The hotel had become a furnace.

Then he stepped out, with a determined look on his dark face.

Ready understood the meaning of that look.
"You'll go to your death if you try it!" he declared.

"It is hotter than ten ovens, and some timbers fell from the second floor as I came out.

If I hadn't rolled under the stairway when I fell, and thus had protection, I should have been cooked alive." But if Hodge heard the warning, he did not heed it.