We were now in the thick of the very
dense belt that ran round the outer edge of the plantation, and the
field was near; yet so dark was the tangle that it was some time before
the first shafts of white sunlight became visible. The doctor now ran
in zigzags. He was following something that dodged and doubled quite
wonderfully, yet had begun, I fancied, to move more slowly than before. “Quick!” he cried. “In the light we shall lose it!”

I still saw nothing, heard nothing, caught no suggestion of a trail;
yet this man, guided by some interior divining that seemed infallible,
made no false turns, though how we failed to crash headlong into the
trees has remained a mystery to me ever since. And then, with a sudden
rush, we found ourselves on the skirts of the wood with the open field
lying in bright sunshine before our eyes. “Too late!” I heard him cry, a note of anguish in his voice. “It’s
out--and, by God, it’s making for the house!”

I saw the Colonel standing in the field with his dogs where we had left
him. He was bending double, peering into the wood where he heard us
running, and he straightened up like a bent whip released. John Silence
dashed passed, calling him to follow. “We shall lose the trail in the light,” I heard him cry as he ran. “But
quick! We may yet get there in time!”

That wild rush across the open field, with the dogs at our heels,
leaping and barking, and the elderly Colonel behind us running as
though for his life, shall I ever forget it? Though I had only vague
ideas of the meaning of it all, I put my best foot forward, and, being
the youngest of the three, I reached the house an easy first. I drew
up, panting, and turned to wait for the others. But, as I turned,
something moving a little distance away caught my eye, and in that
moment I swear I experienced the most overwhelming and singular shock
of surprise and terror I have ever known, or can conceive as possible. 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.