At 8AM a telegram arrived for Mrs. Reeser. Mrs. Carpenter signed the receipt
and went to her tenant's apartment to bring her the telegram.  The doorknob,
when she placed her hand on it, was hot. Alarmed, she stepped back and shouted
for help. Two painters working across the street ran over. One of them opened
the door; as he entered, he felt a blast of hot air. Thinking of rescuing Mrs.
Reeser, he frantically looked around but saw no signs of her. The bed was
empty. There was some smoke, but the only fire was a small flame on a wooden
beam, over a partition separating the living room and kitchenette.

The firemen arrived, put out the small flame with a hand pump. and tore away
part of the partition. When Assistant Fire Chief S. O. Griffith began his
inspection of the premises, he could not believe his eyes. In the middle of the
floor there was a charred area roughly four feet in diameter, inside of which
he found a number of blackened chair springs and the ghastly remains of a human
body, consisting of a charred liver attached to a piece of the spine, a
shrunken skull, one foot still wearing a black satin slipper, and a small pile
of ashes.

Coroner Edward T. Silk arrived to examine the body and survey the apartment.
Although deeply puzzled, he decided the death was accidental and authorized the
removal of the remains. The scooped-up ashes, the tiny shrunken head, and the
slipper-encased foot were taken by ambulance to a local hospital. 

The ensuing investigation included police and fire officials as well as arson
experts. The facts that confronted them seemed inexplicable considering the
great heat necessary to account for Mrs. Reeser's incinerated body. Little of
the furniture, other than the chair and the end table next to it, was badly
damaged, but the apartment had suffered some peculiar effects. The ceiling,
draperies and walls, from a point exactly four feet above the floor, were
coated with a smelly, oily soot. Below this four foot mark there was none. The
wall paint adjacent to the chair was faintly browned, but the carpet where the
chair had rested was not even burned through. A wall mirror 10 feet away had
cracked, probably from heat. On a dressing table 12 feet away, two pink wax
candles had puddled, but their wicks lay undamaged in their holders. Plastic
wall outlets above the four foot mark were melted, but the fuses were not blown
and the current was on. The baseboard electrical outlets were undamaged. An
electric clock plugged into one of the outlets had stopped at precisely 4:20,
but the same clock ran perfectly when plugged into one of the baseboard
outlets.

Newspapers nearby on a table and draperies and linens on the daybed close at
hand - all flammable - were not damaged. And though the painters and Mrs.
Carpenter had felt a wave of heat when they opened the door, no one had noted
smoke or burning odor and there were no embers or flames in the ashes.

[CONTINUED IN SHC3.TXT]