Fire No. 2

Bright by night is the.white dome of the U. S. Capitol, set like an enormous frosted wedding cake in the glare of encircling batteries of searchlights. Brighter than ever was the dome one evening hour last week when sharp flames leaped up through the Capitol roof.

A guard first spied smoke crawling out of cornices in the House wing close to the dome. Up four flights of circular iron stairs he raced to discover a roaring blaze in a room under the eaves used for storage of old Congressional documents. Also in the fiery room were the materials of artists who constantly retouch and restore the Capitol's decorations. On the floor, unconscious, lay Charles Moberly, 61, Capitol artist. He was dragged out, carried downstairs, revived.

A crowd as large as any for an inaugural gathered in the plaza to watch almost all of Washington's firemen subdue the fire.

The document room, tucked away behind corridors, was hard to reach. Firefighters scaled the walls, fought the flames downward through the roof. Cameramen's flashlights added to the radiance of the scene. Senators. Congressmen, Justices of the Supreme Court hustled "up the hill" from dinner to see their workshop burn.

Water leaked down on Associate Justice Edward Terry Sanford. who hastily spread a tarpaulin over his office desk and papers. The rotunda was a puddle ankle-deep. In 45 minutes the fire was out.

Damage: $5,000. David Lynn, architect of the Capitol and its official proprietor, found masses of government documents of no historic worth destroyed, a portrait of himself ruined. A falling beam had smashed a ten-foot plaster model of the Capitol.

Like many another, Architect Lynn suspected a match or cigaret butt had been carelessly thrown into inflammable oils, paints, papers. Still incoherent from inhaled fumes. Artist Moberly babbled that he did not smoke cigarets, only cigars, that, in fact, he did not smoke at all. Later he admitted that he had had "a couple of drinks" in the afternoon, had fallen asleep over his desk in the storage room. With him, he said, was a man named Sam Hall who had been reading a newspaper. When he awoke. Hall was fighting the fire.

Capitol rumor: The storage room, tucked off in a nook by itself, was used as a drinking place and general rendezvous by Capitol employes.

Suspicious citizens immediately linked the Capitol fire with that at the White House offices fortnight ago, spoke darkly of incendiarism. Both blazes had started mysteriously under the roof amid bales of documents at about the same evening hour when the buildings were deserted. Exclaimed Senator Vandenberg of Michigan after the Capitol fire: "This is more than a coincidence!"

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