CHAPTER IX
O NCE more Baltazar stood within his granite enclosure and surveyed the scene of ruin and horror. He had hired a cart and driven over with three nondescript elderly labouring men, who were now wandering aimlessly about the wreckage. Nothing seemed changed since he had last left it in the wake of the stretcher-borne body of Quong Ho, although the Water-End Fire Brigade, learning that the place was still on fire, and inspired by zeal and curiosity, had meanwhile come down with helmets, hatchets and hoses, and had drenched the interior of the house with water pumped from the well. There had been no attempt at salvage. The administrators of the derelict property had long since given up paying insurance premiums on the building, and Baltazar, so long alien to European life, and des
