In an amazingly quick space of time the thing was over.  When the city apparatus arrived, after a run of nearly three miles, there was nothing for them to do.  The chief sought out Manton, to accompany him upon an inspection of the damage and to make sure that the fire was out.  The promoter first beckoned to Kennedy.

“This is unquestionably of incendiary origin,” he explained to the chief.  “I want Mr. Kennedy to see everything before it is disturbed, so that no clue may be lost or destroyed.”

The fire officer brightened.  “Craig Kennedy?” he inquired.  “Gee! there must be some connection between the blaze and the murder of Stella Lamar and her director.  I’ve been reading about it every day in the papers.”

“Mr. Jameson of the Star,” Kennedy said, presenting me.

We found we could not enter the basement immediately adjoining the vaults—­that is, directly from the courtyard—­because it seemed advisable to keep a stream of water playing down the steps, and a resulting cloud of steam blocked us.  Manton explained that we could get through from the next cellar if it was not too hot, and so we hurried toward another entrance.

Mackay, who had remained behind to protect the bag from the heat, joined us there.

“I’ve put the bag in charge of that chauffeur, McGroarty, and armed him with my automatic,” he explained.  He paused to wipe his eyes.  The fumes from the film had distressed all of us.  “Shirley and Marilyn Loring are both missing still,” he added.  “I’ve been asking everyone about them.  No one has seen them.”

The fire chief looked up.  “Everyone is out?  You are sure everybody is safe?”

“I had Wagnalls at my elbow with a hose,” Manton replied.  “I saw the boy around, also.  No one else had any business down there and the vaults were closed and the cellar shut off.”

The door leading from the adjoining basement was hot yet, but not so that we were unable to handle it.  However, the catch had stuck and it took considerable effort to force it in.  As we did so a cloud of acrid vapor and steam drove us back.

Then Kennedy seemed to detect something in the slowly clearing atmosphere.  He rushed ahead without hesitation.  The fire chief followed.  In another instant I was able to see also.

The form of a woman, dimly outlined in the vapor, struggled to lift the prone figure of a man.  After one effort she collapsed upon him.  I dashed forward, as did Mackay and Manton.  Two of them carried the girl out to the air; the other three of us brought her unconscious companion.  It was Marilyn and Shirley.

The little actress was revived easily, but Shirley required the combined efforts of Kennedy and the chief, and it was evident that he had escaped death from suffocation only by the narrowest of margins.  How either had survived seemed a mystery.  Their clothes were wet, their faces and hands blackened, eyebrows and lashes scorched by the heat.  But for the water poured into the basement neither would have been alive.  They had been prisoners during the entire conflagration, the burning vault holding them at one end of the basement, the door in the partition resisting their efforts to open it.