The secret of the Mansion

her shoulder. "Wake up," she yelled. "There’s a fire up at the Mansion. It’ll bum like anything with that junk in it. It might spread to the summerhouse before Jim could get out."
    Honey scrambled out of bed, her hazel eyes wide with fright. Trixie pushed her toward the stairway. "Call the fire department right away while I go warn Jim. Hurry!" Trixie was unlocking the door to the terrace as she called this over her shoulder, almost stumbling over Reddy. As the door slammed behind her, she heard Honey at the phone, sobbing, "Operator! Operator! Fire! Fire! It’s the big house at Ten Acres!"
    Trixie raced up the driveway to the path, with Reddy at her heels. As she ran along, tripping and stumbling in her haste, she could plainly see gray-white puffs of smoke curling out of the open window.
    "Jim," she screamed as she burst into the clearing. "Jim!"
    And then she saw him crawling, sleepy-eyed but alert, from the arbor. "The Mansion’s on fire!" she got out. "Your stepfather’s cigarette! All that trash! Jim!"
    Instantly, he was wide-awake and through the window before Trixie could catch her breath. Then he reappeared again, almost knocking her down as she dragged herself over the sill. "It’s that pile of old newspapers," he called out as he hurtled past her. "Stay where you are. I’ll keep bringing cans of water. You throw them onto the fire."
    Trixie choked in the smoke-filled room, and through her streaming eyes she could see that one pile of paper had binned to ashes and that the stack of magazines next to it was beginning to smolder. She threw can after can of water on it and only vaguely knew that Honey was now helping Jim, running back and forth from the almost dry well. The magazines, which were now a tower of flames, suddenly toppled forward and fell, showering sparks and bits of burning paper all over the room. One comer of the old mattress caught fire; and, coughing and choking, Trixie dragged it across the floor. Somehow, she managed to pull it out of the window and stamp out all the smoldering embers that leaped and scattered around her feet.
    Through her streaming eyes, she saw Jim racing to the window with the watering can. He stopped suddenly and threw can and all in through the window. "It’s no use," he said, wiping his sweaty face with his arm. "The whole room is in flames. We can t stop it now."
    And then they heard the wail of sirens from the road below, mingling with the roar of the fire engines.
    There was such utter confusion for the next hour that Trixie could never get the sequence of events straight. She would always remember the look of sheer desperation on Jims face as he shot past her into the old arbor and how Honey had kept on bringing cans of water from the well long after the clearing was filled with firemen. She tried to warn Jim not to hide in the summerhouse, in case the fire should spread in that direction, which seemed likely, but nothing except a hoarse croak came out of her smoke-tortured throat. And all the while, in the back of her mind, she knew that the chemical truck was roaring up the rutted driveway. There was an awful moment of silence as the siren stopped screaming, and the motor of the truck stalled halfway up the hill.
    And then there were firemen everywhere, working calmly under the direction of their chief. Trixie heard an order which had something to do with ventilation, and two firemen promptly raced up a ladder and began chopping holes in the roof. In a minute, they clambered down and reported that they could "feel the roof breathing from the pressure of the hot air under it."
    She remembered the walled-up staircase then, and how all the other windows and doors were tightly closed. Even in her dazed state of mind, Trixie knew that the men were doing the best they could, but she realized the hopelessness of it all.
    "They’ll never save the house," she shouted at Honey through the uproar of the stifling flames. "But they’ve got to keep it from spreading to the woods. Your place and ours will go, then. There hasn’t been enough rain lately."
    Honey clutched her arm. "Oh, look. Isn’t that Jonesy coming up the hill with all those people from the village who were here when the military plane crashed?"
    Trixie wheeled around to face the driveway. Sure enough, leading the crowd of curious onlookers was the stoop-shouldered man. He stamped across the clearing, yelling at the top of his lungs to the fire chief, "My stepson’s in there. Save him! Save