overwhelmed him as completely as
if he had seen an apparition. For an instant he did not grasp its
significance.

Then, in another moment, understanding began to flood in upon him. He
felt a great weakness ... but he managed to make a trumpet with his
hands, calling in a voice that sounded remote:

"Come out! For God's sake, come out!"

He saw the woman start back in a movement of quick confusion, and
heard himself call again, this time with muffled agony:

"Ginger!"

There was a tremendous roar ... he felt a shower of stones hitting him
sharply in the face ... He pressed forward ... sheets of flame were
leaping greedily toward the sky and a string of people poured out into
the sun-baked street.

At midnight Fred Starratt, making his way from the outlying districts
toward the center of the town, came out of a mental turmoil that had
flung him about all day in a series of blind impulses. The air was
raucous with the shrill cry of newsboys announcing the details of the
morning's sensation. He knew how the journalistic tale would run
without bothering to glimpse the headlines. At this time it would be
made up for the most part of vague speculations as to who was the
prime mover of the enterprise.

The moments following the disaster were now fathomless, but he fancied
that he had been outwardly cool, chilled into subconscious calculation
by the very violence of the shock ... The frenzy had come later when
he found himself aboard a ferryboat bound for Oakland. He could not
disentangle the mixed impulses which had sent him upon this irrational
errand, but he remembered now that a consuming desire to see Hilmer
had possessed him. Perhaps an itching for revenge again had sprung
into life, perhaps a fury to release a measure of his scorn and
contempt, perhaps a mere curiosity to glimpse once more this man whose
armor of arrogance remained unpierced ... Whatever the urge, it had
keyed him to a quivering determination. He had wondered what stupidity
possessed him to send Ginger in warning to a man like Hilmer. ... With
almost psychic power he had created for himself the scene at the depot
with Ginger pouring her tremulous message into contemptuous ears. For
it was certain that Hilmer had been contemptuous. ... Afterward,
standing before the north gate of Hilmer's shipyards, a man at his
side confirmed his intuitions between irritating puffs from a
blackened pipe:

"Nobody can double-cross Hilmer ... and they'd better g