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Updated: May 5, 2025
"The fire in the theater and museum," said Eliph'. "It started right on the stairs between the second and third floors, and the old building flared up like dry paper. Two or three men that was trying the slot machines saw the smoke and run for the lung-testers, thinking by the look they were fire-extinguishers, which was the most natural mistake in the world.
"I think I know who it is. I've seen him hanging round my scullery door before. How did he climb over those railings?" "He didn't. He opened the gate." "Well, I locked the gate myself this afternoon. So he's got a key. I shall manage him all right. We'll get the fire-extinguishers. There's about a dozen of 'em, I should think, in this house. They're rather heavy, but we can do it."
The editor easily guessed that Doc had investigated the rest of the affair, and had seen the fire-extinguishers and known them to be not what they seemed. He hurried back to his office to set in type what he had learned. But others were abroad, too. Attorney Toole, watching the editor, had seen him enter the cobbler-car and leave it again, and he easily guessed the object of the editor's visit.
"I am out of that mayor job. I give him up. I haf been insulted." "I saw it," the editor assured him. "He gave you a good whack. Sounded like a wet plank falling on a marble slab. Mad about the fire-extinguishers business, wasn't he?" "And why?" asked the mayor, looking up for the first time, "he has a right to obey those ordinances and not get mad."
It looks like a conspiracy to throw those fire-extinguishers back on Miss Sally's hands. Probably he has taken an agency for fire-extinguishers, or had made a deal to take some in payment for advertising space in his paper, and wants to sell them to Skinner.
Again he read the article in the TIMES, seeking for the meanings that Doc knew so well how to hide. He paused at the "Things are seldom what they seem" lines, and considered it. Suddenly he arose and put on his hat. "Wait here," he said, "I'll be back." When he returned he was smiling. He had visited Skinner's Opera House and had examined the fire-extinguishers where they sat, each on its bracket.
"Oh, but he don't like the way folks will laugh at him when they learn the joke you have played on him. That was a good one." "Joke?" queried the mayor, growing brighter. "Did I play him one joke?" "You know," said T. J. "Making him buy those lung-testers of Miss Briggs' when he thought they were fire-extinguishers. I should say it WAS a joke!"
Perhaps the Colonel spoke to impetuously; to commandingly. Skinner held the lump of suet offensively near the Colonel's nose as he answered. "Fire-extinguishers!" he laughed. "Me buy fire-extinguishers? I wouldn't give THAT for them." He shook the suet before the Colonel's eyes. "No, sir!" he sneered. "I wouldn't give THAT for them. And I throw that away!"
He did not wait for Miss Sally to answer, but turned to the scowling Colonel. "Colonel," he said, "I want you to walk down to the office with me. I shouldn't wonder if you could sell those fire-extinguishers right here in Kilo." The four descended the stairs together, and the Colonel would willingly have lingered, but the attorney took him by the arm and jovially steered him out of the door.
But we have to take the world as it is, and not as we would like it to be; and as long as we have people in it who want to set it on fire for their own brutally selfish purposes, we shall have to keep the fire-extinguishers in good order." In obedience to an appealing glance from his daughter, the Professor did not reply.
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