A WELL OF FIRE.
“So you are living in this brick house, and running the delicatessen
store as well?” said Nick the next evening, as he and his two
assistants stood outside Bonesy Billings’ home. “This is better than
being in a flat house downtown.”
“You bet it is,” assented Bonesy. “Besides, my work is up here in this
section, and I’ve no reason to go downtown to live. There’s plenty of
these old brick houses up here that can be rented for about what you’d
pay for a flat around Ninety-seventh Street, and it’s much more airy
and nice here. Then we have some roomers, that help out.”
“Who are they? Anybody I know, I wonder?” ventured Nick.
“Not likely. There’s a musician and his daughter—a nice young girl,
and I have another one—that fellow the gang was trying to do up at
Partrom’s last night. His name’s Gordon.”
“All!” remarked Carter, trying to be calm. “I’d like to see him again.”
“Well, I guess you can. I think he’s up in his room now. He isn’t
working to-night. The superintendent of the mill has laid him off until
inquiries are made into that fuss where you took a hand. It’s a rotten
shame! Gordon wasn’t to blame for that. The others jumped on him, and
he had to hold ’em off. He’s told me often that nothing can make him
fight—and he ain’t no coward, either.”
“Look, chief. What’s that?” shouted Patsy Garvan excitedly, running
toward the house. “Fire!”
“Heaven save us!” ejaculated Billings wildly. “It’s my house!”
He dashed into the store, and through to the back room, where he saw at
once what had happened. His wife had put kerosene on the kitchen range,
and there had been an explosion which meant destruction for the house.
Billings lifted his unconscious wife from the floor and ran out to the
street. Then he went back to save what few pieces of furniture he might
hope to get back before the fire took everything its own way.
The only hope lay in the fact that it was a brick structure, and not a
frame one. The house had been built after the fire laws had forbidden
the putting up of wooden buildings in that area. But there had been
many brick houses put up before the era of iron-frame skyscrapers, and
this was one of them.
An alarm had been turned in, and already members of the fire department
were dashing up with their machines. It looked as if the fire would
soon be overcome, when somebody shouted:
“Look! There’s somebody up top!”
The firemen, with their ladders, had already rescued a woman and two
children from another window. But these people who were shouting for
help from an attic were in the next house, which also had caught fire.
The firemen—efficient and cool-nerved, as all New York firemen are—put
their ladders up. But owing to the formation of the house, it was
impossible to get at the attic quickly.
Nick Carter had seen that it was a young girl at the window, and his
wonderful memory carried him back to that night at Maple, where he
had seen the girl they called Bessie Silvius, with her father, Roscoe
Silvius, who had played and sung in the garden of the Savoy.
“That only confirms my belief that Howard Milmarsh is here,” he told
himself. “It would be likely for them to live in the same house in New
York if they could, after being friends in the wilds of Canada.”
This passed his mind like a flash as he looked to see how they might be
rescued. He had seen that the firemen could not do it from the outside,
and he made up his mind to a desperate undertaking.
Fortunately, Nick was known to all the battalion chiefs of the fire
department, and to most of the other men. They all recognized him as
a wonderful detective, and he was allowed privileges that ordinary
citizens do not possess, even though they may have influence and great
wealth.
It is not an easy thing to get inside the fire lines and be permitted
to move about freely—unless you happen to be a newspaper man.
“Keep back, Patsy!” shouted Nick, as he dashed into the house, amid a
shower of sparks and through a flood of water pouring from two or three
lines of hose. “I’m going alone!”
“Come back!” bellowed a battalion chief. “You can’t get through there!”
Patsy and Chick would both have followed their chief, but firemen held
them back, and they were obliged to yield.
As they looked up, they saw a man lean from the attic window of
Billings’ house and Patsy yelled that it was Potter.
“It’s either Potter or Howard Milmarsh,” called out Chick. “I don’t
know one from the other these days.”
“He’s going to try and save that girl!” said Patsy.
“Sure enough!” assented Chick. “But where’s the chief?” he added, in a
tone of agony. “That’s what he went into that house for. I wish we’d
never heard of this Milmarsh case!”
“Come down out of that attic!” roared a chief through his megaphone at
Potter or Milmarsh, whichever it was. “You can’t reach the girl. Hurry
down, and you may save yourself. Another moment will be too late!”
But the man at the attic window paid no heed. His eyes were on the
girl, who still leaned from the other window, and who was uttering
scream after scream of despairing terror.
The roar of the fire, the hissing of the water, and the thud of the
fire engines all made up a deafening confusion of sounds. But, through
it all, Chick heard the man at the other window call out cheerfully:
“Don’t give way, Bessie! I’m coming to save you by the roof!”
“Oh, Howard! Howard!” responded the girl, shrill with horror. “My
father is here, and he’s helpless!”
“Keep up your heart!” responded the man. “I’m coming!”
“Say, Patsy, she called him ‘Howard.’ Did you hear it?”
“Sure!”
“Then that looks as if he is the real thing, doesn’t it?”
But Patsy did not reply. He was wondering whether the man would
reappear. He had vanished from the window, and he might have fallen
back, exhausted, into the awful caldron of flame and smoke behind him.
“We’ll have to get a ladder up there!” cried a fire chief. “Up with
her, boys! The third house is on fire now. We must get this fellow out
somehow. There’s a better chance with the ladder at this house than
either of the others.”
It was Bonesy Billings’ house in which the young man called “Howard” by
the girl had just disappeared from the attic window. It was not burning
so fiercely as the other two.
Whether the firemen succeeded in getting the ladder to the window where
the young man was believed to be, neither Chick nor Patsy could see for
the smoke. Besides, their attention was distracted from it in their
anxiety for their beloved chief.
Meanwhile, Nick was bounding, head down, up the flaming stairs. As
he reached—barely reached—the landing of the second floor, the whole
staircase collapsed behind him. As it did so, it sent a great gush
of flame and burning embers far upward and out of the front door.
Several firemen, who had been trying to follow him, tumbled out, half
suffocated, into the arms of their comrades outside!
Nick glanced over his shoulder as he heard the crash. He saw the well
of fire where the stairs had been, and he knew that death in its most
appalling form had missed him by only a few inches!
He pressed on still upward, with smoke and sparks around him, and
death—almost certain, as it seemed—ahead!