“Yes, sir!” stammered the cook’s assistant. There was still a lot of smoke coming out, even though Ripton had managed to close the door to the dumbwaiter. “Cook will be angry!”

“Hurry up!” said Nick. He strode past the assistant and along a short corridor, to find himself in the main kitchen, where half a dozen immaculately white-clad men were engaged in an orderly but complex dance around a number of counters and stove tops, directed by the rapid snap of commands from a small, thin man with the tallest and whitest hat.

“Fire!” roared Nick. “Get out to the home meadow! Fire!”

He repeated this as he strode through the kitchen and out the swinging doors immediately after a waiter who showed the excellence of his training by hardly looking behind him for more than a second.

As Nick had thought, the dinner guests were making so much noise of their own that they would never have heard any kind of commotion deep in the earth under their feet. Even when he burst out of the servants’ corridor and jumped onto an empty chair near the head of the table that was probably his, only five or six of the forty guests looked around.

Then Ripton fired two rapid shots into the ceiling.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I do beg your pardon!” shouted Nick. “There is a fire in the house! Please get up at once and follow Mr. Ripton here to the home meadow!”

Silence met this announcement for perhaps half a second; then Nick was assaulted with questions, comments, and laughter. It was such a babble that he could hardly make out any one coherent stream of words; but clearly half the guests thought this was some game of Dorrance’s; a quarter of them wanted to go and get their jewels, favorite coats, or lapdogs; and the last quarter intended to keep eating and drinking whether the house burned down around them or not.

“This isn’t a joke!” Nick screamed, his voice barely penetrating the hubbub. “If you don’t go now, you’ll be dead in fifteen minutes! Men have already died!”

Perhaps ten of the guests heard him. Six of them pushed their chairs back and stood. Their movement caused a momentary lull, and Nick tried again.

“I’m Nicholas Sayre,” he said, pointing at his burnt hair and blackened dress shirt, and his bloodied cuffs. “The Chief Minister’s nephew. I am not playing games for Dorrance. Look at me, will you! Get out now or you will die here!”

He jumped down as merry pandemonium turned into panic, and almost knocked down the butler, who had been standing by to either assist or restrain him; Nick couldn’t be sure which.

“You’re D Thirteen, right?” he asked the imposing figure. “There’s been an accident downstairs. There is a fire, but there’s an . . . animal . . . loose. Like a tiger, but much stronger, fiercer. No door can hold it. We need to get everyone out on the home meadow, and get them building a ring of hay. Make it about fifty yards in diameter, and we’ll gather in the middle and set it alight to keep the animal out. You understand?”