HE alarm of fire came at about one o’clock, when most of the people in the hotel had gone to bed and to sleep. Mrs. Carpenter, whose nights were often apt to be white ones, was awake when her telephone rang, and an agitated voice from the office gave her the word that is perhaps the most terrifying of all words in the dead of night—Fire!”
She was quickly out of bed and into a warm, voluminous kimono, and had her door open in half a minute. There was a general dim hubbub and confusion everywhere, and a perceptible smell of smoke swept down the corridor. A woman, crying hysterically, was being led toward the stairs by a man dressed in the incongruous clothes usual at night fires—pajamas, short dinner coat, and hat. He turned with a nervous start as Pippa called to him calmly enough: “Where is the fire, please?”
“The other side, I think,” he said jerkily. “But they say it's spreading rapidly.”
He stared at her vaguely. Her hair was hanging in two burnished, dark-red braids to her waist, Above the soft, dull-blue folds of the kimono, her face was colorless and tranquil. In the midst of the danger and confusion she looked ethereal and childlike and strangely quiet. The man lingered, still gazing at her stupidly.
“I wish I could help you, too” he began stupidly. But the woman with him caught at his arm with a cry: “Oh, hurry! hurry!'
“I'm all right, thanks,” said Philippa, and the couple went on. Some hotel servants came hurrying past; other doors opened; the smell, and a faint, blue dimness of smoke were alike increasing. Pippa turned back into her room and unlocked her jewels. As she did so, she wondered why she bothered. Fire and the peril of it; life and death so close together for a space; and yet, acting on traditional instinct she could think about jewels! She was hunting for her thick coat when a succession of screams that were like one big shriek dragged her back to the door again, Two housemaids were crying and clinging together. Farther down the hallway, she could hear men's voices loud and excited; then another sound. What was it? It seemed like the crashing fall of heavy woodwork and masonry.
“It's gone!” sobbed one of the girls “Oh, I knew they were lying when they told everybody it was only the other side. It was just to save a panic!”
“It's gone!” repeated Pippa. “What has gone?”
“The staircase at this end, ma'am!” whimpered the second girl. “We're cut off!”
The corridor was noticeably hotter. The shouts of the men grew louder and more broken. Some one cried: “Get to the roof!”
The two girls ran screaming toward the little staircase that led up to the top of the big hotel.
“Don't be fools!” called Philippa after them sharply. “If you get to the roof, you can't get down! It's three stories higher than any other building around here!”
“Ladder! Firemen!” panted one of them as she ran. She turned her head to cry over her shoulder: “Better come, too, ma'am!”
The next moment a great volume of smoke blotted out their figures. The fire was evidently spreading both ways, and was now coming down the other corridor. Like many hotels, this was built in a square, with a courtyard and three elevator shafts to create the sort of draft that fire feeds upon. Pippa did feel a sick throb of fear for a moment, for it looked just then as if she must be really cut off. Then she steadied her nerves once more, and forced herself to think clearly and quickly.
There was, she knew, a sort of ell or extension of the building just beyond that ominous curl of blue-gray smoke. Unless she was very much mistaken, the windows of the farthest room in the ell overlooked a row of shops—shops that were rather higher than the average. There was just a chance that she could get from that room onto one of the lower roofs and so escape. As for the wall of smoke that must be gone through, well, life should be worth a risk, and, anyway, one could not stand still and die like a rat in a trap. One must at least make an effort. She hesitated for an instant, and then walked quickly down the hall into the smoke.
It seemed to her that she was being drugged with the heavy, aromatic volume of it, There was less of a choking sensation than of anæsthesia, unconsciousness. The heat was hideous, and, somewhere at her left, through the dense smoke, she could see a dreadful red glow that waxed and waned.