The Pet-Sitting Peril by Willo Davis Roberts

the same time, and I knew where the people next door had left their hose, so I ran for that. Sam turned in the alarm and warned the people in the house.”
    Mr. Griesner’s fuzzy head materialized out of the shadows. “Didn’t warn me. I didn’t know a thing until I heard the fire trucks. Boy, I don’t know what Mr. Hale is going to say about this. He hates to spend money to fix the place up, but he’s sure going to have to rebuild that wall.”
    â€œYou live in the back apartment, sir?”
    â€œYeah, that’s right. I’m the manager,” Mr. Griesner said. “My place would have been next to go, after the garage.”
    â€œThese boys did a good job,” Mr. Jamison put in. “Moved fast, did the right things.”
    â€œHow did the fire start?” the fireman wanted to know. “Anybody see what happened?”
    For a moment there was only silence and the small sounds of the drowned fire. Thesmell was sharp, acrid, and it hurt Nick’s nose and throat. He swallowed.
    â€œSam and I were coming across the end of the alley, there, walking Rudy. He’s Mr. Haggard’s dog, from apartment one, in the front. We noticed the streetlight was out on the corner, and the one at the end of the next block, too, so the alley was darker than usual. Rudy barked and jerked me sideways and took off down the alley as if he were after something, and we saw the sparks. It was only a minute—seconds, really—before the fire was all over the place.”
    The fireman—Nick finally recognized him as Mr. Conrad, who sometimes took up the collection in church—was looking at him and Sam in a way that made Nick shift uneasily from one foot to the other. Not as if Nick were being helpful, but as if he were under suspicion!
    â€œYou didn’t see what caused the sparks?” Mr. Conrad asked.
    This time it was Sam who answered. “Just a little flame, at first, and then a whole lot of fire. We couldn’t see what started it.”
    â€œAnd you say the dog barked at something,or someone, in the alley? Did he usually do that? Bark at people, say, if there was someone around?”
    â€œHe never barked at anybody before that I know of,” Nick said. “Not while I was walking him. Even when we passed other dogs that barked at him, Rudy didn’t. He’d chase cats, though,” he felt compelled to say. “He could have been after a cat when he pulled away from me. We didn’t hear anything.”
    â€œNo feet on the gravel, nothing like that?”
    â€œNo, sir. Not that I noticed.”
    And then Mr. Conrad said something that made Nick both alarmed and angry, all at once. “You boys didn’t start it, did you? Trying out a smoke back here, something like that? Playing with matches?”
    Nick was so stunned that for a minute he couldn’t reply at all. It was Sam who yelped a protest. “Hey! No, we never did anything like that!”
    â€œBetter to admit it now, if you did,” Mr. Conrad told them, and he didn’t sound friendly the way he did when he greeted Nick’s father at church on Sunday mornings. “Because ourinvestigators will be out here to find out what happened. We can’t have people setting fires, and we try to find out how every fire got started so we can prevent future ones. I know boys sometimes snitch a few cigarettes and try smoking, and once in a while they drop a match or a cigarette and start a fire when they don’t mean to.”
    â€œWell, we didn’t,” Sam said, sounding indignant. “My folks would about kill me if I ever did that, and besides, I think it’s stupid to smoke. Or play with matches, either. We’re not little kids, to do something dumb like that.”
    Mr. Conrad asked more questions, and he wrote down their names and addresses, which struck them both as ominous. Not that he could prove anything against them, because of course they