For the front door was open, and the waist of the house being narrow, I
could see through the hall into the dining-room beyond, and so out on
to the back lawn, and there I saw no less a sight than the figure of
Miss Wragge—running. Even at that distance it was plain that she had
seen me, and was coming fast towards me, running with the frantic gait
of a terror-stricken woman. She had recovered the use of her legs. Her face was a livid grey, as of death itself, but the general
expression was one of laughter, for her mouth was gaping, and her eyes,
always bright, shone with the light of a wild merriment that seemed the
merriment of a child, yet was singularly ghastly. And that very second,
as she fled past me into her brother’s arms behind, I smelt again most
unmistakably the odour of burning, and to this day the smell of smoke
and fire can come very near to turning me sick with the memory of what
I had seen. Fast on her heels, too, came the terrified attendant, more mistress of
herself, and able to speak—which the old lady could not do—but with a
face almost, if not quite, as fearful. “We were down by the bushes in the sun,”—she gasped and screamed in
reply to Colonel Wragge’s distracted questionings,—“I was wheeling the
chair as usual when she shrieked and leaped—I don’t know exactly—I was
too frightened to see—Oh, my God! she jumped clean out of the
chair—_and ran_! There was a blast of hot air from the wood, and she
hid her face and jumped. She didn’t make a sound—she didn’t cry out, or
make a sound. She just ran.”

But the nightmare horror of it all reached the breaking point a few
minutes later, and while I was still standing in the hall temporarily
bereft of speech and movement; for while the doctor, the Colonel and
the attendant were half-way up the staircase, helping the fainting
woman to the privacy of her room, and all in a confused group of dark
figures, there sounded a voice behind me, and I turned to see the
butler, his face dripping with perspiration, his eyes starting out of
his head. “The laundry’s on fire!” he cried; “the laundry building’s a-caught!”

I remember his odd expression “a-caught,” and wanting to laugh, but
finding my face rigid and inflexible. “The devil’s about again, s’help me Gawd!” he cried, in a voice thin
with terror, running about in circles. And then the group on the stairs scattered as at the sound of a shot,
and the Colonel and Dr. Silence came down three steps at a time,
leaving the afflicted Miss Wragge to the care of her single attendant. We were out across the front lawn in a moment and round the corner of
the house, the Colonel leading, Silence and I at his heels, and the
portly butler puffing some distance in the rear, getting more and more
mixed in his addresses to God and the devil; and the moment we passed
the stables and came into view of the laundry building, we saw a
wicked-looking volume of smoke pouring out of the narrow windows, and
the frightened women-servants and grooms running hither and thither,
calling aloud as they ran. The arrival of the master restored order instantly, and this retired
soldier, poor thinker perhaps, but capable man of action, had the
matter in hand from the start. He issued orders like a martinet, and,
almost before I could realise it, there were streaming buckets on the
scene and a line of men and women formed between the building and the
stable pump. “Inside,” I heard John Silence cry, and the Colonel followed him
through the door, while I was just quick enough at their heels to hear
him add, “the smoke’s the worst part of it. There’s no fire yet, I
think.”

And, true enough, there was no fire. The interior was thick with smoke,
but it speedily cleared and not a single bucket was used upon the floor
or walls. The air was stifling, the heat fearful. “There’s precious little to burn in here; it’s all stone,” the Colonel
exclaimed, coughing. But the doctor was pointing to the wooden covers
of the great cauldron in which the clothes were washed, and we saw that
these were smouldering and charred. And when we sprinkled half a bucket
of water on them the surrounding bricks hissed and fizzed and sent up
clouds of steam. Through the open door and windows this passed out with
the rest of the smoke, and we three stood there on the brick floor
staring at the spot and wondering, each in our own fashion, how in the
name of natural law the place could have caught fire or smoked at all. And each was silent—myself from sheer incapacity and befuddlement, the
Colonel from the quiet pluck that faces all things yet speaks little,
and John Silence from the intense mental grappling with this latest
manifestation of a profound problem that called for concentration of
thought rather than for any words. There was really nothing to say. The facts were indisputable. Colonel Wragge was the first to utter. “My sister,” he said briefly, and moved off. In the yard I heard him
sending the frightened servants about their business in an excellently
matter-of-fact voice, scolding some one roundly for making such a big
fire and letting the flues get over-heated, and paying no heed to the
stammering reply that no fire had been lit there for several days. Then
he dispatched a groom on horseback for the local doctor. Then Dr. Silence turned and looked at me. The absolute control he
possessed, not only over the outward expression of emotion by gesture,
change of colour, light in the eyes, and so forth, but also, as I well
knew, over its very birth in his heart, the masklike face of the dead
he could assume at will, made it extremely difficult to know at any
given moment what was at work in his inner consciousness. But now, when
he turned and looked at me, there was no sphinx-expression there, but
rather the keen triumphant face of a man who had solved a dangerous and
complicated problem, and saw his way to a clean victory. “_Now_ do you guess?” he asked quietly, as though it were the simplest
matter in the world, and ignorance were impossible. I could only stare stupidly and remain silent. He glanced down at the
charred cauldron-lids, and traced a figure in the air with his finger. But I was too excited, or too mortified, or still too dazed, perhaps,
to see what it was he outlined, or what it was he meant to convey. I
could only go on staring and shaking my puzzled head. “A fire-elemental,” he cried, “a fire-elemental of the most powerful
and malignant kind—”

“A what?” thundered the voice of Colonel Wragge behind us, having
returned suddenly and overheard. “It’s a fire-elemental,” repeated Dr. Silence more calmly, but with a
note of triumph in his voice he could not keep out, “and a
fire-elemental enraged.”

The light began to dawn in my mind at last.