“Oh Lord!” cried Mrs. Jack in a tone of exasperation and despair. “What on earth are they trying to do?...Nora!” She raised her voice sharply. Cook had already disappeared, but Nora heard her and turned in a bewildered way. “Nora, where are you going?” shouted Mrs. Jack impatiently.
“Why—why, mum—I just thought I’d go back here an’ get some things,” said Nora in a confused and thickened voice.
“No you won’t, either!” cried Mrs. Jack furiously, at the same time thinking bitterly: “She probably wanted to sneak back there to get another drink!”
“You come right along with us!” she called sharply. “And where is Cook?” Then, seeing the two bewildered girls, May and Janie, milling round helplessly, she took them by the arm and gave them a little push towards the door. “You girls get along!” she cried. “What are you gawking at?”
George had gone back after the befuddled Nora, and, after seizing her and herding her down the hall, had dashed into the kitchen to find Cook. Mrs. Jack followed him with her candle held high in her hand, and said anxiously:
“Are you there, darling?” Then, calling out loudly: “Cook! Cook! Where are you?”
Suddenly Cook appeared like a spectral visitant, still clutching her candle and flitting from room to room down the narrow hall of the servants’ quarters. Mrs. Jack cried out angrily:
“Oh, Cookie! What are you doing? You’ve simply got to come on now! We’re waiting on you!” And she thought to herself again, as she had thought so many times before: “She’s probably an old miser. I suppose she’s got her wad hoarded away back there somewhere. That’s why she hates to leave.”
Cook had disappeared again, this time into her own room. After a brief, fuming silence Mrs. Jack turned to George. They looked at each other for a moment in that strange light and circumstance, and suddenly both laughed explosively.
“My God!” shrieked Mrs. Jack. “Isn’t it the damnedest----”
At this moment Cook emerged once more and glided away down the hall. They yelled at her and dashed after her, and caught her just as she was about to lock herself into a bathroom.
“Now Cook!” cried Mrs. Jack angrily. “Come on now! You simply must!”
Cook goggled at her and muttered some incomprehensible jargon in an ingratiating tone.
“Do you hear, Cook?” Mrs. Jack cried furiously. “You’ve got to come now! You can’t stay here any longer!”
“Augenblick! Augenblick!” muttered Cook cajolingly.
At last she thrust something into her bosom, and, still looking longingly behind her, allowed herself to be prodded, pushed, and propelled down the servants’ hall, into the kitchen, through the door into the main hallway, and thence out to the service landing.
All the others were now gathered there, waiting while Mr. Jack tested the bell of the service elevator. His repeated efforts brought no response, so in a few moments he said coolly:
“Well, I suppose there’s nothing for us to do now except to walk down.”
Immediately he headed for the concrete stairs beside the elevator shaft, which led, nine flights down, to the ground floor and safety. The others followed him. Mrs. Jack and George herded the servants before them and waited for Mr. Logan to get a firm grip on his suitcases and start down, which at length he did, puffing and blowing and letting the bags bump with loud thuds on each step as he descended.
The electric lights on the service stairways were still burning dimly, but they clung to their candles with an instinctive feeling that these primitive instruments were now more to be trusted than the miracles of science. The smoke had greatly increased. In fact, the air was now so dense with floating filaments and shifting plumes that breathing was uncomfortable.
From top to bottom the service stairs provided an astounding spectacle. Doors were opening now on every floor and other tenants were coming out to swell the tide of refugees. They made an extraordinary conglomeration—a composite of classes, types, and characters that could have been found nowhere else save in a New York apartment house such as this. There were people in splendid evening dress, and beautiful women blazing with jewels and wearing costly wraps. There were others in pyjamas who had evidently been awakened from sleep and had hastily put on slippers, dressing-gowns, kimonos, or whatever garments they could snatch up in the excitement of the moment. There were young and old, masters and servants, a mixture of a dozen races and their excited babel of strange tongues. There were German cooks and French maids, English butlers and Irish serving girls. There were Swedes and Danes and Italians and Norwegians, with a sprinkling of White Russians. There were Poles and Czechs and Austrians, Negroes and Hungarians. All of these poured out helter-skelter on the landing-stages of the service stairway, chattering, gesticulating, their interests all united now in their common pursuit of safety.