Chapter LIII

But when all was done that a brave and energetic man could do Mr. Rodney found that his efforts had been spent in vain.

The maniac fire-fiend had fired the filmy lace curtains and the blaze ran along the inflammable material, licking it up with a fiery tongue of flame and mounting to the ceiling where it ignited the curtain-rods and then the ceiling. The lawyer gazed at it an instant, and seeing the leaping tongues of flame spurting out he realized that he could do no more toward stopping the fire. He ran out of the smoking-room to give the alarm in the street, forgetting for a moment the terrible deed he had done and that his own safety demanded instant flight.

Rushing wildly down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Griffin coming up at a pace as headlong as his own.

She caught him entreatingly by the arm.

“Oh, sir,” she cried “you have not quite killed him! He breathes yet--he can talk a little. Oh for pity’s sake bring some one to him. I cannot leave him alone to go myself.”

Her words recalled him to himself. In the excitement of the past few moments he had momently forgotten that down-stairs in the wide hall lay a man whom he had ruthlessly slain. It rushed over him now with a keen pang of remorse.

“He lives!” he exclaimed and there was a keen note of relief in his voice. Already the thought of murder had begun to lie heavily on his hitherto unspotted soul.

“Yes, and you must bring a doctor quick,” Mrs. Griffin said imploringly.

He glanced back up the wide stairway into the hall. It was already filled with a volume of thick smoke that was pouring out from the doorway of the room he had just quitted.

“Look!” he said.

Her glance followed his.

“My God! have you fired the house?” she cried, in a terrified tone.

“No; but it was fired by the hand of a deformed maniac in that room you quitted,” he answered.

“And she?” cried Mrs. Griffin.

“Has escaped!” he answered.

“Oh, I always thought it would come to this!” cried the housekeeper, wringing her plump hands. “I thought she would murder us all in our beds, or set fire to the house; and she has done it, just as I thought she would. And where is she, Mr. Rodney--not in that room, surely?”

“No; she ran away after she had half strangled me!” he replied, with a shudder at the remembrance of the uncanny creature.

“My God, then she has escaped! Oh, what will Mr. Delaney say? I must go and find her! She must not leave the house!” cried Mrs. Griffin, breaking from him and continuing her flight up the stairs.

He followed and overtook her.

“Woman, are you mad?” he cried to her. “Of course she must leave the house. Every one must leave it. It will be burned to the ground presently! And hark you, if my erring child is here--if she perishes in this holocaust of flame--her blood will be upon your head!”

“Oh, Mr. Rodney, she is not here!” Mrs. Griffin answered, so earnestly that he could not but believe her. “She was here a little while ago, but she went away. I let her out of the kitchen door myself. I saw her go away.”

“Then, where can she have gone?” he cried distractedly.

“I do not know; but I must find that poor crazy soul!” she cried, again breaking from him and fearlessly rushing into the smoke filled hall.

Mr. Rodney ran down the steps, flung wide the front door, and sent his voice ringing out into the snowy night:

“Fire! fire! fire!”

A distant shout answered him from some belated wayfarer whose ear had been caught by the ominous words. He waited for no more, but, leaving the door ajar, ran back into the hall, and knelt down by the side of the man whom, in his murderous wrath, he had tried to murder just now.

Mr. Delaney lay quite still and motionless in the spot where he had fallen, save that Mrs. Griffin had turned him over upon his back, giving him better facilities for breathing. The long fringe of the lashes lay dark and stirless, against his cheeks, but his chest heaved faintly, showing that life was not quite extinct. Strange to say, Mr. Rodney was overjoyed to find that he lived.

“I am glad I did not kill him,” he muttered. “For deeply as I have been wronged, it was terrible to feel myself a murderer.”

He examined the wound, and found that his bullet had entered Mr. Delaney’s shoulder near the breast, but not necessarily in a vital part. With care he might, perhaps, recover.

“But what shall I do with him now?” he thought, in perplexity, hearing a babel of voices outside. “He cannot remain here, and it would be too dangerous to remove him far.”

He decided rapidly that he could not do less than to remove him to the cottage.

By some strange revulsion of feeling, he was now most anxious to save the life of the man whom but a little while ago he had been tempted to kill.

A score of men came hurrying over the threshold of the open door just then. By the help of some of these the wounded man was carefully removed to Mr. Rodney’s house, a physician was hastily summoned, and the men returned to the scene of the fire. The only fire-engine the small town afforded was quickly upon the spot, and every effort was made to save the burning house.

But all in vain. The devouring element had obtained too deadly a headway. It was impossible to beat back the swiftly encroaching flames. They leaped into the air like hydra-headed serpents, coiling and twisting in mad delight over their doomed prey; they lighted the darkness of the snowy night into fierce and lurid grandeur; they licked up at a breath the beautiful articles of _virtu_ that generations of dead and gone Delaneys had gathered in their ancestral home at the cost of many thousands of dollars. They spared naught that came in their way, and when the gray dawn looked with dim eyes at the scene of desolation, nothing remained of the Delaney House but a huge black pile of smoking ruins.