"Do you remember, Boehme, that you threatened me with God's punishment? Formerly the Jesuits used to do the same to trick people's fortune out of them. But I was too clever!... I would not be tricked; therefore God has punished me. It is not long ago since you threw corks and sticks on the water, and said the wave would return. But my poor son will not return." Adler had never been so eloquent as at the moment when his reason was leaving him. He seized the pastor by the shoulders and pushed him out of the door. Restlessly he began to walk up and down again, and at last left the office. The gloom of dusk swallowed him up, and the noise of the machinery drowned his footfalls. The clerks were panic-stricken. No one thought of watching him--they had all lost their heads. They knew how to attend mechanically to their duties, but no one would have dared to take any responsibility. Pastor Boehme dared not give orders either. To whom should he have given them? Who would have listened to him? Events meanwhile took their course. One of the workmen noticed that the small door leading to the cotton warehouse was open. Before he could give notice to the foreman, it had been shut again. The workpeople whispered to one another about thieves and Ferdinand's repentant ghost. But the clerks rushed to the office to see what had become of the master-key, and found it gone. No doubt Adler himself had taken it. But where was he? The porter had seen him pass through the gateway, but had not noticed him go out again, though he said he had been watching closely for him. Who would undertake to find him in the huge building? This time the old book-keeper guessed the danger which threatened the factory. He called up the foremen, ordered that watchmen should be set outside the main doors, that the engines should be stopped and the hands withdrawn from the workshop. But before these orders could be carried out the sound of the alarm bell was heard from the warehouses. Smoke and flames were issuing from the openings. The hands, already demoralized, were seized with panic and left the workrooms in a crowd. So precipitate was their flight that they forgot to turn out the lights, left all the doors open, and did not stop the engines. But they had only just saved themselves when the fire began to break out in the warehouses containing the manufactured goods. "What is this? Someone is setting fire to the mill!" they cried. "It is the boss himself! He is setting fire to it!" "Where is he?" "Nobody knows." The fire was breaking out in the spinning and weaving departments. "Surely it is Adler himself who is setting the mill alight!" "Why should we save it, when he is destroying it?" "Who tells you to save it?" "But what are we going to eat to-morrow?"