When this was done he looked in the glass, and started back with a
shout. "By Jove!" cried he, after a moment; "I thought all was lost. I
thought my own reflection was another man's! I _am_ already another man.
I feel it in every fibre. No one who knew me, and thinks I am dead,
would recognise me. I might walk down the streets of Daneford
to-morrow, and talk about my own sad end to my most intimate friend, and
he would not recognise me. The Daneford Bank would open an account for
me to-morrow in the name of Grey, and observe no likeness between their
new customer and their old master. I am a new man already. I feel new
blood in all my veins, new sinews in all my limbs; the nightmare of the
past is vanishing; I shall sleep now of nights, and whistle once more
while I dress of mornings. Ten thousand times better this feeling than
all the pomp my ambition longed for with the canker and the care."
He took from the pocket of the coat he had removed a small packet,
thinking: "All I want is the money. Twenty thousand pounds will be a
large fortune in either Spain or Italy."
He threw the clothes he had worn on the bed, opened the cupboard, and
took out one after another four cans. Two of these he emptied over his
own bed, one on the floor and furniture, and one on the landing and
first flight of the stairs. Turpentine!
He then threw the four cans on the bed, wrenched off the gas-brackets
and set fire to the gas at the ends of the broken pipes.
He cast one hasty glance round.
"All right!"
He struck a match and held it to the saturated bed.
A little spirt of flame shot out of the counterpane to the match. The
spirt of flame then fell back and spread slowly until it formed a spire
as large as a pine-cone.
Grey backed to the door and seized the handle.
From that cone flashed twenty javelins of light this way and that. The
air of the room sobbed, and a solid mass of white flame stood up over
that bed.
Swiftly opening the door Grey sprang out, and shut the door leading to
the landing. A second he stood there, threw up his hands, and cried in a
husky voice:
"Saved!"
He looked out of the window.
"All right."
He put his hand on the iron bar.
"Quite firm."
Suddenly he drew back. Had he seen anyone below?
No.
He put his hand on his breast.
"The money is here," he whispered to himself, "but I have forgotten
something. What is it?" A few seconds passed and he yelled: "I know! I
know! What I forgot is on the roof."
With furious speed he dashed up the noisome stairs.
As he did so there arose a soft flapping sound at the door on the
landing, and a lazy serpent of white flame crawled across the landing
and climbed up the stairs.
* * * * *
A sweetheart of one of the maid-servants, leaving the Manor House by the
side door at half-past nine, saw fire issuing from the window on the
first floor of the tower, ran back to the servants' hall, and gave the
alarm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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