“Tom, run out and get a policeman, and come back as quick as you can!”
Jack flung the words back as he leaped forward and stumbled against the
bottom step of a flight of stairs. Higher up he could hear his quarry
scuttling off in the darkness like a rat.
“You’re going after him?”
“Yes. I must. We’ve got a chance to get on the trail of these rascals
right now, and I don’t intend to miss it.”
There was a snap in Jack’s tones as he spoke that convinced Tom it would
be useless to argue. He hurried out to get an officer of the law while
Jack plunged blindly up the staircase, stumbling at every other step.
Ahead of him he could still hear the retreating footsteps.
In his anger at the behavior of the rascals who had stolen the model and
kidnapped young Ingersoll, Jack gave little thought to the grave danger
he was running. Guided by the sound of the unseen man’s flight he
bounded up the stairs at top speed, barking his shins and bruising
himself as he stumbled and slipped in the darkness.
One—two—three landings he passed, and then he came to what appeared to
be the top story of the old house. At any rate, above his head was a
square of star-spangled sky, framed apparently by a skylight. Jack
reached out a hand and encountered the rungs of a ladder. Clearly it led
to the roof, and the man he was pursuing had used it to reach the top of
the rickety old edifice.
“Well, here goes!” exclaimed Jack; “it’s taking a big chance, but if I
lose him now I might as well bid good-bye to the chance of ever getting
on his tracks again.”
While this thought flashed through his mind he was rapidly scaling the
ladder. In a jiffy he was on the roof of the tenement. But not a trace
of the man he was following could he see. All at once, however, he spied
a sort of raised doorway on what appeared to be the roof of an adjoining
house.
A space of some three feet separated the two houses, but Jack jumped
across it without hesitation. From the fact that the man was not in
sight, and there was no other place down which he could have vanished.
Jack argued that he must have descended by this scuttle.
A ladder, similar to the one he had just ascended, led down from the
scuttle to the interior of the house into which he believed the
red-bearded man had vanished. Jack descended this, and found himself on
a landing illumined by a smoky lamp. Opposite to where he stood was a
door.
While he stood there, still hesitating, he heard from within the room a
cry that thrilled his blood.
“Don’t! Oh, don’t! I’ve told you all I know! I have, really I have!”
“Heavens! That’s Ralph’s voice!” gasped Jack; “those rascals have got
him prisoner in there and are trying to find out something more about
Mr. Peregrine from him. Oh, if Tom will only hurry with that policeman!
I guess I’ll go back and meet him and——”
Crash! Jack felt a sudden stinging blow on the back of the head. A
hundred brilliant lights danced in front of his eyes, and then came what
seemed to be the bursting of a bomb within his head. At the same instant
everything went black.
“Humph! That’s the time I fooled you nicely,” muttered a voice, as a
figure stooped over the unconscious boy and raised him from the floor.
It was the red-bearded man, by name Jake Rook, who, instead of
descending the scuttle as Jack had imagined, had been hiding behind a
stack of chimneys. He had seen Jack vanish into the scuttle, and had
crept softly after him without the boy having any notion that danger was
behind him.
“Get the police after me, eh?” he growled, still holding Jack’s limp
figure in his arms; “not yet, young man, nor soon, either, if Jake Rook
knows his business.”
So saying, he half-lifted, half-dragged Jack toward the door and rapped
on it three times in a peculiar manner. It was instantly opened, and the
rat-like face of the black-moustached man appeared. The instant his eyes
lit on Jack’s pallid countenance, as he lay supported in the other’s
arms in the doorway, he gave an exclamation.
“By hooky, Jake! One of those kids! How on earth?”
“Never mind questions now. I’ll explain it later. Help me get him
inside. Hurry now. The other kid’s gone alter the police.”
“Jove! How did they locate us?”
“Don’t know. Accident, I guess. I ran right into ’em as I was coming out
of the doorway next door.”
While they were speaking the two men dragged Jack into the room and
flung him on a rough bed in one corner of the place. Already huddled
miserably on the wretched pallet was the figure of Ralph Ingersoll. His
face was pale and scared, and he had a bruise on his forehead, received
the day before when he had gallantly attempted to fight off the two
rascals in the yellow auto.
“It’s Jack Chadwick!” he exclaimed, as the men flung their unconscious
burden down; “how did he come here? What dreadful thing have you done?”
“You shut up,” warned Jake Rook savagely; “listen, now, Rad.”
So saying he launched into an account of just how he had encountered the
two boys and how he had tricked Jack into walking into a trap. While he
was doing this Ralph, despite the risk he ran of being brutally treated
by the men, got some water from a tin jug in one corner of the room and
bathed Jack’s forehead. But the boy’s eyes remained closed, and his
heavy breathing showed that he was far from recovering consciousness.
“The question now is, what’s the next best move?” queried Radcliff, as
Jake Rook concluded his recital.
“Well, we’d best lie quietly here for a while. You see the police will
be in the next house in a few minutes. They’ll search it and maybe this
one, too.”
“In that case we’d better get out of here.”
“No, I’ve got a better plan.”
“What’s that?”
For reply Jake Rook gave his beard a tug and off it came, revealing him
as a clean-shaven fellow with a heavy bulldog jaw. Next he removed a
wig, and no one would have recognized him, even had they had a far
longer acquaintanceship with him than had Jack or Tom.
“You’re a wonder, Jake,” exclaimed his companion admiringly; “well, what
now?”
For answer Jake Rook stepped to the wall. He fumbled for a minute and
then pulled back a section of the wainscotting, disclosing a sort of
dark closet within.
“You get in there with the two kids, and if they try to make a holler
you know how to keep them quiet. Hark!”
“Someone’s on the roof!”
“That’s right. In with you. Quick, now, they’ll be here in a minute.”
The two men picked up Jack and carried him to the opening, thrust him
in. Ralph was bidden to follow, and he was far too terrified to make any
objections.
“If he makes a sound you know what to do, Rad?” said Jake Rook, with a
sinister look at the trembling boy.
“I know, all right,” muttered the other, producing a revolver from his
hip pocket and tapping it suggestively.
Jake Rook’s disguise was thrown into the hole in the wall also, and then
the panel was slid into place again. This done, it would have defied the
keenest eyes to tell that there had ever been an opening there. As the
panel was slid shut the vastly altered Jake Rook tiptoed softly across
the room to the door and listened intently. He was just in time to hear
somebody descending the ladder.
Instantly he slid across the room and threw himself on the couch,
drawing the dirty blankets up to his chin. He had just done so when a
sharp rap sounded on the door. Jake instantly began to cough in a
painful manner.
“Ugh-ugh-ugh! Who’s there?”
“Open this door at once!”
“Ugh-ugh, I’m sick in bed. Open it yourself. What is it?
Ugh-ugh-ugh—what do you want?” As he spoke the door was flung open and
two policemen, with Tom just behind them, stepped into the room.
“Who are you?” demanded one of them of the figure on the ragged bed.
“Ugh-ugh—oh, my cough!—My name’s Tattered Terry. I was selling papers up
to a week ago, when I took sick. Ugh-ugh, how my cough hurts!”
“Guess we’re on the wrong scent,” said one of the policemen.
Then he turned to the huddled figure of the man on the couch.
“Did you hear any disturbance here to-night? We’re looking for a boy who
entered the place next door and has vanished.”
“Ugh-ugh-ugh,” and Jake Rook was shaken by what seemed to be a paroxysm
of coughing, “if he’s in the next house, why don’t you look there?”
“We have, but there’s no trace of him,” burst out Tom; “are you quite
sure you’ve heard nothing unusual?”
“Ugh-ugh. Oh, my poor lungs! Not a thing, my boy, not a thing.
Ugh-ugh—is that all you want to know?”
“I guess that’s all,” said one of the policemen. Turning to Tom, he
continued: “Are you quite sure he went in next door?”
“Yes, oh, yes, I’m certain of it. I’d know the house by those peculiarly
shaped lower windows. Oh, what can have become of him?”
“Well, he’s not here, that’s certain,” said one of the policemen and,
with Tom in despair at the disappearance of Jack, they bade the seeming
sick man a gruff good-night and left the room. But Jake Rook did not
arise immediately. Instead, he lay very still till he was sure that the
police had visited the other dwellers in the rookery. Then he sprang
from the bed and hastened to the panel. In a second he flung it open and
released Radcliff.
“Phew!” panted that worthy, as he stepped out into the room, followed by
Ralph, who looked more woebegone than ever, “it’s like a furnace in
there. I don’t think we could have stood it much longer.”
Ralph, who felt sick and dizzy from his confinement in the stuffy hole,
reeled over to the cot and sank down on it wearily, while the two men
once more lifted Jack across the room. His body was limp, and his face
still white and deathlike. Jake Rook gave a startled look at him.
“He’s taking a long time to come to,” he growled; “I hope I didn’t hit
him too hard.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Radcliff, a rather scared look coming over
his countenance.
“Why, that—that——Hark! What’s that?”
Somewhere below in the house somebody was shouting something at the top
of his lungs. What was it, that alarmed cry, coming in that high-pitched
voice?
Radcliff stepped to the door and opened it. The cry was plain enough
then. It was being caught up and echoed by a score of frightened voices
throughout the tumble-down tenement.
“Fire! fire! fire!”
On the bottom floor of the rickety old tenement a lamp had exploded.
Already the flames were spreading to the stairways.
“We’ll have to get out by the roof!” exclaimed Radcliff, in a nervous
tone; “this place will burn like a haystack once that fire gets a good
start.”
“That’s right! Come on, we’ve no time to lose. Here, you,” and Jake Rook
seized Ralph roughly by the wrist and began dragging him out of the
room.
In the meantime Radcliff dived under the cot and secured the model of
the vanishing gun machine and the papers which had been hidden there.
Having done this, he started after Jake Rook. Already the street below
was full of shouts, and the acrid reek of smoke was filling the hallway.
“Come on! We’ve no time to lose,” admonished Rook, rushing through the
doorway, still holding Ralph in an iron grip.
But the boy hung back, pleading piteously. His eyes were on Jack’s
unconscious form, which lay just as it had been flung across the cot.
“But, Jack—you’ve left Jack!” he cried. “Surely you don’t mean to leave
him behind!”
“You shut up and come on, or I’ll take steps to make you,” was the gruff
reply, and the next moment Radcliff closed the door of the room, and
dragging Ralph after them the two ruffians effected their escape from
the burning house.