THE CROWN OF IRON
Durkin's first feeling, as he scrambled to his feet and half-stumbled,
half-groped his way along the narrow, tunnel-like passage, was an
untimely and impotent and almost delirious passion to get out into the
open and fight--fight to the last, if need be, for all that narrowing
life still held for him. This feeling was followed by a quick sense of
frustration as he realized his momentary helplessness and how
comprehensive and relentless seemed the machinery of intrigue opposing
him.
Yet, he told himself with that lightning-like rapidity of thought which
came to him at such moments of peril, however intricate and vast the
machinery, however carefully planned the line of impending campaign,
the human element would be an essential part of it. And his last
forlorn hope, his final fighting chance, lay in the fact that wherever
the human element entered there also entered weakness and passion and
the possibility of accident.
What now remained to him, he warned himself as he hurriedly locked and
barred the two steel doors which shut off the first and second
passageway, was to think quickly and act decisively. Somewhere, at
some unforeseen moment, his chance might still come to him.
As for himself, he felt that he was safe enough, for the time being.
The officer who had detected him in the manhole would be sure to follow
up a case so temptingly suspicious. The police, in turn, could take
open advantage of an intrusion so obviously unauthorized and ominous as
his own, and find in it ample excuse for investigating a quarter which
for many months must have been under suspicion. But, under any
circumstances, well guarded as that poolroom fortress stood, its
resistance could be only a matter of time, and of strictly limited
time, once the reserves were on the scene.
Durkin's first thought, accordingly, was of the roof, for, so far as he
knew, all escape from the ground floor was even then cut off. Yet the
first door leading from the vault chamber he found to be steel-bound
and securely locked. He surmised, with a gasp of consternation, that
the doors above him would be equally well secured. He remembered that
Penfield never did things by halves, and he felt that his only escape
lay in that upward flight.
So he saw that it was to be a grim race in demolition; that while he
was to gnaw and eat his way upward through steel and brick, like a
starving rat boring its passage up through the chambers of a huge
granary, his pursuers would be pounding and battering at the lower
doors in just as frenzied pursuit.
He no longer hesitated, but moved with that clear-thoughted rapidity of
action which often came to him in his moments of half-delirium.
Turning to his tool-bag and scooping out his bar of soap, he kneaded
together enough of the nitroglycerine from one of the stout rubber bags
to make a mixture of the consistency of liquid honey. This he quickly
but carefully worked into the crack of the obstructing door. Then he
attached his detonator, and shortened and lighted his fuse, scuttling
back to the momentary shelter of the outer passage, making sure to be
beyond the deadly "feathered radius" of the nitro.
There he waited behind the steel-bound door for the coming detonation.
The sound of it smote him like a blow on the chest, followed by a rush
of air and a sudden feeling of nausea.
But he did not wait. He groped his way in, relocked the passage door
and crawled on all fours through the smoke and heavy, malodorous gases.
The remnants of the blasted door hung, like a tattered pennon, on one
twisted hinge, and his way now lay clear to the ladder of grilled
ironwork leading to the floor above. But here the steel trapdoor again
barred his progress. One sharp twist and wrench with his steel lever,
however, tore the bolt-head from its setting, and in another
half-minute he was standing on the closed door above, shutting out the
noxious smoke from the basement.
Between him and the stairway stood still another fortified door,
heavier than the others. He did not stop to knead his paste, for
already he could hear the crash of glass and the sound of sledges on
the door at the rear of the cigar-shop. Catching up a strand of what
he knew to be the most explosive of all guncottons--it was
cellulose-hexanitrate--he worked it gently into the open keyhole and
again scuttled back to safety as the fuse burnt down.
He could feel the building shake with the tremor of the detonation,
shake and quiver like a ship pounded by strong head seas. A remote
window splintered and crashed to the floor, sucked in by the
atmospheric inrush following the explosion-vacuum. He noticed, too, as
he mounted the narrow stairs before him, that he was bleeding at the
nose. But this, he told himself, was no time for resting. For at the
head of the second stairway still another sheet of armored steel
blocked his passage, and still again the hurried, hollow detonation
shook the building. The ache in his head, behind and above the eyes,
became almost unbearable; his stomach revolted at the poisonous gases
through which he was groping. But he did not stop.
As he twisted and pried with his steel lever at the lock of the
trapdoor that stood between him and the open air of the housetop, he
could already hear the telltale splintering of wood and sharp orders
and muffled cries and the approaching, quick tramping of feet. He
fought at the lock like a madman, for by this time the trampling feet
were mounting the upper stairs, and doors were being battered and
wrenched from their hinges. He had at least made their work easy for
them; he had torn open the heart of Penfield's stronghold; he had
blazed a path for those officers of the law who had bowed before the
inaccessibility of the building he had disrupted single-handed!
"Good!" he cried, in his frenzied delight. "Give it to them good!
Wreck 'em, once for all; put 'em out of business!"
Then he gave a sudden relieving "Ah!"--for the sullen wood had
surrendered its bolts, and the door swung open to his upward push. The
night wind, cold and damp and clean, swept his hot and grimy face as he
pulled himself up through the opening.
Even as he did so he heard the gathering sounds below him growing
clearer and clearer. He squatted low in the darkness, and with a
furtive eye ever on the dismantled trapdoor, groped his way,
gorilla-like, closer and closer to the wall against which he knew the
janitor's ladder to be still leaning.
Then he dropped flat on his face, and wormed his way toward the nearest
chimney, not twelve feet from him, for a wet helmet had emerged from
the trap opening. A moment later a lantern was flashing and playing
about the rainy roof.
"We've got 'em! Quick, Lanigan; we've got 'em!" cried the helmeted
head exultantly, from the trapdoor, to someone below.
The next moment Durkin, prone on his face, heard the crack of a
revolver and the impact of the ball as it ricochetted from the
roof-tin, not a yard from his feet.
He no longer tried to conceal himself, but, rolling and tumbling toward
the eave-cornice, let himself over, and hung and clung there by his
hands, while a second ball whistled over him.
He felt desperately along the flat brick surface, with his kicking
feet, wondering if he had misjudged his direction, sick with a fear
that he might be dangling over an open abyss. He shifted the weight of
his body along the cornice ledge, still pawing and feeling, feverishly
and ridiculously, with his gyrating limbs. Then a joy of relief swept
through him. The ladder was there, and his feet were already on its
second step.
As he ran, cat-like, across the lower apartment-house roof, he knew
that he stood in full range of his pursuers above, and he knew that by
this time they were already crowding out to the cornice-ledge. There
was no time for thought. He did not pause to look back at them, to
weigh either the problem or the possible consequences in his mind; he
only remembered that that afternoon he had noticed five crowded lines
of washing swinging in multi-colored disarray at the back of that
many-familied hive of life. He hesitated only once, at the sheer edge
of the roof, to make sure, in the uncertain half-light, that he was
above those crowded lines.
"Let him have it--there he goes!" cried a voice above, and at that too
warning note his hesitation took wing.
Durkin leaped out into space, straddling the first line of sodden
clothes as he fell. Even in that brief flight the thought came to his
mind that it would have been infinitely better for him if the falling
rain had not weighted and flattened those sagging lines of washing.
Then he remembered, more gratefully, that it was probably only because
of the rain that they still swung there.
As his weight came on the first line it snapped under the blow, as did
the second, which he clutched with his hands, and the third, which he
doubled over, limply, and the fourth, which cut up under his arm-pit.
But as he went downward he carried that ever-growing avalanche of
cotton and woolen and linen with him, so that when his sprawling figure
smote the stone court it fell muffled and hidden in a web of tangled
garments.