  It was a dramatic moment, such a moment as comes at times to the lives of firemen. Had the building been a tenement it would have been searched from cellar to garret; had it even been a business block, little less than this would have been done. But a school house! Who would have suspected it of housing a child at midnight? Others in the throng had seen the child and now great shouts came up from the crowd that surged the line. Coolly, methodically, as is the manner of those whose business it is to save lives, the firemen backed a ladder truck into position. After a speedy measurement with his eye, the Chief marked a spot sixteen feet from the building, and there the base of the ladder came to rest. Then, up, up, up, as if by magic, the ladder ascended in air. Not touching the building, but ever mounting, it reached the level of the third floor, the fourth floor, the fifth. A mighty shout arose when it came to the level of the window where the child, leaning far out, waved her slender arms in mute petition. As yet the ladder was far out beyond her reach. A fireman must climb the ladder to bring her down. Johnny Thompson was no player to the grandstand, but a sudden thought had struck him and the next second had set him into action. “If I go up—if I save her,” he thought to himself as he dashed for the ladder, “she will think of me as her friend. She’ll tell me all.” “Here!” he exclaimed, reaching out a hand for the truck as the Chief was about to detail a man, “Let me go up.” Had the Chief not known Johnny so well; had he not realized that the boy had lived all his life in such a manner as would fit himself for a moment like this; lived clean, grasped every opportunity for practice that makes a fellow active and physically fit, he would have pushed him aside—this was no moment for playing. But now, knowing Johnny as he did, he only rumbled: “All right, Johnny.” The next moment, agile as a monkey ascending the side of his cage, Johnny was leaping upward. Through his mind, as he climbed, passed many shadowy questions. Was the ladder set right? Would it fall to position, or would it buckle to send him crashing to the pavement? Such a thing had happened; might happen now. Still he climbed. The slender reed-like ladder swayed as he climbed. One story was passed, another, another, and yet another. Who was this girl? How had she come to be on the top floor of the school at such a time? Had she set the fire and then, frightened at her deed, fled to a place of hiding? The ladder swayed more and more. Then, just as he reached the level of the fifth floor it swung slowly in and came to rest against the sixth floor window ledge. “Oh! Ah!” Johnny sighed. Less than a moment after that, with one arm about the child’s slender waist and with her arms about his neck, he found himself descending. Far below the crowd was shouting mad approval. “Listen, little girl,” he said, talking in the girl’s ear that he might be heard above the hubub of the street, “where do you live?” The child started, then stared up at the burning schoolhouse as if to say: “That’s my home.” What she said was: “Not anywhere.” “No home?” Johnny said in astonishment. The girl nodded. Johnny was nonplussed. Here was a new mystery, and there was no time to solve it. At last he was at the base of the ladder. “Here, Tom,” he said to a stalwart fireman who sat at the wheel of the truck, “take care of this child. Don’t let her get out of your sight. She may be a valuable witness. I’ll be back soon. I want to look for—for a man.” He dropped to the street where glowing and sputtering bits of wood floated on rivers of water. The girl’s attention was instantly caught by a strange creature that rested on the fireman’s shoulder—a large monkey. “That’s Jerry,” smiled Tom. “He’s our mascot. Came to us of his own free will. Tenement burned on the near west side. After everybody was out an’ the walls was totterin’ Jerry comes scamperin’ down a drain pipe, hopped on my shoulder, and he’s been there lot of times since. Nobody’s ever claimed him. He’s been with us three years, so I guess nobody ever will claim him.” Sensing that the conversation was about him, the monkey evidently decided to show off a bit. Leaping from Tom’s shoulder, he made the towering ladder at a bound and was half way up before the child could let out her first scream of delight. Then, as the ladder began to double in upon itself, he raced down again, to at last make one mighty leap and land squarely in the girl’s lap. In the meantime Johnny was fighting his way through the throng toward the store where he had seen the pink-eyed man. The crowd was increasing. He made his way through it with great difficulty. Then, just as he reached the outer edge of it, there came a cry: “Back! Back!” Wedged in between a fat Jewish woman with a shawl over her head and a dark Italian with a bundle on his back, Johnny found himself carried backward, still backward, then to one side until a passage had been made. Through this passage, like a young queen in a pageant, the girl he had rescued rode atop the truck. And by her side, important as a footman, rode Jerry, the monkey. Hardly had the truck moved to a place of safety than again came the cry: “Back! Back!” Once more the crowd surged away from the fire. High time it was, too, for the brick walls, trembling like a tree before its fall, threatened to topple over and crush them. For a long moment it stood tottering, then instead of pitching headlong into the street, it crumbled down like a melting mass of waxen blocks. A wail rose from the crowd. Their school was gone. This was followed almost at once by a shout of joy. Their homes were saved, for were not a score of nozzles playing upon the crumbled, red-hot mass, reducing it to blackness and ashes? Such was the burning of the Shelby School. Who had set this fire? Where was he now? These were Johnny Thompson’s problems. Unless they were speedily solved there was reason to believe that within a month, perhaps within a week, or even a day, other public buildings would be burned to a heap of smouldering ruins. Who was this firebug? What could his motives be? He thought of the pink-eyed man and of that expression he had surprised on his face. He fought his way back to the store in which he had seen the man. The store was dark, the door locked. “No use;” he told himself, “couldn’t find him in this crowd. Probably never see him again. Probably nothing to it, anyway. Some people are so constituted that they just naturally enjoy a catastrophe. They’d smile at the burning of their own home. Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” In this he was partly wrong. He was destined to see this pink-eyed man again, again, and yet again; and always under the most unusual circumstances. But now his thoughts turned to the child. She had said she had no home. How could that be? What did she know about the fire? Had she been in the building at the time it was set? That seemed probable. Could she answer important questions? That seemed probable, too. He must question her; not now, not here, but in some quiet place. She needed rest and probably food as well. Where should he take her? He had no relatives in the city. His own room would not do. The fire station would be too public and the little girl would be too greatly alarmed to talk well there. “Mazie,” he thought to himself, “Mazie will take us in.” Ten minutes later, he and the girl were speeding toward the home of Mazie, the girl pal of Johnny’s boyhood days. It was a very much surprised Mazie who at last answered Johnny’s repeated ringing of her bell, but when she saw it was Johnny who called she at once invited him to join her in the kitchen, the proper place to entertain a friend who calls at three in the morning in a grimy fireman’s uniform. Mazie was a plump young lady. The bloom on her cheeks was as natural as the brown of her abundant hair. A sincere, honest, healthy girl she was—just the kind to be pal to a boy like Johnny. “Mazie,” said Johnny as he entered the kitchen and sat down to watch her light the gas, “this is a little girl I found. I have a notion she’s hungry—are you?” he turned to the girl. The girl nodded her head. “What’s your name?” “Tillie McFadden.” It was a strange story that Tillie McFadden told over Mazie’s cold lunch and steaming cocoa. She truly had no home. Weeks before—she did not now how many—her mother had died. Neighbors had come in. They had talked of an orphan asylum for her. She had not known quite what that was, but it had frightened her. She ran away. A corner newstand man had allowed her to sell papers for him. With these few pennies she had bought food. For three nights she had slept on a bed of shavings in a barrel back of a crockery store. Then, while prowling round a school house at night, she had discovered a basement window with a broken catch. She had climbed in and, having made her way to the upper story which was used as a gymnasium, had slept on wrestling mats. Since this was better than the barrel, like some stray kitten that has found its way out of the dark and the cold, she had made her home there. “And now,” she exclaimed, her eyes growing suddenly wide with excitement, “it’s all burned up!” “What time did you go to sleep to-night?” Johnny asked. “I—I think I heard the tower clock strike eleven.” “And were you up there all the time?” “No, down in the office mostly.” “The office?” Johnny leaned forward eagerly. That was where the fire had started. “Yes.” “What were you doing in the office?” “Looking at picture books. Lots of them down there, and I could read by the light from the street lamp.” “But didn’t you hear any sound; smell smoke or anything?” “N—o,” the girl cast upon him a look of puzzled eagerness. It was plain that she wished to help all she could. Further questioning revealed the fact that she had nothing more of importance to tell. The sound of fire gongs and sirens had wakened her. She had gone to the window to look down. Then, realizing her peril, she had dashed for the head of the stairs, only to find her way cut off by flames and smoke. She had returned to the window. The rest Johnny knew as well as she. After the child had been put to sleep on a couch in the living room, Johnny and Mazie sat long by the kitchen table, talking. Johnny told of his new task and of his hopes of capturing the firebug. “Of course,” he said, “the police and fire inspectors are working on it. They’ll probably solve the mystery first. I hope they solve it to-morrow. No one wants the city’s buildings burned and lives endangered by fire. But,” he sighed, “I’d like to be the lucky fellow.” “I wish you might,” said Mazie loyally. “I—I wish I could help you. Oh, Johnny, can’t I? Couldn’t I come down and stay awhile in that strange central station where all the alarms come in? It must be fairly bewitching.” “I guess there’d be no objection to that,” said Johnny thoughtfully. “As for your helping me, I’ll welcome all the help I can get. Looks like I was going to need it. Didn’t get a clue except—well, there was the pink-eyed man.” “The pink-eyed man?” Mazie exclaimed in amazement. “Who was he?” Johnny told her about the man in the store. “Probably not much to it,” he added at the end. “But, Johnny,” said Mazie suddenly, “if Tillie was in the office until nearly eleven o’clock, how could the fire, which started near the office, have gotten going so strong before the firemen arrived? It takes some time to start a big blaze, doesn’t it?” “Yes, it must,” answered Johnny thoughtfully. “Doesn’t seem that the firebug could have accomplished it in an hour. It might have been—” he paused to consider—“it might have been set by a mechanism such as is sometimes used on a time bomb, but how could it have been gotten in during the day? Tell you what!” he exclaimed, “I’ll go back there as soon as the fire cools and look about in the ruins. That side of the wall fell outward. If a mechanism was used, its remains should still be there. I may discover something.” He did go and he did discover something. At the time of this discovery the thing appeared insignificant, but Johnny’s motto was, “You never can tell,” and so he filed it away in his memory. Mazie did go down to the central alarm station on the very next night, and that night there came in over the wires the thrilling third alarm. |
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