CHAPTER XXI

IN DIRE PERIL

GAYETY and merriment were twin spirits in possession at the big hotel on top of Mt. Camon. The establishment was crowded to capacity with guests, young and old, and all were enjoying themselves to the utmost. It had been a glorious day—a day filled with the pleasure of strolls in the wooded recesses of the forest, with games of tennis and baseball on the spacious grounds, and now, in the evening, after a bountiful dinner, the men, women, and children were gathered in the big ballroom to witness another clever marionette performance.

Pietro Notine and his charming wife with her radiant smile had been asked to play a return engagement of their puppets at the Mt. Camon resort and had been only too glad to do so.

“It is with so much pleasure that I greet you again,” said the Italian puppet master to Mary Swift, as he got ready to go on with the little marionette play.

“And your so helpful husband, he is not here?” asked Mrs. Notine, with her warm smile.

“No, he’s hard at work on that big dirigible of his,” Mary answered.

“He was so good to us,” murmured the marionette master’s wife as she went behind the scenes of the miniature stage to manipulate the strings of the puppets with her husband. “Had it not been for him, our summer tour would have failed. Please make my remembrances to him.”

“I will,” promised Mary.

Then the little play went on, to the great delight of the children and the no small pleasure of the adults. There was music by the hotel orchestra and the evening came to a close with a small, informal dance following the entertainment.

Mary was standing out on the veranda of the hotel, to get a little fresh air before going to bed. She was talking to her mother.

“Is Tom coming up soon?” Mrs. Nestor asked.

“Yes,” Mary replied. “And I shall be so glad!”

From the other side of the veranda, she heard her father say:

“You haven’t seen anything more of that crazy gardener who wanted to stop you from picking roses, have you, Mr. Damon?”

“No. And, bless my insurance policy, I don’t want to, either! I guess he left these parts after he broke jail. It wouldn’t be healthy for him to stay around here after——”

Mr. Damon’s voice trailed off, and he arose, went to the edge of the big veranda, and looked down the wooded slope. There was something so odd and startling in his manner that Mary and her mother left their seats and walked toward him as Mr. Nestor asked:

“What’s the matter? What do you see?”

“A fire,” Mr. Damon replied. “Some one has started a bonfire down there in the woods, and it’s a bad thing to do with the dry weather we’ve had. The trees and bushes are like tinder. That’s a very foolish thing to do! I think I had better notify the manager. That fire is too close to this hotel. Look!”

He pointed out some flickering flames which showed plainly in the blackness of the dense forest.

“Some campers, probably,” suggested Mary. “But it’s a good way off.”

“Still, fire can travel fast!” observed Mr. Damon, and there was an anxious tone to his voice. “I don’t like it!”

As they watched, the flames spread with alarming rapidity, creeping out in two long lines as if from a central point. At the same time a cry arose from the other side of the hotel, where there was also a veranda.

“Fire! Fire! There’s a big fire down the side of the mountain!”

“Bless my——” began Mr. Damon, but he did not take time to finish. With Mr. Nestor, he ran around to the other veranda. Mary and her mother followed, having seen the first little blaze they had noticed spread out into an alarming trail of flames.

On the other side of the hotel it was the same. It seemed as if the woods on the east and west of the place had simultaneously broken out into a dangerous conflagration, and in a short time the two lines of flames crept north and south, until it seemed they would soon meet and form an encircling ring of fire about the hotel, though several miles down the mountain.

“This is terrible!” cried Mr. Damon. “Awful!”

“It is a bad forest fire,” agreed Mr. Nestor. “I never saw a fire spread so rapidly! Hark!”

Blasts from an air siren echoed in the quiet of the night. It was the danger signal from a fire warden’s station. A little wind began to blow, and it wafted to the nostrils of the hotel guests the odor of gasoline.

“Some car must have had an accident and caught fire,” said Mr. Nestor. “It has scattered the burning gas along the road that runs through the woods below and all around the hotel.”

“An automobile!” ejaculated Mary. Her thoughts went in a flash to Tom and his House on Wheels. Could he have been coming up in that?

The excitement spread rapidly throughout the hotel, and guests who had gone early to bed hurriedly dressed and came down. All were greatly alarmed and there was some talk of getting things together and departing, even though it was now midnight.

“There is no danger,” Mr. Thorndyke told his people. “Do not be alarmed. It is true that the woods are on fire, as they have been before. But the wardens and their men will soon have the fire out. Do not be alarmed.”

But for all his words there was great alarm, and some of the guests became a bit hysterical.

Mrs. Notine was standing near Mary and her people.

“It looks like a bad fire,” said the puppet master’s wife. “I am so afraid of fires—ever since that wicked dwarf tried to burn our little traveling theater. I hope he had nothing to do with this.”

“You mean that dwarf my husband hired—Chock?” asked Mary.

“Jim Chock? Yes. He seems to have a mania for fires.”

“What would he be doing up here?” Mary asked wonderingly.

“I do not know. I only hope he had no hand in this. I must go to help my husband pack the puppets. We shall leave in our van if this fire gets worse.”

“You can’t leave, I’m afraid,” Mr. Damon said. “At least not now.”

“Why not?”

“Because the fire is completely about the hotel, as you can see. It is some distance away and probably will not come here. But until the circle of flames is broken you cannot get through.”

“Oh, but we must get away!” cried Mrs. Notine. “I shall go tell my husband!”

As she hurried off, there was some excitement around one of the lower entrances to the hotel—at a basement door directly under Mary Swift and her people, who stood on the veranda watching the ever increasing flames below them.

Mary saw a man stagger through the light which streamed out of the basement toward a group of hotel employees. He was a man who had evidently just come off a tank automobile containing oil or gasoline, for his clothes bore unmistakable evidences of that occupation. There was some excited talk, and, evidently, Mr. Thorndyke had been sent for, for a moment later Mary, leaning over the edge of the veranda, saw the manager talking to the oil man.

“What is it?” asked the manager.

“Danger! That’s what it is!” cried the man. “A little while ago, as I was driving up here with a tank of oil and gas for your place, I was stopped by a man with a red light who leaped out into the road from the bushes and waved it at me. I thought there was some obstruction ahead, and I got down to ask him about it. Then he jumped at me and knocked me out.”

“Knocked you out?”

“Yes, unconscious. Slammed a rock on my head. When I came to I saw him driving away with my tank auto and the cocks were open. Oil and gas was running out all over the road.”

“Gasoline!” cried the hotel manager.

“Yes, and oil,” went on the driver, whose head was bleeding. “I yelled to the fellow, but he kept on driving with the cocks open, and a little later I saw a spurt of flame and I knew the oil and gas had caught fire—or had been set.”

“This is awful!” gasped Mr. Thorndyke, and murmured cries of alarm came from the hotel workers. “We are surrounded by fire!”

It was only too true. The flames were rapidly spreading, started by the oil and gasoline and now fed by the tinder of trees, dried leaves, and bushes of the forest.

“It was the work of some madman!” cried Mr. Damon, when he and the other guests heard what had happened. “The state police should be informed!”

“An alarm has been given,” said Mr. Thorndyke, going about and trying to calm his guests. “The fire wardens are summoning help from all over.”

This was evidenced by the weird screaming of the air sirens located here and there on the mountain. But the fire was spreading fast and the forest for miles around the big hotel was in flames. Something very like panic spread among the guests in spite of the efforts of the manager and some of the cooler guests to keep it in check.

“What can we do?” Mr. Nestor asked of Mr. Damon, as their party stood on a corner of the veranda, looking at the spreading flames, as yet far below them but inexorably creeping nearer.

“We ought to get away from here!” said Mr. Damon. “There are cars in the garage, and if we can’t take all our things we can take some.”

“How can we get through that ring of fire?” asked Mr. Nestor, pointing to it. “Out of the question! We can only wait until the fire fighters beat out the flames on a path by which we can get through. We are safer here than we would be down there.”

“It is coming nearer,” said his wife.

“Yes,” he admitted in a grave voice, “it is coming nearer!”

Mrs. Jardine swept up to the group.

“I am going to telephone my husband by long distance,” she announced.

“What good will that do?” Mr. Nestor asked.

“I don’t know. But I must tell him that we are in danger—we, his wife and children and all of us are in grave danger.”

She hurried toward the office. The air was now beginning to be acrid with smoke and odors from the burning trees.

“For that matter I might telephone Tom,” said Mary in a low voice. “But what good would it do?”

“Nothing can do any good until the wardens and their men put out the fire all about us,” her father said.

Helpless and alarmed, the guests paced the verandas or walked nervously about the grounds adjacent to the hotel. Mrs. Jardine came hurrying back to Mary and her people. It was now beginning to get daylight.

“I got my husband on the wire!” exclaimed the woman. “I told him we were surrounded by flames and asked him if there was no way to get help to us to rescue us.”

“What did he say?” asked Mary.

“I couldn’t hear him very well in the first place, and then the wire was suddenly broken or cut.”

“Or burned through,” said Mr. Damon.

They looked at one another helplessly in the smoke and flame-reddened light of the early morning. Just then there was a piercing cry of alarm from an outer wing of the hotel. As all ran in that direction they saw a big mass of flame and cinder come sailing through the air from the forest of fire down below. This flaming mass fell into a great pine tree, not far from the hotel, and in a moment the pine was a glowing torch of fire.

“I’m afraid this is the beginning of the end,” said Mr. Nestor solemnly, as he stood close to his wife and daughter.

“Quick! Run out the hose!” commanded Mr. Thorndyke to his emergency fire-fighting squad. “The hotel will catch from that burning pine if we don’t put it out! Hurry!”