CHAPTER XVIII

AN ALARM OF FIRE

“Mary had a little dog, It was a noble pup; ’Twould stand upon its front legs When you’d hold its hind legs up!”

Thus warbled Tommy as, having kicked the door shut, he subsided into one of Allan’s chairs by sliding over the back. Allan pushed his book away, yawned dismally, and looked over at his visitor mutely questioning:

“Where’s Pete?” Tommy demanded.

“Am I his keeper?” asked Allan.

“You’re his _fidus whatyoucallit_. Seen him to-night?”

“No; maybe he’s studying.”

“Careless youth,” muttered Tommy. “Say, did you hear about Pete and Bœotia?”

“No; who’s Bœotia, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s that place in--er--ancient history, you know. It was at recitation this morning; Professor Grove asked Pete how Bœotia was situated. Pete wasn’t prepared, but he thought he’d make a bluff at it. So he gets up and drawls out in his cheerfully idiotic way, ‘Oh, he had a pretty good situation, but he lost it.’”

“What did old Grove say?” laughed Allan.

“Well, I wasn’t there and can’t tell you. I’m going to settle my debts this week, and we’ll have that dinner at the Elm Tree Saturday night, if that’s all right for you fellows.”

“It’s all right for me,” said Allan.

“The funny part of it is,” Tommy went on, smiling, “that I made just enough to pay for the dinner out of the reports of Pete’s drowning which I sent to the Boston paper. I got my account yesterday.”

“Tell that to Pete,” laughed Allan.

“I’m going to. Where’s the angel child?”

“The angel child is probably out in the kitchen. I can’t keep her at home since vacation; she found out then where the grub comes from.”

“I think she ought to go to the dinner with us, don’t you?”

“Well, scarcely. Let’s go down to the ‘Ranch’ and see what Pete’s up to. I can’t study any more to-night.”

Town Lane was as dark as pitch save at remote intervals where street lamps flickered half-heartedly, and to reach Pete’s domicile at night without breaking a limb was quite a feat. To-night nothing more exciting occurred than a collision with a stable door which was swinging open, and the two reached the corner to find Pete’s windows brightly illumined. Tommy, being in a musical mood, took up a position underneath and broke into song.

“Here ’neath thy window, Love, I am waiting, Waiting thy sweet face to see,”

he declared, strumming the while on an imaginary guitar. But the verse came to an end without signs from the window, and so they climbed the stairs. The “Ranch” was deserted. But even as they assured themselves of the fact by looking into the bedroom, soft footfalls sounded on the stairs from the third-story loft, and a moment after Pete, looking like a conspirator, crept into the front room and softly closed the door behind him. Then his eyes fell on Allan and Tommy, and he grinned mysteriously.

“Where’d you come from?” Allan demanded.

“Up-stairs.”

“What’s doing up there?” asked Tommy, suspiciously.

“Nothing at all.” But the grin remained. Tommy sniffed.

“I’m going up to see,” he threatened.

Pete sank into a chair, took up his pipe, and spread his hands apart as if to say, “Please yourself; believe me or not, as you like.” Then he lighted his pipe.

“What have you done with your coat?” asked Allan. “And why are you festooned with cobwebs and decorated with dust?”

“_Quien sabe?_” answered Pete, shrugging his broad shoulders.

“Just the same, you’ve been up to something,” declared Allan, sternly. “And you’d better ’fess up.”

“Huh!” grunted Pete.

“Out with it!” commanded Tommy.

“Huh!” said Pete again.

“Sounds like a blamed old Indian, doesn’t he?” asked Tommy, disgustedly. “Well, don’t you come and beg me to intercede with the Dean for you.”

The smile on Pete’s face broadened; he chuckled enjoyably; but commands and demands failed to move him to confession, and, after arranging for the dinner at the Inn, Allan and Tommy took their departure, Pete, for some reason and contrary to custom, making no effort to detain them. As they clambered down the steep stairs, Pete called after them:

“Say, it would be a great night for a fire, wouldn’t it?”

“Fire?” repeated Allan. “Why?”

“Oh, such a dandy old high wind,” answered Pete. “Well, _adios_.”

“Wonder what he meant?” said Allan, on the way back. “It would be just like him to get into another mess.”

“About time,” chuckled Tommy. “Good night.”

Allan went to bed soon after eleven, with Two Spot, according to nightly custom, curled up against the small of his back. For a while he lay awake listening to the howling and buffeting of the wind, but presently sleep came to him.

It seemed hours later, but was in reality scarcely thirty minutes, when he awoke abruptly with the wild clanging of a bell in his ears. He sat up and listened. It was undoubtedly the fire-bell, and had he had any doubt about it the sound of running footsteps in the street would have convinced him at once.

For a moment he weighed the prospective excitement of a conflagration against the comforts of the warm bed. In the end the fire offered greater inducements, and he leaped out of bed, lighted the gas, and tumbled into his clothes. And all the time the fire-bell clanged and clashed on the March wind. Leaving Two Spot to the undisputed possession of the bed, Allan left the house and looked expectantly about him. But there was no glow in the sky in any quarter; darkness reigned everywhere save about the infrequent street lamps. Here and there persons were running toward the fire-house, and Allan followed their example.

Down Main Street he hurried, entered the yard back of the library, and cut across in the face of the buffeting wind to the beginning of Town Lane. When he reached Elm Street he was part of a steady stream of excited citizens and students, all hurrying anxiously toward where, half-way down the narrow thoroughfare, the brazen alarum was pealing deafeningly forth. And then, for the first time since he had awoke, Allan recollected Pete and his mysterious observation regarding fire. And instantly he knew that Pete and the fire-bell were in some way working mischief together.

Pete’s rooms were in the building at the corner of Center Street, and next door stood the fire-house, a plain two-storied building, surmounted by a twenty-foot tower, at the top of which hung the bell. When Allan reached the scene the windows of Pete’s front room were brilliantly illumined, and from one of them hung Pete, exchanging lively salutations with friends in the throng below.

For a moment Allan’s suspicions were deadened. In front of the fire-house the crowd jostled and craned their necks as they stared wonderingly upward to where the tower showed indistinctly against the midnight sky. On every hand were heard bewildered ejaculations, while members of the volunteer fire department ran hither and thither, questioning, suggesting, and plainly distracted. The big doors were open and inside the engine and hose-cart, horses in harness, were ready to sally forth the instant any one discovered where the fire was or why the bell clanged on and on without apparent reason. Through a hole in the ceiling a big rope descended, and at every clang of the bell it rose and fell again, and the building shook with the jar.

“Hello, Allan! Isn’t this great?” shouted a voice in his ear, and Allan turned to find Hal, arrayed principally in a plaid dressing-gown and white duck cricket hat, grinning from ear to ear.

“But--but what is it?” asked Allan, bewildered.

“Don’t know; nobody knows. There’s the bell and there’s the rope; no one’s pulling it; must be spooks! Isn’t it jolly?” And Hal leaped with delight and thumped Allan on the back.

“But why does the bell ring?” he asked, following the general example and staring upward at the tower.

“That’s it! Why does it? Some say it’s the wind, but that’s poppycock, you know. What I think is that some one’s got a rope hitched to the bell and is pulling it from the back of the building somewhere; that’s what I think.”

“But haven’t they been around there to see?”

“Yes, but they’re so excited and fussed they wouldn’t know a rope if they fell over it. Some one’s having a lark, you can bet on that. Isn’t it a picnic? Just hear the old bell! Wow! Listen to that!”

Allan put his mouth to Hal’s ear and whispered a single word. Hal started, shot a glance at Pete’s window and Pete himself, and burst into a gale of laughter.

“D-d-do you think so?” he gasped. “But--how could he? Look, there he is at the window. O Pete!”

“Hush up!” whispered Allan. “They’ll get onto it. Look, they’ve got a ladder! They’ll find out what’s up now, all right, because the rope will be hanging. We ought to warn Pete; come on!”

They wormed their way through the crowd, exchanging shouts of salutation with acquaintances as they went, until they were under Pete’s window. There they found Tommy, note-book in hand, looking very important and excited.

“O Pete!” shouted Allan. “Is your door unlocked?”

“Hello, partner!” returned Pete in a happy bellow. “Isn’t this great? Here I sit at my parlor window and watch all the wealth, beauty and fashion of our charming metropolis. And, say, ain’t the racket fine? This is more noise than I’ve heard since a dynamite blast went off behind my back! Why, it’s almost like living in a city! Say, if you fellows----”

“We want to come up,” shouted Allan. “Unlock your door.”

Pete shook his head.

“Not on your life, partner; I’ve only got my nightie on. Want me to freeze to death?”

“Well, put something on,” said Allan anxiously, “and come down.”

“’Fraid of catching cold. Besides, I must turn in now; I’m losing my beauty sleep.”

“But--but, Pete, they’re--they’re putting up a ladder!” blurted Allan.

“Are they?” asked Pete imperturbably. “Well, I’m not coming down to help ’em. They’ll have to get on without me, my boy. Hello, Hal, that you? Ain’t this wano? Such a cheerful----”

Pete’s roar stopped suddenly, as did the noise of the crowd. Two firemen half-way up the ladder at the front of the building nearly fell off. For a sudden appalling silence gave place to the uproar! The bell was still!

After a moment of startled surprise--for at first the silence seemed louder than the noise--every one broke into incoherent laughter and ejaculations. The men on the ladder paused, undecided, and finally slid back to earth to hold a consultation.

“Well, ain’t that a shame!” lamented Pete. “Just when I was beginning to get sleepy! Now I’m all woke up again. Say, you chaps, wait a bit and I’ll slip something on and let you up.” He disappeared from the window and was gone some time. Then the key scraped in the door at the foot of the stairs and Allan, Hal, and Tommy slipped through. Pete, standing guard, locked the portal in the faces of several undesired fellows and followed them up-stairs.

As Allan entered the room he glanced eagerly around. Just what he expected to find would have been hard to say, but whatever it was he didn’t find it. The room presented its usual appearance, save that articles of apparel lay scattered widely about just wherever Pete had happened to be when they came off. Pete locked the room door, took his pipe from the table and proceeded to fill it. The others looked about the room, looked at each other and looked at Pete. Pete scratched a match, lighted his corn-cob and smiled easily back. Allan sank into the easy chair.

“How--how did you do it?” he gasped.

“Do it? Do what?” asked Pete, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the open window. Outside sounds told of the dispersing of the throng.

“You know what,” said Allan.

Pete went to the window, called good night to an acquaintance, closed the sash and ambled back, smiling enjoyably.

“Wasn’t it moocha wano?” he asked. “Just answer me that, Allan. Did anything ever go off more beautifully, with more--er--_éclat_, as we say in Paree? Is your Uncle Pete the boss, all-star bell-ringer? Did you get on to the expression, the--the phrasing? Did you----”

“Shut up, Pete,” said Hal, grinning. “Tell us about it. Go on, like a good chap.”

“There’s little to tell,” said Pete with becoming modesty. “Up there”--he pointed toward the ceiling--“is a loft. Over there is a bell. Bring a rope from the bell into the back window of the loft, down-stairs and through that door and--there you are! Quite simple.”

“But, look here,” piped up Tommy. “You were at the window when the bell was doing its stunts. How--how was that?”

“Simple, too,” answered Pete, waving aside a cloud of smoke. “There was a noose in the end of the rope and the noose fitted over my knee as I kneeled on the floor. It was hard work and I guess the hide’s about wore off, but it was all for the sake of Art.”

The three deluged him with questions simultaneously, and Pete, sitting nonchalantly on the edge of the table, answered them as best he could.

“But how about the rope?” asked Allan finally. “They’ll see it and trace it through the window.”

“Oh, no, they won’t, because, my boy, it isn’t there any longer. When I said I’d put something on and let you fellows in, I cut it off at the foot of the tower and brought my end of it away. They’ll find a rope there, all right, but they’ll never guess it went through the back window. Besides, I can prove an alibi,” he ended, with a generous and virtuous smile.

“That’s so,” answered Tommy. “We saw you at the window.”

“When the bell was ringing,” added Hal.

“And I saw both his hands,” supplemented Allan.

“Yes, I meant you should,” said Pete. Going to the trunk he took from behind it the lariat which usually hung on the wall, and from one end of it detached a few feet of hemp rope. This he put into the stove. The lariat he replaced upon the wall.

“Thus we destroy all evidences of guilt,” he said.