_ CHAPTER XXV. ABEL STROUT AT THE ROOT OF IT
The shock of seeing the chimney on fire did not overcome Janice Day as much as the thought that daddy was lying down, resting, in the living room, and that she would never be able to get him up and into his wheelchair and out of doors before the whole house was in a blaze.
For those lurid flames darting out of the chimney looked very terrifying indeed. Bertha Warring ran out into the street, screaming; but Janice darted back into the house.
Somebody outside screamed. "Fire! Fire!" Janice believed it must have been Miss Peckham. Little ever got past the sharp eyes of that neighbor in the next cottage.
Janice heard her father ejaculate some exclamation, but she did not go to him first. She rushed, instead, to the telephone in the hall.
Seizing the receiver, she rattled the hook up and down, hoping to get a quick response.
"Janice!" she heard her father call.
"Yes, Daddy. I'm coming!" she cried. Then her ear came the leisurely question:
"Number, please?"
"Central! give me the Fire Department--please!" ejaculated the excited girl.
"Number, please?" again drawled the unruffled Central.
"Oh, quick! Quick!" cried Janice into the instrument. "Give me the Fire Department. Our house is on fire!"
"Great heavens!" ejaculated her father from the living room. He was awake and heard Janice now.
"Do be quick, Central!" cried Janice. "The Fire De--"
"Market, two, three hundred," said Central.
"It's a wonder," thought Janice, even in her present state of mind, "that she doesn't call 'Information'!"
"Janice! Where is the fire?" called her father.
"It's the chimney. Wait, Daddy! I'll come and help yon. The kitchen chim-- Oh!"
Somebody on the wire just then said crisply: "Central Fire Station. What's wanted?"
"Fire!" shouted Janice. "Our house! Eight-forty-five Knight Street!"
"I hear you!" exclaimed the man at the other end, and Janice almost threw the receiver back on the hook, and darted into the living room.
Mrs. Carringford happened to be out. Janice, now that Bertha Warring had deserted her, was all alone in the house with the injured man.
"Oh, Daddy!" she gasped, seeing him already in his chair.
"Give me a push, child. Where is the fire? This is something new--the first time the Days were ever burned out."
"It's the kitchen chimney. But I can't get you down the front steps--"
Meanwhile she was pushing him out on the porch. People were running toward the house now and many were shouting. But it did not look like a very helpful crowd.
Just then Janice saw a wagon being driven rather wildly along the street toward the house. It was not a part of the Fire Department equipment, although she looked eagerly for that. The nearest fire station was fully half a mile from the Day house.
The children in the street scattered as the horse's pounding feet on the macadam warned them of his approach. The driver stood up, his feet braced against the dashboard, yelling to the horse to stop as he swung back on the reins.
It was Gummy!
"Hi, Janice! Your chimneys on fire!" he shouted, when he had stopped the horse.
"Well, for goodness sake!" exclaimed Janice, "doesn't he suppose we know it, with all this crowd--and noise --and everything?"
Gummy tumbled out of the covered wagon. He came down on all fours, he was in such a hurry; but he was up again in a moment.
"Hi, Janice! I can put it out, if I can get out on to that ell roof through that little window up there." he cried.
"That's the hired' girl's room," gasped Janice.
"What's he going to do? Take pails of water out there and throw them down the chimney?"
"Give the boy a chance," said daddy. "Maybe he can do something." And to Janice's amazement, her father was smiling.
Gummy ran around to the back of the wagon. He dropped the tailboard, backed around, and got a bag on his shoulders. With this he staggered toward the house.
"Oh, Gummy!" screamed Janice, "what have you got in that sack?"
"Salt," replied the boy, panting up the steps. "Half a shushal of balt. I was takin' it out to Jones's.
"Salt?" gasped Janice, in her excitement not noticing at all that Gummy had again "gummed up his speech," to quote his own expression. "Why, what good is salt? That chimney is blazing."
"Salt will do the trick. Show me the way to that window. Salt will put out a fire in a chimney better than anything else."
"Let him have his way, Janice," said her father quickly.
She thought she heard the gong of some of the fire apparatus approaching; but she was not sure. She gave Gummy a hand, and they ran upstairs with the sack of salt between them.
Here was the small room. She flung open the door and Gummy flung up the lower sash of the window. He almost dived out upon the tinned roof of the kitchen ell.
"Quick! Give me that salt I" he cried reaching in for it.
Janice helped him lift the bag out of the window. He dragged it along the roof toward the chimney that now vomited black smoke and flames in a very threatening volume. Fortunately the light wind drifted it away from the main part of the house.
"Oh, Gummy, you'll be burned to death--and then what will your mother say?" cried Janice.
Gummy was so much in earnest that he did not even laugh at this. He dragged the sack of salt as close to the burning chimney as he dared. Then he got out his pocketknife and cut the string.
Everybody in the street below was yelling to him by this time, telling him what to do and how to do it. Gummy gave them little attention.
The smoke choked him and occasionally a tongue of flame seemed to reach for him. But Gummy Carringford possessed a good deal of pluck, and he was strong and wary for so young a boy. Shielding his face as best he could from the heat and smoke, he began to cast double handfuls of salt into the chimney.
The chimney was fortunately not as high as his head and Gummy could do this as well as a man. The soot which had gathered in the chimney (perhaps it had not been cleaned out since the house was built) was mostly at the bottom, and the flames came from down there; but the hot bricks would soon set the roof on fire, if not the walls inside the house.
The salt smothered the fire wherever it landed. It was better than sand for such a purpose, for salt is damp and seems to possess smothering qualities all its own when rained upon the flames.
Before half the contents of the bag had been thrown down the chimney the flames no longer leaped above its top. The smoke continued to roll up, and Gummy had pretty well smothered it himself when the Fire Department apparatus came clanging up to the house.
One of the fireman with a portable extinguisher rushed upstairs, got out at the small window and reached Gummy's side quickly.
"Good boy, kid," he said. "Let's give it the lad," and he began to squirt the contents of the fire extinguisher down the chimney.
Gummy staggered back and sat down, coughing. His face and hands were pretty black and he was breathless. When he got back downstairs and the firemen had declared the conflagration entirely extinguished, Gummy found himself quite a hero.
The excitement had hurt nobody, after all. Janice was glad Mrs. Carringford was not there at the time, or she certainly would have been worried about Gummy.
"You are an awfully smart boy, Gummy," Janice declared, clinging to the boy's hand. "I won't ever make fun of you again when you get mixed up in talking."
Mr. Day overheard this and laughed heartily. He too, shook Gummy cordially by the hand.
"You have a head on you, son," he said. "How came you to think about the salt?"
"I saw a chimney on fire in the country once, and they put it out with salt," the boy replied. "I've got to hurry back to the store and get more salt for the Jones's now. I guess Mr. Harriman will be mad."
"Oh, no he won't. I'll call him up on the telephone and tell him to put this sack on my account. He won't scold you, I am sure," said Mr. Day.
In fact, everybody who heard about the matter praised Gummy Carringford. They began to say "that boy with the funny name is considerable of a boy," and things like that. Mr. Day gave him a little money, although Gummy did not want to take that.
"You treat your little brothers and sisters with it, Janice's father said laughing. "They didn't have the fun of seeing you put out the fire."
"We-ell," said the thoughtful boy, "I'll see what Momsy says about it first."
When Mrs. Carringford returned to the house Mr. Day himself told her of the fire and of what Gummy had done, and how proud she should be of him, too. And Mrs. Carringford was proud--Mr. Day could see that.
"Boys are awfully nice to have around the house, aren't they, Daddy?" Janice said that evening as they sat alone. "I never did think before that I'd care to have a brother. You see, you are just like a brother to me, Daddy."
"I see," said Daddy, chuckling. "When it comes to chimney fires and such excitement, a boy comes in handy, is that it?"
"Why--ye-es, Berta Warring ran away, crying, and I couldn't do much but squeal myself," said Janice gravely.
"And telephone for the Fire Department, and help me out, and aid Gummy to carry up the salt, and--"
"Oh, but, Daddy, those are all such little things!" sighed Janice.
Janice thought things were going pretty well after that. They were so glad to have their house saved from destruction, and so proud of Gummy, that everybody seemed all right. But there was trouble coming, and one afternoon Amy brought it to the Day house.
Amy, in tears, came to see her mother. Janice chanced to be in the kitchen when she entered from the Love Street gate. Amy had in tow a curly-haired dapper little man who looked too oily to be honest, and with little gimlet eyes that seemed to bore right through one.
"Oh, Mother!" gasped Amy, "this--this man's come to take our house away from us!"
"What is this now?" exclaimed Mrs. Carringford, in as much surprise as fear.
"Yes, he has. He said so. He's got papers, and all," sobbed Amy.
"Ahem! the young lady puts it very crassly indeed," said the curly-haired man. "You, I presume, are Mrs. Josephine Carringford," he went on, reading from a paper.
"Yes."
"I am serving you in the suit of Mrs. Alice G. Blayne, of Croydon, Michigan, my client, to recover a certain parcel of property situated on Mullen Lane and now occupied by you and your family, Mrs. Carringford," said the man glibly, and thrusting a paper into the woman's hand.
"But I bought my home through Mr. Abel Strout, of Napsburg," gasped Mrs. Carringford. She did not recognize Jamison, the farm hand, in the transaction at all. She now felt that man was but Abel Strout's tool.
"Oh! As to that, I have nothing to say," said the curly-haired lawyer, smiling in a way Janice did not like at all. "I merely represent my client. The property has been claimed by several people, I believe, and may have been sold a dozen times. That will not invalidate my client's claim."
"But I never even heard of this Mrs, Blayne," murmured Amy's mother.
"A poor widow, ma'am," said the lawyer blandly. "And one who can ill afford to lose her rights. She as heir of old Peter Warburton Blayne who lived in that house where you now reside for a great many years. He died. His heirs were not informed. The place was sold for taxes--for a nominal sum, ma'am. Of course, a tax-deed has no standing in court if the real owner of the property comes forward ready to pay the back taxes, accrued interest, and the fixed court charges."
"But I got a warranty deed!" cried Mrs. Carringford.
"That is a matter between you and the person you say you bought the house of," said the lawyer calmly. "If you consider that you have a case against him you will have to go to court with him. Ahem! An expensive matter, my dear madam, I assure you. Probably the man who sold to you had every reason to believe he had a clear title. It has passed through several hands since Peter Blayne died, as I say.
"I cannot advise you as to that, ma'am," pursued the lawyer. "Those papers are in regard to this suit that is already entered against you. Of course, it would be cheaper for you to settle the case out of court; but you will probably want to fight us. Most women do."
At this point Janice got to her feet and ran out of the room. She rushed in to where her father was writing on a lapboard across the arms of his chair.
Meanwhile Mrs. Carringford and Amy were clinging together and facing the dapper, voluble, little lawyer in the kitchen. Amy was sobbing excitedly; but her mother said firmly:
"Abel Strout is at the root of this--"
"I assure you," said the lawyer politely, "my client is Mrs. Blayne. I have nothing to do with Abel Strout."
"He is at the root of it, nevertheless," said Mrs. Carringford confidently. "I saw it in his eye when he was last in my house. He means to turn me and my children out, and ruin us!" _