IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS

by

ROBERT BARR

1894



TO E.B.




CHAPTER I.


In the marble-floored vestibule of the Metropolitan Grand Hotel in
Buffalo, Professor Stillson Renmark stood and looked about him with the
anxious manner of a person unused to the gaudy splendor of the modern
American house of entertainment. The professor had paused halfway
between the door and the marble counter, because he began to fear that
he had arrived at an inopportune time, that something unusual was going
on. The hurry and bustle bewildered him.

An omnibus, partly filled with passengers, was standing at the door,
its steps backed over the curbstone, and beside it was a broad, flat
van, on which stalwart porters were heaving great square, iron-bound
trunks belonging to commercial travelers, and the more fragile, but not