204
THE SURAKARTA
ance patrol. He found the corridor of the tenth floor filled with heavy smoke and crowded with the firemen and attendants of the hotel. Fighting and elbowing his way through the hall, he reached the entrance to the Javanese suite, and finally gained Baraka's room.
This—and even more plainly the inner room next, from which the Surakarta had so mysteriously disappeared—had been the scene of the fire. The doors stood open and the rooms were in confusion, and he could see through the doorway the strange Java box with the paper burned away from it, standing among the room's charred furnishings.
