The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII
Mock Rose
TAKING the dazed young man by the hand, as though he had been a child, the Reverend Mr. Wright led Alan back to his study and established him in a comfortable armchair beside his desk.
At the elbow of the Reverend Mr. Wright a telephone shrilled. With a gesture of professional patience he turned to the instrument, lifted the receiver to his ear, and spoke in musically modulated accents:
"Yes; this is Mr. Wright. … Ah, you, Mr. Digby. … Not coming? But, my dear sir, Mr. Law is already here. I must tell you"
"If you please," Alan begged, "let me speak to Digby at once. Forgive me"
Reluctantly the minister surrendered the telephone.
"That you, Digby?"
"Alan! Bless my soul, what are you doing over there?"
"Rose? What about her?" Alan demanded, stammering with anxiety.
"Why—one of my spies has just reported by telephone. He saw a young woman—either Rose or Judith—climb out of one of the basement windows of Trine's house this morning. Then several rough-looking customers rushed out of Trine's house, seized the girl, and made off with her in a motor-car bearing a New Jersey license number."
Without a word of response, and without a word of apology to the Reverend Mr. Wright, Alan dropped the receiver and fled that house like a man demented.
There was neither a motor-car in sight nor any time to waste in seeking one. Alan could only hope to find one on his way back toward the ferry. He traversed a vast amount of strange territory, and it must have been upward of an hour before he came into a street which he recognized.
As he paused, to cast about him for the way to the ferry, a touring-car turned a corner at top-speed and slowed to a stop before an unsavoury tenement. This touring-car was occupied by half a dozen ruffians in whose hands a young girl struggled, as they jumped out and wrestled her out with brutal inconsideration.
Like a shot Alan had crossed the street, but only to bring up nose to the panels pf the tenement door, and to find himself seized and thrown roughly aside by a burly denizen when he grasped the knob and made as if to follow in.
"Keep back, young feller!" his assailant warned him.
To the speaker's side another ranged, eying Alan with a formidable scowl. An elbow planted heavily in the pit of the stomach of one disposed of him for the time being. A blow from the shoulder sent the other reeling to the gutter. And Alan was in the tenement's lowermost hall. Sounds of scuffling feet were audible on the first landing. Alan addressed himself impetuously to the staircase, gaining its top in half a dozen leaps, and only in time to see a door slammed at the forward end of the hall and hear a key turned in its lock.
A cluster of men blocked his way. He threw himself headlong into their midst, and gained the closed door before they sought to stay him.
He shook the knob and shouted: "Rose! Rose!"
Her cry came back to him, a muffled scream: "Alan! Help! Help!"
Backing away with a mad idea of throwing himself bodily against the door and breaking it down, he was suddenly confronted by a hideously menacing face.
Without the hesitation of a heart-beat Alan swung heavily for the thug's jaw. The blow went solidly home. The man fell like a poled ox.
Pendemonium ensued. Rallying to their comrade, the ruffians attacked Alan with one mind and one intent. Simultaneously the lamp on the wall was struck from its bracket and crashed to the floor, its glass well breaking and loosing a flood of kerosene to receive the burning wick. The explosion followed instantly. In a trice the hallway was a lake of burning oil.
Still fighting like a madman, contesting every foot of the way, Alan was borne downstairs by the fleeing mob and out of the front door. The doorway vomited men and women of the tenement. By the time they left the way clear a solid wall of flame stood behind it.
Thrice Alan essayed to pass that barrier of fire, and thrice it threw him back.
Then drawing aside, he endeavoured to come to his sober senses, and cast about for some more feasible way to effect the rescue of his Rose.
That way was revealed to him in another instant.
The tenement occupied one corner of a narrow street and directly opposite stood a storage warehouse. Before this last was the common landing stage for truck deliveries protected by a shed roof. And, suspended from a timber that peered out over the eaves, a hoisting tackle dragged the ground with its ropes.
It was the work of another minute to rig a loop in the line and fasten it round his body beneath the arms. Volunteers did not lack—a couple of husky longshoremen sprang to the ropes. They heaved with a will. His feet left the ground. He caught the eaves of the shed roof and drew himself up on this last, back a little way down it, and calculating his direction nicely, with a running jump launched himself out over the street.
The momentum of his leap carried him truly toward that window where Rose was waiting. Then its force slackened. For an awful instant he believed that he had failed. But with the last expiring ounce of impetus he was brought within grasping distance of the window-sill.
Hauling himself up, he gathered her into his arms. …
A great tongue of flames licked angrily out of the window as he swung her back to safety.