. Buckets were being passed. There were throngs
of natives and resorters. Through them he pushed.

At the further entrance to the Casino, above which he knew the Prices
lodged, a fat policeman stood, blocking the way. Annandale shoved him
aside, sprang up the stairs, reached the room, fumbled with the door.
It was locked.

Annandale swore deeply, tried the door with his shoulder, kicked at it
till it cracked, kicked again, throwing himself against it with all
his weight, then, not the door, but the fastenings of the lock broke
and he went sprawling in. Through the open window he could see the
flames, he could hear them, he could hear too the cries of the crowd.
But he had no time to waste. He tore around the room.

In one corner was a deep closet, full of clothes. He took them and
threw them in armfuls on the bed. In another corner was a bureau, the
drawers packed with scented lingerie. These on the bed he emptied
also. What else did women wear? he wondered. Oh, yes, he remembered;
hats certainly and probably shoes. Around the room he tore again. But
already the bed was mountainous. He turned it all over on the floor,
gathered up as much as the coverlid would hold and made a hasty bundle
of it. Beneath was a blanket; he filled that, made a bundle of it
also, repeated the operation with a sheet. Into another sheet he threw
hats which meanwhile had loomed in boxes on a shelf, and dragging a
curtain down filled that with shoes which also he had found, changed
his mind and stuffed them into a pillow case, tossing in after them
articles from a dressing-table, brushes and combs, odds and ends,
helter skelter.

But in dragging the curtain from the window he had noticed a
writing-desk. After he had finished with the pillow case he returned
to it. Like the door it was locked. He kicked at it, kicked it open,
discovered in it loose money and trinkets, stuck them in his pockets,
grabbed at the bundles and dashed from the room just as with a roar
the flames leaped in.

In the corridor he tripped, but he was up again with the tightly tied
bundles and down the stair before the flames and the smoke of them
could catch him. Once on the road without he turned to look, but the
flames pirouetting in increasing size made it too hot to linger. Down
the road he went, not overweighted but impeded by the awkward bundles,
and staggered first into an engulfing, shouting crowd, then into a
convenient hack, in which he reached the Inn, minus