They were not destined, however, to finish out the night with sleep. There are some nights, sometimes, into which Fate seems anxious to crowd in the experience of a lifetime, as though there would never be any more nights for her to play with. This night was already badly jammed with events, but they were not yet through, though the next act of destiny was not directly involved with Val’s affairs. Fate was not yet finished. She still had a trump card up her sleeve to play, and she played said card just before the dawn, when the night was blackest and when men slept the soundest.
Val was awakened by a fit of coughing. He opened his eyes slowly, sleepily, and though his window was open it seemed to him that the atmosphere was stifling; that it was almost impossible for him to breathe. There was a pungent, acrid element in the atmosphere; something he was unaccustomed to; something that his tortured lungs rejected. From afar, through his semiconscious state, he heard a sound of crackling. In the next room he caught the creaking of the springs of the bed as Eddie turned from side to side, in his sleep, evidently also endeavoring to breathe.
Suddenly, instantly, however, he was awake—awake to the fullest extent. Through the great corridors outside, ringing up and down the wooden walls, came the dread cry that sometimes comes in the night.
“Fire!”
Fire! The one element of which all animals are instinctively afraid—the element man has harnessed to his own use, and which, sometimes escaping from the bonds, turns on man with deadly, vicious effect.
Fire!
The sound shrieked through the corridors again, and was taken up here and there in different parts of the great hotel. Val was on his feet in an instant, switching on the lights with almost the same motion. From the next room came Eddie, dragging with him his trousers, a sleepy figure in pink silk pajamas and scarcely opened eyes. The room was full of smoke, and it was hard to breathe—getting harder every moment.
Val opened his door, and shut it instantly. The corridor was thick with rolling billows of choking smoke, and in the distance, at the end, he saw the dull red of flames leaping the height of the hall.
“Eddie, let’s go!” gasped Val. “This old rattletrap of a hotel’ll go up like tinder—I know this place. No chance.”
“Right, sir!” Eddie shouted back at him.
The men jumped for their suitcases, and shoveled their belongings, as many of them as they could reach, hastily into the leather receptacles. There was not a moment to be lost. The smoke was now rolling into the room, through the skylight and through the cracks around the door. The men could hardly breathe.
“By the window, Eddie!” commanded Val. He knew there was no chance through the halls, which must by now be an inferno of fire and smoke. They were only one flight up, and it would be no difficult thing to slide down one of the pillars.
“All right, sir,” said Eddie.
Val jumped for the window and started to go. “Come on,” he shouted over his shoulder. He heard no answering footsteps, and looked back.
Eddie was struggling mightily to get into his trousers.
“Come on, Eddie!” he shouted again. “There’s no time for that.”
“I won’t go out without my pants,” shouted Eddie obstinately, struggling still harder to persuade the refractory garment to envelop his nether extremities. In his excitement he had them turned around wrong, and another few precious seconds were wasted in turning them around.
“Damn your respectability, Eddie!” shouted Val, knowing that in another instant the flames would be leaping into the room. By that time Eddie was inside his beloved pants. The red flames were already showing over the transom and licking in around the edges of the door.
The men hurried out on the balcony. Eddie carefully threw the suitcases over. “All right, chief,” he said, and motioned to the pillar.
Val dropped over the balcony, wrapped his legs around the smooth column, and slid down, acquiring thereby three splinters in inconvenient places. In an instant Eddie was standing beside him on the ground. Their automobile was still standing at the curb, where Val had placed it when he returned from the Pomeroy place. Eddie deposited the suitcases therein and cranked the machine up quickly. He drove it to a spot a hundred yards farther on, out of the line of danger.
In the meantime Val, in bathrobe and slippers, ran around to the front entrance to see whether there was anything he could do, any assistance he could give. From all sides came guests, scantily clad, hundreds of guests; the Chamberlin, at this time, was full. There was little anyone could do. The fire had already attained a glorious start and, as Val had predicted, the hotel went up like tinder. It was built of wood throughout, with the exception of the foundations, and there was no chance of stopping it.
By some miracle nobody was hurt, although hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal belongings were lost in the haste of the escape. The Chamberlin was now blazing to the skies at the west end, illumining the land and the sea for miles. It was a red pit of leaping, devilish flame. There was an occasional crash somewhere inside of the place as some great timber fell. There was the continual tinkle of broken glass, and through every window the flames leaped, gaining headway incredibly.
Through the rent night sounded the thin, golden call of the bugle at Fortress Monroe, a few hundred yards away. It was the fire call. In a few minutes the soldiers were there, dragging their equipment, pitifully impotent against the magnitude of the debacle. Other organizations were there almost as soon—they came from Phoebus first, and then from Hampton, and then from Newport News, the last a great, chugging monster of a motor truck.
The thin lines of water were absolutely lost in the ever-climbing flames. And now the dawn began to come in over the sea, a golden dawn that was thinned, somehow, against the wonder of the great pile of flame. Hundreds of people crowded in front of the hotel, watching it burning. It was said on authority that everyone seemed to be out, and that being the case, Val and Eddie returned to their automobile and dressed in haste. Then they returned to the fire, but there was nothing to do but watch. No human agency could stop that devouring monster of flame, though the firemen worked like diminutive, foreshortened demons against it, scurrying here and there, all but being caught under the fall of some wall or column, even darting inside the red hot walls where they thought some human might be penned. It was the last of the famous old hotel.
“What about Miss Pomeroy?” asked Eddie, turning to his employer.
Val regarded him in silence. “Why, I guess you’re right,” he said at length. “Now would seem to be the time to get out there and dig up old Pomeroy’s money, wouldn’t it?”
Eddie nodded.
“I don’t think Teck’ll go out there for an hour or two yet—its only five o’clock now. We can be finished by the time he comes.”
Val acquiesced. “That’s right. It’ll be just as well if we can get that done before he gets out. There are complications whenever he shows up.”
In a few moments they had the flivver pointed toward Hampton, and were chugging on their way. The trip was not a long one—fifteen or twenty minutes sufficed to cover the intervening ground. They knew where Teck was, so there was no necessity of hiding their machine before advancing upon the cottage. They stopped beside the door.
The Virginia hills, at that time of the morning, just tipped by the rising sun, were at their prettiest, blue in the distance, softened in the ambient air. Bird life had already awakened, and there came to them, through the twittering of the small birds, the lusty crowing of a rooster ushering in his friend, the sun.
They knocked on the door, and waited a few minutes for an answer.
“Terrible time to go calling,” muttered Val. Dragging them out of bed at this time. Guess they won’t mind, though, when they hear what I have to say.”
He knocked again. Still there was no answer—no sign of life in the cottage. “Sound sleepers,” he said, thundering upon the resonant door with the knocker. Nobody stirred within.
“That’s funny,” he said. “Somebody ought to have heard that. I wonder . . .” he turned and looked at Eddie, inquiringly.
“Never can tell, sir,” said Eddie sententiously. “Let’s look around.”
A walk around the house soon showed them that the kitchen window was open.
“Of course,” commented Val, “it’s hardly the approved mode of entering a lady’s home, but . . .”
Eddie was already inside, not waiting to trouble himself with the ethics of the case. A moment later Val followed him.
There was not a sign of life in the rooms. A rapid glance at the beds showed them that they had not been slept in.
Jessica was gone.