"I don't know--must've been in the house--I told cabby to wait--Anisty
seems to have walked out right on your heels."
"Hell!" And a moment later: "What's this about a woman in the case?"
Maitland took swift thought on her behalf.
"Too long to go into now," he parried the query. "You help me catch
this scoundrel Anisty and I'll put in a good word for you with the
deputy commissioner."
"Ah, yeh help _me_ nab him," grunted the detective, "'nd I won't need
no good word with nobody."
The hansom swung into Broadway, going like a whirlwind; and picked up
an uniformed officer in front of the Flatiron Building, who, shouting
and using his locust stridently, sprinted after them. A block further
down another fell into line; and he it was who panted at the step an
instant after the cab had lurched to a stop before the entrance to the
St. Luke Building.
Hickey had rolled out before the policeman had a chance to bluster.
"'Lo, Bergen," he greeted the man. "Yeh know me--I'm Hickey, Central
Office. Yeh're jus' in time. Anisty's in this buildin'--'r was ten
minutes ago. We want all the help we c'n get."
By way of reply the officer stooped and drummed a loud alarm on the
sidewalk with his night-stick.
"Say," he panted, rising, "you're a wonder, Hickey--if you get him."
"Uh-huh," grunted the detective with a sidelong glance at Maitland.
"C'm 'long."
The lobby of the building was quite deserted as they entered, the
night-watchman invisible, the night elevator on its way to the roof--as
was discovered by consultation of the indicator dial above the gate.
Hickey punched the night call bell savagely.
"Me 'nd him," he said, jerking the free thumb at Maitland, "'ll go up
and hunt him out. Begin at th' top floor an' work down. That's th' way,
huh? 'Nd," to the policeman, "yeh stay here an' hold up anybody 't
tries tuh leave th' buildin'. There ain't no other entrance, I s'pose,
what?"
"Basement door an' ash lift's round th' corner," responded the officer.
"But that had ought tuh be locked, night."
"Well, 'f anybody else comes along yeh put him there, anyway, for
luck.... What 'n hell's th' matter with this elevator?"
The detective settled a pudgy index-finger on the push button and
elicited a far, thin, shrill peal from the annunciator above. But the
indicator arrow remained as motionless as the car at the top of the
shaft. Another summons gained no response, in likewise, and a third was
also disregarded.
Hickey stepped back, face black as a storm-cloud, summed up his opinion
of the management of the building in one soul-blistering phrase,
produced his bandana and used it vigorously, uttered a libel on the
ancestry of the night-watchman and the likes of him, and turned to give
profane welcome to the policeman who had noticed the cab at
Twenty-third Street and who now panted in, blown and perspiring.
Much to his disgust he found himself assigned to stand guard over the
basement exits, and waddled forth again into the street.
Meanwhile the first officer to arrive upon the scene was taking his
turn at agitating the button and shaking the gates; and with no more
profit of his undertaking than Hickey. After a minute or two of it he
acknowledged defeat with an oath, and turned away to browbeat the
straggling vanguard of belated wayfarers,--messenger-boys, slatternly
drabs, hackmen, loafers, and one or two plain citizens conspicuously
out of their reputable grooves,--who were drifting in at the entrance
to line the lobby walls with blank, curious faces. Forerunners of that
mysterious rabble which is apparently precipitated out of the very air
by any extraordinary happening in city streets, if allowed to remain
they would in five minutes have waxed in numbers to the proportions of
an unmanageable mob; and the policeman, knowing this, set about
dispersing them with perhaps greater discretion than consideration.
They wavered and fell back, grumbling discontentedly; and Maitland, his
anxiety temporarily distracted by the noise they made, looked round to
find his erstwhile cabby at his elbow. Of whom the sight was
inspiration. Ever thoughtful, never unmindful of her whose influence
held him in this coil, he laid an arresting hand on the man's sleeve.
"You've got your cab--?"
"Yessir, right houtside."
"Drive round the corner, away from the crowd, and wait for me. If
she--the young lady--comes without me, drive her anywhere she tells you
and come to my rooms to-morrow morning for your pay."
"Thankee, sir."
Maitland turned back, to find the situation round the elevator shaft
_in status quo_. Nothing had happened, save that Hickey's rage and
vexation had increased mightily.
"But why don't you go up after him?"
"How 'n blazes can I?" exploded the detective. "He's got th' night car.
'F I takes the stairs, he comes down by th' shaft, 'nd how'm I tuh
trust this here mutt?" He indicated his associate but humbler custodian
of the peace with a disgusted gesture.
"Perhaps one of the other cars will run--" Maitland suggested.
"Ah, they're all dead ones," Hickey disagreed with disdain as the young
man moved down the row of gates, trying one after another. "Yeh're only
wastin'--"
He broke off with a snort as Maitland, somewhat to his own surprise
managing to move the gate of the third shaft from the night elevator,
stepped into the darkened car and groped for the controller. Presently
his fingers encountered it, and he moved it cautiously to one side. A
vicious blue spark leaped hissing from the controller-box and the cage
bounded up a dozen feet, and was only restrained from its ambition to
soar skywards by an instantaneous release of the lever.
By discreet manipulation Maitland worked the car down to the street
floor again, and Hickey with a grunt that might be interpreted as an
apology for his incredulity, jumped in.
"Let 'er rip!" he cried exultantly. "Fan them folks out intuh th'
street, Bergen, 'nd watch ow-ut!"
Maitland was pressing the lever slowly wide of its catch, and the
lighted lobby dropped out of sight while the detective was still
shouting admonitions to the police below. Gradually gaining in momentum
the car began to shoot smoothly up into the blackness, safety chains
clanking beneath the floor. Hickey fumbled for the electric light
switch but, finding it, immediately shut the glare off again and left
the car in darkness.
"Safer," he explained, sententious. "Anisty'll shoot, 'nd they says he
shoots straight."
Floor after floor in ghostly strata slipped silently down before their
eyes. Half-way to the top, approximately, Hickey's voice rang sharply
in the volunteer operator's ear.
"Stop 'er! Hold 'er steady. T'other's comin' down."
Maitland obeyed, managing the car with greater ease and less jerkily as
he began to understand the principle of the lever. The cage paused in
the black shaft, and he looked upward.
Down the third shaft over, the other cage was dropping like a plummet,
a block of golden light walled in by black filigree-work and bisected
vertically by the black line of the guide-rail.
"Stop that there car!"
Hickey's stentorian command had no effect; the block of light continued
to fall with unabated speed.
The detective wasted no more breath. As the other car swept past,
Maitland was shocked by a report and flash beside him. Hickey was using
his revolver.
The detonation was answered by a cry, a scream of pain, from the
lighted cage. It paused on the instant, like a bird stricken a-wing,
some four floors below, but at once resumed its downward swoop.
"Down, down! After 'em!" Hickey bellowed. "I dropped one, by God!
T'other can't--"
"How many in the car?" interrupted Maitland, opening the lever with a
firm and careful hand. "Only two, same's us, I hit th' feller what was
runnin' it--"
"Steady!" cautioned Maitland, decreasing the speed, as the car
approached the lower floor.
The other had beaten them down; but its arrival at the street level was
greeted by a short chorus of mad yells, a brief fusillade of
shots--perhaps five in all--and the clang of the gate. Then, like a
ball rebounding, the cage swung upwards again, hurtling at full speed.
Evidently Anisty had been received in force which he had not bargained
for.
Maitland instinctively reversed the lever and sent his own car upward
again, slowly, waiting for the other to overtake it. Peering down
through the iron lattice-work he could indistinctly observe the growing
cube of light, with a dark shape lying huddled in one corner of the
floor. A second figure, rapidly taking shape as Anisty's, stood by the
controller, braced against the side of the car, one hand on the lever,
the other poising a shining thing, the flesh-colored oval of his face
turned upwards in a supposititious attempt to discern the location of
the dark car.
Hickey, by firing prematurely, lent him adventitious aid. The criminal
replied with spirit, aiming at the flash, his bullet spattering against
the back wall of the shaft. Hickey's next bullet rang with a bell-like
note against the metal-work, Anisty's presumably went wide--though
Maitland could have sworn he felt the cold kiss of its breath upon his
cheek. And the lighted cage rocketed past and up.
Maitland needed no admonition to pursue; his blood was up, his heart
singing with the lust of the man-hunt. Yet Anisty was rapidly leaving
them, his car soaring at an appalling pace. Towards the top he
evidently made some attempt to slow up, but either he was ignorant of
the management of the lever, or else the thing had got beyond control.
The cage rammed the buffers with a crash that echoed through the
sounding halls like a peal of thunder-claps; it was instantaneously
plunged into darkness. There followed a splintering and rending sound,
and Maitland, heart in mouth, could make out dimly a dark, falling
shadow in the further shaft. Yet ere it had descended a score of feet
the safety-clutch acted and, with a third tremendous jar, shaking the
building, the car halted.
Hickey and Maitland were then some five floors below. "Stop 'er at
Nineteen," ordered the detective. There was a lilt of exultancy in his
voice. "We got him now, all right, all right. He'll try to get down
by--There!" Overhead the crash of a gate forced open was followed by a
scurry of footsteps over the tiling. "Stop 'er and we'll head him off.
So now--_eee_asy!"
Maitland shut off the power as the car reached the nineteenth floor.
Hickey opened the gate and jumped out. "Shut that," he commanded
sharply as Maitland followed him, "in case he gets past us."
He paused a moment in thought, heavy head on bull-neck drooping forward
as he stared toward the rear of the building. He was fearless and
resourceful, for all his many deficiencies. Maitland found time,
quaintly enough, to regard him with detached curiosity, a rare animal,
illustrating all that was best and worst in his order. Endowed with
unexceptionable courage, his address in emergencies seemed altogether
admirable.
"Yeh guard them stairs," he decided suddenly. "I'll run through this
hall, 'nd see what's doing. Don't hesitate to shoot if he tries to jump
yeh." And was gone, clumping briskly down the corridor to the rear.
Maitland, yielding the initiative to the other's superior generalship,
stood sentinel, revolver in hand, until the detective returned,
overheated and sweating, from his tour, to report "nothin' doin'," with
characteristic brevity. He had the same report to make on both the
twentieth and twenty-first floors, where the same procedure was
observed; but as the latter was reached unexpected and very welcome
reinforcements were gained by the arrival of a third car, containing
three patrolmen and one roundsman. Yet numbers created delay; Hickey
was seized and compelled to pant explanations, to his supreme disgust.
And, suddenly impatient beyond endurance, Maitland left them and alone
sprang up the stairs.
That this was simple foolhardiness may be granted without dispute. But
it must be borne in mind that he was very young and ardent, very
greatly perturbed on behalf of an actor in the tragedy in whom the
police, to their then knowledge, had no interest whatsoever. And if in
the heat of chase he had for an instant forgotten her, now he
remembered; and at once the capture of Anisty was relegated to the
status of a matter of secondary importance. The real matter at stake
was the safety of the girl whom Anisty, by exercise of an infernal
ingenuity that passed Maitland's comprehension, had managed to spirit
into this place of death and darkness and whispering halls. Where she
might be, in what degree of suffering and danger,--these were the
considerations that sent him in search of her without a thought of
personal peril, but with a sick heart and overwhelmed with a stifling
sense of anxiety.
More active than the paunch-burdened detective, he had sprinted down
and back through the hallway of the twenty-second floor, without
discovering anything, ere the police contingent had reached an
agreement and the stairhead.
There remained two more floors, two final flights. A little hopelessly
he swung up the first. And as he did so the blackness above him was
riven by a tongue of fire, and a bullet, singing past his head,
flattened itself with a vicious spat against the marble dado of the
walls. Instinctively he pulled up, finger closing upon the trigger of
his revolver; flash and report followed the motion, and a panel of
ribbed glass in a door overhead was splintered and fell in clashing
fragments, all but drowning the sound of feet in flight upon the upper
staircase.
A clamor of caution, warning, encouragement, and advice broke out from
the police below. But Maitland hardly heard. Already he was again in
pursuit, taking the steps two at a leap. With a hand upon the
newel-post he swung round on the twenty-third floor, and hurled himself
toward the foot of the last flight. A crash like a rifle-shot rang out
above, and for a second he fancied that Anisty had fired again and with
a heavier weapon. But immediately he realized that the noise had been
only the slamming of the door at the head of the stairs,--the door
whose glazed panel loomed above him, shedding a diffused light to guide
his footsteps, its opalescent surface lettered with the name of
HENRY M. BANNERMAN
_Attorney & Counselor-at-Law_
the door of the office whose threshold he had so often crossed to meet
a friend and adviser. It was with a shock that he comprehended this, a
thrill of wonder. He had all but forgotten that Bannerman owned an
office in the building, in the rush, the urge of this wild adventure.
Strange that Anisty should have chosen it for the scene of his last
stand,--strange, and strangely fatal for the criminal! For Maitland
knew that from this eyrie there was no means of escape, other than by
the stairs.