The fire had been beaten; its last gasp was out;
and the main building stood, smoke-stained, water-stained, with
gaping sockets for windows, but with its roof apparently intact.
The trees were scorched to leeward, and the turf was a trampled
morass. Charred benches and desks, broken bottles, retorts, and
glass cases, bestrewed it. But of Jack's sanctum--of the room in
which I had been allowed to sit while he worked, because, as he put
it, "I made no noise with my pipe"--nothing remained save a mound of
ashes and a few sheets of iron roofing, buckled and contorted.
A thin wisp of smoke coiled up from the ruin.
"Jack!" I called.
"Let's try the theatre," Sir Elkin suggested. "I left him there."
We went in.
The rostrum Jack used for his lectures was low, flat-topped and
semicircular, with a high raised desk in the middle. Being isolated,
it had escaped the fire; as maybe it had proved too cumbrous for
removal.
Anyhow, there it was; and Jack stood beside it busy with something he
was laying out on the flat desk-top. It looked like some sort of
jigsaw puzzle that he was piecing together very carefully, very--
what's the word?--meticulously.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173