here, Starr reasoned from that
assumption.

He waited another minute or two, watching and listening. There was
nothing at the front to break the quiet or spoil the air of desertion
that surrounds an empty office building at midnight. He went cautiously
to the rear corner and turned there to look back at the building,
watchful for any stray beam of light or any movement.

The upper story was dark as the rest of the yard and building, and Starr
could almost believe that he was on the wrong track entirely, and that
nothing was going on here. But he continued to stand there, loath to give
up and go home with nothing accomplished.

Close beside the building and back perhaps twenty feet from the front
corner, a telephone and electric light pole stood with outstretched arms,
holding aloft its faintly humming wires. Starr stood looking that way for
some time before it occurred to him that there was no street light near
enough to send that warm, yellow glow across the second bar from the
bottom. The rest of the pole was vague and shadowy, like everything else
in the immediate neighborhood. The bottom of the pole he could not see at
all from where he stood, it was so dark alongside the building. But that
second cross-arm was lighted as from a near-by window. Yet there was no
lighted window anywhere in the place.

Starr was puzzled. Being puzzled, he went slowly toward the pole, his
face turned upward. The nearest street lamp was a full block away, and it
would have lighted up the whole top of the pole evenly, if at all. At the
foot of the pole Starr stood for a minute, still staring upward. Then he
reached up, gripped the metal steps and began carefully to climb.

Before he had reached the lighted cross-arm he knew that the glow must
come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had
saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman,
but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several
minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had
few wires.

Just below him and no more than twelve or fifteen feet distant was the
skylight he had suspected, but before he gave that much attention, he
looked across to where the fire was sending up a column of crimson smoke
and bright, eddying sparks, four blocks or so away. The man left on guard
would find it difficult to tear himself away from all that excitement,
Starr thought satisfiedly; though if he came