who’s Mitzi?” Stacey asked quickly. “Some pet—still in the house?”
Mrs. Langdon smiled. “Mitzi is only Helen’s doll,” she explained. “We forgot it in the hurry, and now it’s too late. Her room was full of smoke even when we left it.”
Stacey, too, smiled—ever so faintly touched. “I’ll go and see if I can help Mr. Langdon,” he remarked. “Where is he?”
“Oh, thank you!” said the young woman. “He’s there at the west end of the house. Please don’t let him climb in again. He’s strained his ankle.”
A ladder had been placed against the low porch at the end of the west wing. Stacey scrambled up to the roof of the porch, where he found Mr. Langdon and others among a heterogeneous collection of household goods that had been carried out through an open second-story window. The tin roof was uncomfortably hot, and there was a good deal of smoke. Mr. Langdon was directing the lowering to the ground of a sofa and pausing between times to toss down less fragile belongings as they were brought out to him through the window. He appeared quite calm and greeted Stacey courteously.
“Mrs. Langdon told me you had strained your ankle,” Stacey remarked. “Hadn’t you better go back down and let me tend to this for you?”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” Mr. Langdon replied, “but I am all right. I regret that I cannot go inside with the others.”
“Well, I can do that, anyway,” said Stacey curtly, and, disregarding the other’s protests, went quickly over to the window and through it.
The room beyond was very hot but not yet burning, and there was not even much smoke. Three or four men were gathering up the few objects still remaining in it, and a frightened negro servant was standing very close to the window and directing their efforts. No one paid the least attention to his instructions, but a youth, coming in with a mattress from a room beyond, called: “Come on in theah, Joe!” at which the negro shook his head vigorously and the others laughed. Stacey went through another door.