Reginald Thomas Maitland Scott

“ Ram Singh had taken the last of the barricade away from the door and stood with his hand on the bolt, looking back at his master.
Molly, gasping, also looked back at Wentworth and wondered how he managed to refrain from coughing. He seemed so calm and at his ease as he sat at the telephone in the smoke.
She began to believe that he must be superhuman. What other kind of a man would and could do the things for her that he was doing? She did not wonder so much about Ram Singh. ”

“ From somewhere in the building a woman could faintly be heard as she screamed that word of grim alarm. There are some buildings in New York where almost anything may be done without attracting the interest of other inmates; but there is no building in the entire world where the alarm of fire will not focus attention. The volume of smoke escaping from the bathroom window must have become quite prodigious. Some of it was now seeping under the bathroom door and creeping into the living room.
Wentworth smiled. ”

“ In the midst of the telephone conversation there came a clanging from the street. The New York Fire Department had sent some of its apparatus to the building which was allowing such a great quantity of black smoke to issue from one of its bathroom windows. Wentworth heard the fire gongs and suspended his telephone talk for a moment in order to issue some rapid directions to Ram Singh. Then he continued his conversation with Nita as quietly as if nothing at all were happening. ”