The star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1908-1909, 1908-05-15
In the door she was the first to enter.

In the door she was the first to enter.
Opening the door into the rear room,
the child was swept from her feet by
the rush of flames. The first fire
alarm brought the newspaper reporters
from headquarters, and they saw in
stantly that it was something more
than a mere fire. the burning of an
old, tenantless shack. They knew his
because Captain Carroll and his men
were there, and they seemed desper-
ately anxious to enter the back room,
which was now a furnace of seething
flames. The fire had eaten through
the ceiling into the first floor, and from
there into the second floor inc on
through the roof, brilliantly illumi-
mating the neighborhood for many
blocks II attracting a great crowd,
late as the hour was, "Matty'' Whit
ing, THE EVENING STAR reporter.
saw little Laura grope her way out of
the burning basement, her arms over
her eyes, shielding the pain she suf-
fered from having her eyebrows
burned off. Whiting grabbed the child
and took her to the edge of the crowd,
which was being held back in the l.
of Campbell place, and asked her how
she came to be in the house.
Frightened, hysterical and suffering
the pain from her burns, the girl could
tell little coherently. But Whiting gath
cred from her that there had been a
man with a black mask in the back
room putting red-hot wires to the barred
feet Of a richly dressed and beautiful
young woman and hat he had been
trying to eXtort from her, by this brutal
means, some secret she possessed.
Whiting got back to the house in time
to hear Detective Long say to his chief;
"They didn't get out the front way
because we were here. and they were
in there when We got here. They could
hardly have escaped by the rear, as
there are the solid brick walls of build
ings on two sides and a ten-foot fence
on one side. A man might have been
able to scale this fence with a rope, bur
he could not lave taken an unconscious
man and a young woman over with
him. and bless me if | can see how old
Mag could get over the fence"
Then they must be in there" con-
jectured the chief.
And they are burned up by this
time"
"YVho are they" asked the reporter,
1--WE haven't the least idea, All we
| know is that his little girl came run-
ming over to headquarters, saying that
a man with a mask was burning the
feet Of. a pretty young in the
back room and hat there was a man
asleep on the bed. She said that old
Mag-you know Mag, the old woman
with the daily jag-was there also. ]
guess they're done for"
When the firemen had extinsuished
the flames a search was made of the
ruins, and the mystery was heightened
by the failure to find any charred bodies
among the ruins. Water from the fire.
mems hose had failed to fill the cellar,
which was a peculiar thing, but which
the f1remen said was accounted for by
the possibility of an old well, or per
haps a sewer opening from the cellar.
Anyway. here was a irst-class mys-
terry for the newspapers, and they made
the most of it. Reporter Whiting took
charge of little Laura, sending her
that night to a woman who gave her
a temporary Home, but Whiting, after
writing his STORY for the paper, went
back to the ruins, dissatisfied with the
! unsettled condition of the mystery