A MAN IN A HURRY
Heavy clouds hung low and not a star was visible. The darkness was
intensified by the gleam of distant city lights, for in that section of
Washington lying to the southwest of Pennsylvania Avenue a defective fuse
had caused the dimming of every electric light in the vicinity. Far up on
one of the roofs a man, crouching behind the meager shelter offered by a
chimney, blessed the chance which fortune provided.
Crawling on hands and knees, he cautiously made his way to the edges of
the roof, on which he had dropped from the higher building next door, and
looked down. His eyes straining in the darkness, every sense alert to
danger, he scanned intently each window ledge and cornice. No hope there.
Not even a lead pipe or telephone wires afforded a hold for desperate,
gripping fingers. Unlike the building adjoining on the south, the new
house had no party wall, and a gulf too wide to jump separated it from
its northern neighbor. The sheer drop to the garden beneath was suicidal.
The man lay for a few seconds striving to collect himself. He could not
return the way he had come. He would be caught like a rat in the trap
with the arrival of dawn, if not before. Perhaps his pursuers were on his
trail already. The thought spurred his numbed body to action, and lifting
his head he glanced along the flat roof. Toward the center of it rose a
box-like structure with apparently an arched skylight above it. A little
distance away from the structure, he distinguished the outlines of what
appeared to be a scuttle. Warily he approached it, and using every
precaution to make the least possible sound, he attempted to raise the
scuttle. A long sigh of relief escaped him as he succeeded. The scuttle
was not locked.
He paused long enough to glance keenly about him. There was no sign of
another human being, but a sound smote his ear. Someone was moving on the
pebbled roof of the building he had just left. Without an instant's delay
he groped about until his feet touched the rung of a ladder, and drawing
to the scuttle behind him, he made his way down the ladder.
On reaching the bottom he paused in indecision. He could make out nothing
in the inky blackness, and with every sense alive to danger, he waited.
But apparently his entrance had disturbed no one, and taking heart of
grace, he pulled out a tiny flashlight and pressed the button.
The light revealed a large attic partly filled with trunks and worn
furniture. A large wine closet, the bottles shining as the light fell on
them through the slat partition, occupied one part of the attic, while a
wall partition, with closed door, ran across the entire western side. To
his right, the man made out the head of a narrow staircase. He was making
his way to the staircase when his acute hearing caught the sound of a
softly closing door on the floor below and approaching footsteps.
Casting a hunted look about him, he spied a closed closet door. He doused
his light while making his way to the closet, and jerked open the door,
at the same time throwing out his right hand, the better to judge the
depth of the dark closet. His groping fingers closed on cold steel. His
heart lost a throb, then raced madly on, as he clung weakly to the metal.
An elevator shaft, and he had mistaken it for prison bars!
For a second his chilled body was shaken with hysterical desire for
laughter; then his strong will conquered. He had not forgotten the
advancing footsteps. A desperate situation required desperate chances.
Stepping back he closed the outer door of the elevator shaft and pressed
the button for the elevator. Which would reach him first--the person
creeping upstairs or the automatic electric elevator?