'
Biffen leaped on to the threshold, and crashed against Mrs
Willoughby, the landlady, who was carrying a huge bundle of
household linen.
'I told you to look after that drunken brute;' he said to her.
'Can I get upstairs?'
'What do I care whether you can or not!' the woman shrieked. 'My
God! And all them new chairs as I bought--!'
He heard no more, but bounded over a confusion of obstacles, and
in a moment was on the landing of the first storey. Here he
encountered a man who had not lost his head, a stalwart mechanic
engaged in slipping clothes on to two little children.
'If somebody don't drag that fellow Briggs down he'll be dead,'
observed the man. 'He's layin' outside his door. I pulled him
out, but I can't do no more for him.'
Smoke grew thick on the staircase. Burning was as yet confined to
that front room on the second floor tenanted by Briggs the
disastrous, but in all likelihood the ceiling was ablaze, and if
so it would be all but impossible for Biffen to gain his own
chamber, which was at the back on the floor above. No one was
making an attempt to extinguish the fire; personal safety and the
rescue of their possessions alone occupied the thoughts of such
people as were still in the house.
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