Bob nodded. Jake was a good man. He would have picked up enough of incident and accident to make a story. The rewrite men in the office would do the rest. His, Bob’s, job was to look for a feature the other men might have overlooked.... And abruptly, he remembered Dade’s instructions to Ingalls that morning. Fire escapes; fire-doors. Were they adequate, on this old trap? There was an alley beside the burning building. He could work in through there and find out, perhaps.... At the mouth of the alley a policeman halted him. Bob showed his fire badge. The policeman said scornfully: “I don’t give a damn for that. That wall in there is going to fall in a minute.” Bob laughed. “I was covering fires when you were in the cradle, old man,” he said, and slipped by, into the alley. The officer started to pursue, swore, changed his mind, returned to his post. The alley was not an attractive place to enter. It was full of smoke, and sprinkled with bits of glass that still tinkled down in a steady rain from the shattered windows above; and as he had said, the upper part of the wall had been gnawed by the fire till it was like to fall at any moment. In spite of this, Bob went in. He was not afraid, and he was not excited, and he was not valorous. He was simply matter of fact. The smoke made him cough, and burned his eyes. Nevertheless he located the fire-escape, where it came zigzagging down the wall. Its ladder swung seven feet above the sidewalk. He got a barrel and climbed upon it and so reached the ladder. He scaled the ladder to the second floor landing. He found there a blank, iron-sheathed door. Locked. He could not move it. “But it probably opens from the inside,” he reminded himself. “Let’s see.” There was no window on this floor; he looked up and discovered that from the landing above he could reach a window. Flames were streaming thinly out of windows ten feet above that landing. Nevertheless, Bob did not hesitate. He climbed, straddled the iron rail, kicked in a pane of glass and pushed the sash up. The room within was full of eddying smoke; Bob crawled inside. He wished to reach the hall, test the doors that opened upon the fire-escape from the inside. Smoke in the room was thick, so he crouched below it and slipped out into the hall. When he reached the door, he found it adequately equipped with patent bolts of the sort that yielded at a tug. He tried them; the door swung open. The bolts, he saw, were recently installed and in good condition.... The open door had created a draft. Smoke, with a hot breath of fire in it, began to pour past him and out through the door. Fire-escapes all right; doors all right. No story. Time to get out, he decided.