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out . I’m in a hurry.”
    Tom Delaney piled out
and stood on the soaked asphalt watching the red coupe go screaming out of
sight. Engines and hose carts were pulling out in its wake, carrying their
cargoes of red-eyed, dripping men who swore wearily as they realized that the
night’s work promised no respite.
    Blackford was standing
just outside the gutted door of the department store, playing a flashlight over
the black interior. He turned the beam on the detective.
    â€œHello! I was hoping
you’d be along. It looks safe enough inside, but don’t move anything. That
second floor looks like it’s sagging in spots.”
    Lazy spirals of steam
were rising up from the ravaged counters to hang in the air like a choking
poisonous gas. Goods were heaped in sullen, charred piles which dripped gray
water. Two men in raincoats stood dismally beside the wall, looking at the
chaos.
    â€œHello, Blackford,”
said one. “Hope you get this thing figured out in a hurry. There’s a hundred
thousand in goods insurance alone.”
    â€œYeah,” grunted the
other. “You would be worried about your blamed insurance. What about my
company, that’s paying all this? If we find out it’s arson, it’s going to go
hard with somebody. Look alive, Blackford.” Slowly he trudged out of the
shambles into the flickering glitter of the street lights.
    â€œThat first one was
Tyler himself,” said the investigator. “The other guy was Morley, of Graysons’
Insurance Company. Those insurance guys always give me a pain. They act like I
cause all these burns. Let’s go down in the basement and look around at what’s
left of the garage.”
    Tom Delaney coughed as
smoke stung his throat.
    â€œI thought it looked
as though it started on the main floor,” he objected. “How could flame get
through this concrete?”
    â€œElevator shafts,”
said Blackford. “It always looks as though it started on the main floor. That’s
because fire burns upward.”
    â€œSounds reasonable,
but I think I’ll look around up here.”
    â€œGo ahead,” said
Blackford, amiably, and followed the detective over to the front wall.
    Tom Delaney broke out
his own flashlight and stabbed it through the foggy interior, probing into
piles of goods and along the floor. He went slowly ahead, marveling that anyone
could ever trace arson in such a hideous shambles.
    Then he stopped with
something like a shudder and played the light on a charred hand which jutted
out from beneath a counter. He bent down and then straightened up.
    â€œI’ll send in the
morgue wagon when we go outside. That’s one of your missing girls, Blackford.”
    Blackford looked
quickly away. “I found the other two.”
    â€œUh-huh. Both dead,
weren’t they? This isn’t only arson, it’s first-degree murder. That is, if the
fire was more than an accident. Funny they couldn’t have seen the flames coming
at them.”
    â€œPanic,” muttered the
investigator. “People get trampled.”
    â€œSure, but it was
almost closing time when this fire started, and there couldn’t have been many
in the building. I think we’ll find that it started on this floor, and in more
than one place.”
    Blackford sighed. “It
takes a detective to figure all that out. I wouldn’t have thought about it, I
guess.”
    Tom Delaney said
nothing more. He walked ahead still lashing the counters with his light. This
must have been the dress goods department, he judged. Then once more he stopped
and stood looking down. Blackford came up and peered over the detective’s shoulder.
    â€œBottle glass,” said
Delaney. “Now what the devil could bottle glass be doing here?”
    Blackford shrugged and
picked a fragment up, sniffing at it.
    â€œFurniture polish.
They used it to polish the counters, I guess.”
    But the detective took
the