  “That,” exclaimed the Chief, turning to Johnny, “is one of yours. It’s the old Garrity School.” “That’s right,” Johnny answered. “It’s not a school now; sort of a social center for downtown folks. The fire starts in the office as usual.” “Sure enough it does. You’re a wizard.” “No need to be a wizard to tell that. This is the fourth fire on city property and every one started near the office. Time we were learning something from that one fact, something about how the fires are set. I dug up a bit of evidence in that last fire; couple of wires in——” “You won’t learn much about this fire until it’s burned out,” broke in the Chief. “Look at her shooting toward the sky. That dirty trick they played us lost us time.” He leaped from the car and was at once in the midst of it, quietly issuing orders. “Going to be bad,” he said to Marshal Neil. “If we save the Simons Building we’ll be in luck. Wind’s strong from the lake. It’s fireproof, but has no shutters. Full of furniture, new furniture. Burn like stove wood. Get all the lines you can spare playing on that side. Beat it back if you can.” “Corigon,” he turned suddenly to the driver, “go send in another alarm. Call up the fire boat. She’s got twelve lines. It’s pretty far to the river, but she’ll do in an emergency. “Neil, tell the boys to get up the fire tower. Clear the Simons Building. Not many people in there, I guess. Some cleaners, though. Better be safe. She’ll go fast if she goes.” There were people in the Simons Building; three at least—Johnny, Mazie and the pink-eyed man whom Johnny suspected of being the firebug. Johnny and Mazie had left the car and had been skirting the engines for a better look at the fire when Johnny had suddenly brought Mazie up with a shrill whisper: “There he is!” “Who?” “The fire—the—the pink-eyed man.” “Where?” “There. He’s just crossing the street. I believe—yes, yes. C’mon.” In imminent danger of being run down by a fire engine, they darted across the street and into the Simons Building. “You wait here in the corridor,” whispered Johnny. “He went in. I saw him. Want to shadow him.” “No. I might lose you. I—I’ll go along.” “C’mon, then.” On tiptoes they explored the corridors. Then, having found no sign of the man, and having come upon an unlocked stairway door, they started up. There were no open doors at the second, third or fourth floors, nor at the fifth, nor sixth. Johnny had about decided to turn back when he discovered the seventh floor door stood ajar. Tip-toeing silently forward, they entered the corridor, a long tunnel-like affair extending as far as they could see, both to the right and left, and lighted only by some small red lamps. “Down this way. I heard him,” Mazie whispered. At that identical instant Johnny actually caught sight of a movement in the opposite direction. Without thinking that his companion would do other than follow, he tip-toed down the corridor. The person, whoever he was, moved silently down the hall to at last suddenly disappear through a door or a side hall to the left. Stealthily Johnny followed on. As for Mazie, being actually confident of her discovery of the person and supposing as a matter of course that Johnny would follow her, she had gone tip-toeing in the opposite direction. She had not gone a dozen paces when, on hearing a sound at her left, she found herself looking down a corridor darker than the first and which ran off at right angles to the one she was following. By this time she had discovered that Johnny had vanished; but lured on by slight sounds and spurred forward by the tang of adventure, she followed on down this corridor, then turned into another one to the right, and after that a great way to the left again. When at last she came up square against a door at the end of this last corridor and found that there was no right nor left for her now, she began dimly to sense the fact that she was lost. She did not realize this in all its fullness until she had started to retrace her steps. Then, to her consternation, she discovered three corridors running to the right. “Three,” she whispered as her heart skipped a beat, “and which one was it that I came down?” At that precise moment a fresh suggestion of horror set her knees trembling. Her delicate nostrils had detected smoke! There could be no doubt about it! “The fire’s just across the street,” she thought, “and the wind is right this way. This building may be on fire at this very moment.” Her only thought now was of escape. But what was the way out? She thought of the door at the end of the hall. “Probably opens on a stair,” she told herself. It did, but the stair went up, not down. By this time, quite thoroughly frightened, she took the up-going stairs. She had climbed three flights before she realized her folly. At that time she found herself at a door leading down the corridor. “Follow it to a stairway that is open all the way down,” she told herself. She had gone a hundred feet or more when light from a room attracted her attention. There was, she found, no lamps lit in the room. The light entered through the window—the glow of the fire. Impulsively she rushed to the window and threw up the sash. The sight that struck her eye staggered her like a blow upon the head. Dizzy depths below was the street where the struggling firemen toiled, and half way up to where she stood, and off a hundred or more feet to the right, her own building was belching forth flames. “How—how am I ever to escape!” she breathed as she dropped limply by the window sill. All this time Johnny Thompson had not been idle. The clue he followed had led him at last to a room that was open, and in that room he had found, not the man of the pink eyes, but an Italian cleaner waxing the floor. He at once warned the man to leave the building. Chagrined at his failure to locate his man, he turned about to look for Mazie. Then, for the first time, he knew they were separated. Realizing the danger of remaining in this building too long, he hastened back over his trail. Having come to the place where they had been separated, he made his way first to the right, then to the left. Calling her name, but receiving no reply, he wandered back and forth for some time. Then, catching the first faint sign of smoke, he hurried back to the head of the stairway and fairly flew down it. He was going for aid. A number of searchers might find her where one would fail. Into the street, thronged now with firemen, laced and interlaced by lines of hose, soaked and slippery with water, for some time he found no one whom he could feel sure was in charge of men. At last he came upon Marshal Neil. The Marshal was kindly, but inflexible. “Men have been sent to warn workers out of the building,” he said. “Doubtless they will come upon the girl and bring her down. No others can be spared.” Sick at heart, Johnny was about to retrace his steps and again enter the building when an exclamation from the man nearest him attracted his attention. The man was not a fireman. Johnny recognized him instantly as the cause of all his present trouble. It was the pink-eyed man. But, having followed the man’s upward glance, he saw that which drove all other thoughts out of his mind. There, in the tenth story window, waving her arms frantically, was Mazie. What had happened? Simply this: As calmly as her wildly throbbing brain would permit her, Mazie had made her way down every corridor that suggested a possible exit. She had found only two. These two were blocked by smoke and fire. Her only hope of escape lay through that window; a window that was far above the reach of the tallest ladder. Johnny was struck dumb. How was she to be saved? “Why not send the monkey up?” calmly suggested the pink-eyed man. Johnny stared at him blankly. What could the man mean? He must be a madman. As Johnny thought of this the man began dragging a large ball of strong hempen twine from his pocket. “Send him up with the end of this,” he said, as calmly as if he had been suggesting tying a parcel with it. At the same time he gave a sidewise nod toward Jerry, the monkey mascot of the hook and ladder company. Instantly Johnny was at the side of the truck. Here was a chance, though a slim one. “Did Jerry ever scale a wall?” he asked of the driver. “Many’s the time. Guess he must’a belonged to an organ grinder.” “Would he take the end of this to her?” asked Johnny, looking up at the window. “Mebby. Then what?” “We’d attach the lower end to a rope from the emergency wagon.” “And then what?” “She’d draw up the rope, attach it to something inside the room, and come on down.” “Hand over hand?” Johnny nodded. “A girl?” “Yes, a girl!” Johnny shouted fiercely. “She’s a girl, but not the soft kind. She’s got nerve, Mazie has. And when she was a kid she could climb a rope. I know. She was my pal. She’s not forgotten how. Question is, are you going to send Jerry up?” “Sure I am.” The driver climbed down from his wagon with alacrity, then working his way through the scorching heat to a place beneath the window, he looked up to the window where the girl was plainly visible, patted Jerry on the head, and said: “See her up there? It’s roasted chestnuts and a box of chocolates fer you if you get up to her.” With almost human intelligence the little creature took the cord firmly in his teeth and with a leap was away, scurrying up from window ledge to window ledge, making progress where even a squirrel would not have attempted to go. Mazie, on her part, could not so much as guess what was going on below. She was trapped. They knew that. They would save her if it was humanly possible. She knew that, too. She had caught the bright gleam of the monkey’s cap as he was carried to the wall, but what could the monkey have to do with her rescue? Strangely enough, in this moment of excitement and great danger, she felt a desire to sing. It often happens that way. And the songs that came to her mind were songs of peace. “I have a sweet peace that is calm as a river,” she sang softly. And then: “I tell Him all that troubles me, I tell Him what amays; And so we walk together, My——” Her song broke short off. Had she seen a vision? No, there it was again, Jerry’s jaunty red cap bobbing down there above a window, half way between her own window and the ground. It was strange what a comfort she found in the company of such a small creature, for he truly was company. Was he not much closer to her than any other living thing? Even as she watched, the monkey drew nearer, leaping from ledge to ledge, climbing higher and higher. Without in the least understanding what it all meant, Mazie found her heart in her mouth as the dauntless little creature, leaping from a window sill, caught a stone ledge with but one hand, balanced there for a second as if about to fall, and then threw himself with a fine show of skill to another and wider ledge where he might pause an instant for breath. An instant only, then he was at it again, climbing, climbing. Clawing here, leaping there, swinging to a window, up—up—up, until at last, with a sigh of relief, the girl seized him and dragged him in. The instant she saw the end of the string she understood and hope came ebbing back. Not a second was to be lost. The fire, which was working toward the center of the building and up, was now only four windows to the right and five down. Had the building not been fireproof it would have burned like a torch. As it was, the fire, fed by the contents of offices and store-rooms, worked its way from room to room. Rapidly she drew in the cord, and with it the rope attached to the end. When at last she held the end of the rope in her hand she carried it to a heavy table and wrapped it about the top. Then she dragged the table to the window. At once the monkey, as if to show her the way, went scampering down the rope. All this had taken time. When at last the girl, with a little prayer for protection on her lips, gripped the rope firmly and glanced down, she saw that fire had burst forth from the window two rows to her right and six stories down. Would the window directly beneath her soon be belching flames? Would it burn off the rope before she had reached the ground? Panic seized her for an instant. Then, calmly, she finished the song she had begun a moment before: “And so we walk together My Lord and I.” Then, calm as a May morning, she wrapped her feet about the rope and began the descent, hand over hand, right, left, right, left. It was painfully slow, but there was no other way. To slip was to come to a terrible death. |
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