noticed that some sticks had fallen out and landed in the tangle of petticoats Beth had left and he smiled at the disorder of everything and put his head back against the sofa.

Petticoats crackling woke him. Even before he got his head up very high in the room, he was coughing. The room was turning bright, sparkling orange.

"Beth!" he said. "Beth!"

There were still the two tan sofa chairs.

"Beth, sober up now! Come on, change! We've got to get out!"

Nothing happened. Pendleton looked at the chairs a moment. The one on the left. He grabbed it up and wavered to the apartment door. To make sure, he'd have to come up for the other one.

For several minutes, it seemed the chair would stay wedged in the doorway. It came free finally and he went back with it and tumbled and twisted down the stairs.

A siren met him in the cold night outside. The engines were already there. The firemen were heading for the building.

Spray fell back across the street where Pendleton took the chair. "Beth, please," he said in a low voice. "Change now." He tried to go get the other chair, to be sure, but they wouldn't let him.

He fell into the one he'd picked and began crying softly. The sirens stopped. Before he let the ambulance people look at him, he insisted that the chair be looked after.

No trace of Beth was found, and Pendleton couldn't explain what had happened. After they let him go, he had the chair sent to his apartment.

He put it very carefully in the living room by the liquor cabinet and sat down near it to wait.The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in 

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