A THRILLING RESCUE
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.