PRISONER
The results of a forceful tap on the human jaw are various. One man
lies inert, dead of body, blank of mind; a second writhes about and
babbles; a third retains a modicum of control over locomotion, but the
mind journeys afar into a phantasmagoric world.
Martin was the third man during this, his first, reaction to a knockout
blow. He was not completely unconscious, but that terrific jolt seemed
to divorce body and mind. So far as further resistance was concerned,
he was helpless. He swam about in an opaque mist. There, afar off,
on the floor, was stretched another Martin Blake, a shadow of Martin
Blake; and he saw monstrous things surrounding this adumbration of
himself, headless bodies, and bodiless heads, and detached arms and
legs.
He saw these parts of men haul the unreal Martin Blake to his feet and
bundle him through the door, back into the big, lighted room. He saw
this other self, body sagging, head hanging, stand again before the
paper-littered table and sway to and fro upon tottering legs. He heard,
from a great distance, the deep rumble of Captain Carew’s voice—but all
he could see of Carew was a foot and a section of leg. He saw a wide
expanse of bare floor, and the floor was moving.
He hung suspended before a door. Came Carew’s voice—
“Not there—fools—next room.”
More moving floor. Another door. The door receded and showed a black
hole. Again the deep voice—
“Good place—safe—just quill-pusher—dump.”
A headlong flight through darkness, falling, falling, into the
bottomless pit. A crash. And Martin’s mind and Martin’s body became one
again as he struck the floor.
He was lying face downward upon a bare floor. He sat up. His head was
ringing, and he could feel that his cheek was swelling. His addled wits
slowly settled themselves. He moved his head about and took stock, as
well as he could, of his new surroundings.
He retained a vague memory of his passage through the big room, and of
the two doors. So, he knew the place he had been so unceremoniously
dumped into was one of the rooms that opened upon Carew’s headquarters.
The only light that entered the place crept under the door from the
room without. He knew, without experiment, the door was locked upon him.
The room felt bare. He struck one of his few remaining matches. The
room was bare, not a stick of furniture in it. The single window was
closed, and he supposed it was shuttered as well, for he could not
see through it. But he would make sure. He clambered to his feet, a
bit dizzy yet but well able to control his movements. He moved softly
toward the window, feeling his way.
In a second his hand touched the window-ledge. He felt along the sash
and shoved upward. To his surprise, the window lifted easily. But the
hand he shoved without met, as he expected it would, a heavy wooden
shutter; and his investigating fingers disclosed, moreover, a padlock,
that, by means of a staple sunk in the sill, locked the shutter fast.
No hope of getting away through the window.
The certainty that he was imprisoned in this sealed box of a room was
not soothing to Martin’s temper. He was not frightened—he was angry.
The haughty Carew had aroused in him resentment; now, he had been
slugged semi-conscious and locked in this room. His anger reached the
proportions of a rage, a hot, furious rage.
He left the window and crossed to the door. He did not try this time to
soften his footfalls—he did not care who heard him.
He tried the door. Locked. He shook it, and rattled it. No response,
but his straining ears caught the sound of light footfalls without.
He pounded upon the door, shouted threats, demands, challenges. He was
in the mood to flog the whole vile brood of this Pension Spulvedo.
He resorted to the method that had brought him freedom once before that
night—he lifted his foot and drove his boot against the door. And, as
before, the response was immediate.
A peremptory voice was raised in the other room.
“Be quiet, you, een there! Eef you be not quiet, I feex you!”
A well-remembered voice! That greasy villain of a saloonkeeper was out
there! It was Spulvedo who had smote him on the jaw. Martin redoubled
his blows on the door.
“Stop! _Santa Maria_, eef you not stop, I shoot!”
Martin kicked away. The door, of flimsy enough construction, seemed on
point of giving way. Then, there happened in such rapid sequence as to
seem simultaneous, several things.
There was an ear-splitting crash, a splintering of wood, a hot streak
passing so close to Martin’s head it scorched, a tinkle of broken glass
from the window behind him, a smell of burnt gunpowder.
Martin stood on one leg, like a stork, his free foot suspended for the
kick he did not deliver. There was a queer sinking feeling in that
inward organ that received his food. He stared at a little hole in the
door panel, just above his head—a little bullet-hole that glowed yellow
with the light from the other room. The man had shot through the door
at him!
“Eef you not stop the keek, I shoot lower!” came the voice.
Martin sat down quickly upon the floor. Then, on second thought, he
crawled into the nearest corner and crouched against the wall.
To be shot at, to have Death’s hot breath scorch one’s very hair,
might very well daunt a person of more tumultuous antecedents than
Martin Blake. To a young man whose chief occupation in life has been
the warming of an office chair, such an experience is apt to prove
unnerving. It spoke well of the stuff Martin was made of that he was
not overly frightened. But Martin was certainly a bit shaken.
He suddenly discovered there was a vast difference between braving
death in spirit in the pages of a book, and braving death in person in
a locked upstairs room of a dubious and isolated boozing den. It was
all very well for, say, Roger De Puyster, hero of that swanking tale
“Death before Dishonor” to disregard such trifles as revolver shots and
threats of death. But as for Martin Blake, law clerk, well, he squatted
low and hugged close in his corner. No panic gripped him, but the
instinct of self-preservation is a primal instinct. Martin’s condition
of mind, for the moment, was that bromidic state, “better imagined than
described.”
Chiefly, he was astonished. He, Martin Blake, had at last encountered
a real adventure! He, the obscure law clerk and messenger, whose
existence was a drab routine, whose every act must favor dull
convention, had suddenly tumbled into the meshes of a dark intrigue,
undoubtedly unlawful, where men’s violent passions were given free rein.
In the short space of a half-hour, he had witnessed an abduction, been
assaulted, imprisoned, murderously shot at! These things had happened
to him, to Mrs. Meagher’s star boarder, to Martin Blake, the despised
quill-pusher! There was in Martin’s mood, as he crouched there in the
corner, that transcended his anger, his wonder, his fear, something
that was close akin to exhilaration.
It was very still. His thumping heart seemed to him to be the only
sound that reached his straining ears.
What was going on out there in the big room? He had not heard Carew’s
voice. Was the captain still there? Was Spulvedo crouching without
the door, pistol raised, waiting for him to “keek”? Where were the
mysterious Japanese? What were they—Carew’s men or Dr. Ichi’s?
Strange thing about that envelope. Martin had been as much surprised
as Carew at the contents. What kind of a game were Smatt and Ichi
playing, sending him with injunctions of secrecy to deliver sheets of
blank paper? Carew declared the envelope had been tampered with, but
Martin knew better. It had not left his possession. Had Smatt foreseen
the reception that would be accorded his messenger? He did not doubt
it. Smatt was a cold-blooded fish; he would not hesitate to risk his
clerk’s skin if a dollar profit were in sight. Did Smatt and Ichi know
about the abduction—the imprisonment of that girl who masqueraded in
the gray overcoat?
Aye, the girl—that was the important thing! Who was she? Where had she
been taken? If he could only get word to the police! He had no fears
for himself, at least, not many. When Carew had adjusted the matter of
the envelope with Smatt and Ichi, why, of course, he would be turned
loose. But the woman—those yellow men....
Martin’s ears became suddenly aware of a faint, strange sound. It was
a sound he had been endeavoring subconsciously to place during the
period of his musing; he had almost identified it as his heart-beats.
Now, alert and listening, he placed it. It was a tapping on the other
side of the wall he leaned against, a light tap-tap-tap. It started,
stopped, started.
Somebody was tapping on the wall in the next room. Another prisoner! It
was the girl—of course, it was the girl.
Martin was instantly sure of the tapper’s identity, with a sureness
born of intuition and memory. He remembered the two doors opening from
the big room, the gray overcoat lying in the corner, Carew’s words when
the semi-conscious Martin Blake was held poised before the other door.
“Not there—next room.” Those were Carew’s words. Why, of course, the
Japs had brought the girl to Carew, and he had shut her in the next
room.
_Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap_. There it came again. Martin rapped against the
wall with his own knuckles, paused, rapped again. Instantly came the
response from the other side, the same number of raps. A plain answer.
But Martin’s elation was short lived. The unseen tapper immediately
commenced again, _tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap, tap_.
Surely there was method in that irregular tapping. A signal, a talk
in code! But he could not read it. Nor dare he lift his voice in
shouted communication through the wall—Spulvedo, and bullets, hung over
him. One experience of being shot at while unarmed and helpless was
sufficient. It would not help the girl for him to get himself shot.
The unevenly tapped message came again. The best he could do was repeat
the taps. But this, evidently, did not satisfy the sender. The tapping
on the other side ceased. Though he rapped till his knuckles were sore,
he could not induce the other to recommence.
The gloom of the room was less dense, Martin’s accustomed eyes being
now able to discern all four walls and the outline of the window.
A-fever with excitement as he was, the inactivity palled upon him,
became unbearable. He must do something. Well, he would try the window
again.
But first he crept to the door and endeavored to peer through the
key-hole into the big room. He hoped to get a view of what was
happening without, of Carew, of Spulvedo. But he was disappointed.
The key, thrust in the lock on the outer side, completely barred any
outlook. He pressed his ear against the door, but heard nothing.
A second later he was at the window, feeling of the padlocked shutter.
He drew his penknife from his pocket. It was a tiny, ridiculous blade,
and it seemed futile to hope it would dig that stout staple out of the
sill; still, thought Martin, any sort of attempt was better than no
attempt.
He leaned over the sill and pecked away with his office tool. Of a
sudden, a draft of cold, fresh air rushed up into his face. At the same
instant, his other hand, which was leaning against the shutter, felt
the shutter bulge slightly outward, and his ears caught a distinct, but
not loud, scraping sound.
The sound increased, the bulge increased, the draft increased. Martin
felt the staple that held the padlock bending, felt, also, the prying
edge of a small steel bar between the sill edge and the shutter. Some
one was outside, breaking entrance.
He drew to one side, shrinking against the wall, instinctively holding
his breath. The prying of the shutter from without steadily continued.
Conjectures and hopes surged through his mind—it was a burglar, it was
the police, it was some unknown, unguessed friend. He didn’t care who
it was so long as the shutter was opened.
His heart beat a bass-drum solo against his ribs. There were distinct,
rasping creaks from the window-sill—the staple was groaning at being
hauled from its wooden bed. There was a sharp crack, and the shutter
swung open. Martin heard a relieved grunt, felt the cool, fresh air
enveloping him, and saw a square of black sky, lighted with a few stars.
A hand grasped the window-sill and slid along it. Martin stared at the
hand, fascinated. It seemed no more than a writhing shadow.
Then a head abruptly bobbed into the square of uncertain light. It was
a familiar head; even against that dark background Martin recognized it
promptly; it was an unusually large head, surmounted by a ridiculously
small hat. A well remembered voice reached Martin’s ear in a guarded
whisper:
“Miss Ruth, Miss Ruth! Are you there, Miss Ruth?”
It was the hunchback, Little Billy.
Martin’s long-held breath exploded with a sudden pop. The hunchback
stiffened at the sound and hung motionless, half over the sill. He
peered into the dark room evidently endeavoring to locate the noise.
“Miss Ruth?” he hissed sharply.
Martin stepped from the wall towards the window.
“It is I,” he commenced.
“Stop! Don’t move, don’t yell. I have you covered!” was Little Billy’s
sharp injunction; and Martin caught the gleam of steel in the other’s
hand, saw the muzzle of a revolver pointed at his chest.
“No, no, don’t shoot!” he exclaimed. “It is I, Martin Blake, the law
clerk. Don’t you remember—the fellow who was talking to you by the fire
hydrant?”
“The law clerk! Good Lord! Have they shanghaied you?”
“Yes, I’m locked in this room,” said Martin. “They are guarding the
door. That fellow, Spulvedo, just took a shot at me because I tried to
break out. Don’t speak loudly—they’ll overhear.”
“I’m coming in,” whispered Little Billy.
He wriggled his body further over the sill, swung about and dropped to
the floor by Martin’s side. Immediately, he turned and thrust his head
out of the window and spoke a few words in an undertone to some one
below.
Martin leaned over Little Billy’s shoulder and peered out. He
discovered the means by which the hunchback had reached that second
story window—about nine feet below was the roof of a shed that abutted
against the side of the building, and on the farther side of the shed
was a dark space that looked like an alley, a freight entrance probably
to the great brick warehouse that reared its blank, windowless side
just opposite. He saw that his previous surmise had been correct—this
room he had been confined in was a rear room, the shed below was
doubtless an outhouse of the saloon, the street yonder was Green Street.
Martin grasped these details at a glance. What really interested him at
the moment was a man’s figure just below him on the roof of the shed.
The upturned face was but a few feet distant; the man bulked huge in
the shadow. It was the boatswain. Martin divined the method of the
hunchback’s assault upon the shutters—he had evidently stood upon the
giant’s shoulders.
“Stand by, Bos,” called Little Billy softly. “I’m inside, all right.”
“Aye, aye,” came the answering rumble. “’Ave you found ’er, lad? ’Oo’s
that lookin’ over your shoulder?”
“It is that clerk,” said Little Billy. “‘Wild Bob’ locked him up. No,
she isn’t——”
He straightened up and clutched Martin’s arm.
“You in here alone?” he demanded. “I am looking——”
“I know—a girl,” interrupted Martin excitedly. “I think she is in the
next room. A white girl. The japs caught her and turned her over to
Carew. Had on a man’s gray overcoat, and——”
“Did you see her? Is she safe?”
“Think so. They haven’t had time to harm her. I think she is in the
next room. Some one was rapping on the wall.”
“Code talk!” supplemented the hunchback. “That is Ruth. She thinks I
was caught, too. She has been trying to communicate with me. Must have
heard them put you in here. Which wall?”
He darted to the side of the room Martin indicated, moving lightly and
soundlessly. He started a light tapping on the wall, the same irregular
tapping that had puzzled Martin a few moments before. Hardly had he
begun when faint replies came from the next room.
Martin tiptoed to the door and pressed his ear against it. Events were
crowding him swiftly. He had no time or data for cool reasoning. The
boatswain, the hunchback, the imprisoned woman, Carew, the envelope,
Ichi and Smatt—it was all a mysterious jumble that he had no time to
bother with. His impulse controlled him, and his impulse enlisted him
upon the girl’s side against Carew. Little Billy and the boatswain he
accepted without question as friends. Had they not opened the window,
and the way to freedom? So he listened at the door while the hunchback
exchanged signals, alert for alarming sounds from the big room. But he
heard nothing.
For several moments the strange conversation continued through the
wall. Twice, Martin heard the hunchback mutter an oath. Then, after
a final series of raps, the little man left the wall and crept to
Martin’s side.
“Yes, she is in there,” he announced. “We will have to work swiftly.
What do you know of this house—how constructed?”
Martin described in whispers the plan of the building as he knew it—the
hall and stairs, the large room, the two smaller rooms opening off it.
He also told Little Billy of his own rough experience, though he did
not mention the envelope.
“Spulvedo is on guard on the other side of this door,” he concluded.
“He is armed, and he won’t hesitate to shoot.”
“I know he would shoot,” said Little Billy grimly. “So will I shoot, if
necessary. You have been thrust into a desperate business, my friend.
Oh, I understand your position, even better than you, yourself. I know
why you were seized and locked in here. I warn you truly, you are in
some danger. Carew, or any of his crowd, would snuff you out in an
instant if he thought fit. I am not going to ask you to risk your skin
in an affair that does not concern you. There is the window—the bosun
will let you pass.”
“I’ll stay and help you, if you’ll have me,” promptly replied Martin.
“I am not afraid to take a chance. And that girl—those yellow——”
“I knew you would stick!” interrupted the hunchback. His hand grasped
Martin’s in a congratulatory grip. “I knew I had not misjudged you—you
are a white man. We must get her away, and we dare not call the police
into this affair. But there is nothing crooked on our side of the
fence. Here, take this—you may need it!”
Little Billy thrust something into Martin’s hand, and Martin thrilled
at the feel of it. It was a pistol, a compact, automatic messenger
of death. But once or twice before had Martin ever handled such a
weapon, and he had never shot one at a living mark. Nevertheless, it
fitted snugly and naturally into his palm. He even contemplated, with
a certain amount of pleasure, its instant use upon the divekeeper’s
gross person. There was a subtle and lasting change of character in
that brief moment—Martin Blake, law clerk, became of the dead past, and
Martin Blake, adventurer, stepped into the law clerk’s boots.
“It is too risky to make a rush through this door,” Little Billy was
saying. “They would hear us and be on guard. We will try the next
window.”
He darted to the window, and Martin followed. The purposeful hunchback
was a stimulating surprise, a far cry from the eloquent Little Billy of
the fire hydrant to the energetic Little Billy of the moment! The man
of words become the man of action.
Little Billy leaned out of the window, and whispered.
“Aye, aye,” Martin heard the hoarse whisper in reply.
“Stand by, we are coming out—both of us,” admonished Little Billy.
He vaulted over the sill, clung a moment, and dropped. Martin saw the
boatswain catch the little man in midair and lower him gently to his
feet.
“Come on,” the hunchback then called softly.
Martin divested himself of his overcoat. The cause, he thought, was
worth the sacrifice, and the garment was cumbersome. Then he clambered
over the sill and lowered himself.
He was preparing to drop, when a resistless clutch fastened upon his
hips. He was handed through the air as if he were a feather, and set
gently upon his feet at Little Billy’s side. The boatswain’s gruff
whisper was in his ear—
“Swiggle me, ladibuck, I ’ad no thought to run afoul of you again.”
“Come on—next window,” commanded Little Billy.
He shrank against the side of the building and began to edge himself
along. Martin and the boatswain followed. Martin looked up. The window
they had just climbed through was a mere black blot, the window that
was their objective was a mere outline overhead and a few feet to
one side. No betraying light hazarded them, there on the shed. The
warehouse behind them, and the building against which they crouched,
combined to drape them in black shadow. Unless they made a noise,
Martin divined there was not much chance of their being discovered.
Little Billy paused beneath the other window, and Martin and the
boatswain pressed close to his side.
“Now, bosun, lend me your shoulders,” said Little Billy. “If this
shutter is fastened the same way the other one was, we won’t have much
trouble. Hand me the bar.”
The boatswain produced a short steel bar from some place about his
person and handed it to the hunchback. Then he braced his back against
the building, directly below the desired window, and picking up Little
Billy, hoisted the little fellow to his own broad shoulders. The
hunchback perched there a moment and delivered instructions to Martin.
“You stand lookout,” he instructed. “Watch the street. Listen for
footsteps.”
Martin obediently crept to the edge of the shed’s roof that overlooked
the street and posted himself there as watchman. The alley was on his
left hand, but it was so dark there he could not see the ground. The
street, just before him, was not so impervious to peering eyes.
The cobblestones and the sidewalk pavement gleamed dully. By stretching
his neck, he could see the corner where the street lamp spluttered
before the saloon entrance, and beyond the corner, the wide vista
of the Embarcadero and a section of dark wharf. But he saw nothing
threatening in the scene. Nothing moved—the street was empty of life.
The only sounds were the hooting of steamboat whistles on the bay and
the light rattle of Little Billy’s bar against the shutter.
Then, abruptly, came from around the corner, in front of the saloon,
the muffled throb of an automobile engine. It sank to a purr, and
stopped. Martin stiffened tensely and gripped the revolver in his hand.
Behind him, he heard the boatswain mutter:
“’Ear that, Billy? Swiggle me, ’e’s back—’urry!”
The scraping sound of the steel bar upon the shutter increased in
volume. Martin heard a mumble of voices, and a stamping of feet on the
pavement. Then a door closed and the sounds ceased. Martin knew that
several men had entered the saloon. The danger seemed to have passed
them by.
He heard Little Billy give vent to a satisfied grunt. He looked up,
over his shoulder, and saw that the jimmy had completed its task. The
shutter was open, Little Billy was clambering down from the boatswain’s
shoulders, an indistinct figure was half over the sill, clambering
out of the newly opened window. And in the same glance, he saw a beam
of yellow light illumine the other window, the window of the room in
which he had been prisoner. His ears were assailed with a sudden outcry
coming through that window——
“He ees gone!”
It happened in the twinkling of an eye. Martin wheeled about at the
sight and sound. He had no time for reflection, but he knew instantly
that his escape had been discovered, that the light above came from the
big room where he had bearded Carew, that they had opened the door and
found him gone.
Feet trampled in the room. A man’s figure was framed in the lighted
window—a bloated bulk that he knew was Spulvedo. A flame shot from that
figure into his very face. The missile struck the roof close to his
side and splattered shingle and dirt in his face. Without hesitation,
he straightened his own arm and fired point blank at the living mark.
Spulvedo emitted a stifled shriek and fell from sight.
The window was empty again. Not until long afterward did Martin recall
that his conscious mind never received the sound of those two shots.
A dark figure brushed past him and dropped over the edge of the roof
to the street. The boatswain followed. Little Billy was by his side,
grasping his shoulder.
“Come on—roll off!” the hunchback was urging.
The second window overhead was suddenly alight, and a booming voice
was cursing in the room. Martin rolled off the edge and fell into the
boatswain’s arms.
Then he was on his feet, running, by the boatswain’s side. Just in
front of him raced the hunchback, and a queer figure in man’s clothes,
whose long hair streamed behind. He heard men shouting.
They passed the corner and started across the Embarcadero toward the
wharves. Far down the street a police whistle was blowing shrilly.
Behind them, the Black Cruiser was spewing forth its brood.
The street was wide. They were not nearly across when these sounds of
pursuit reached Martin’s ears. He heard the pounding of feet behind
him, and the sound of shots. He heard the hunchback fling over his
shoulder:
“Hold them back, bos! We’ll get the boat free!”
The boatswain stopped short and wheeled about. Martin’s momentum
carried him several steps farther, then he too checked his stride.
Intuitively, he knew his place was at the boatswain’s side.
The boatswain was on one knee, shooting rapidly at a cluster of
retreating figures. The Black Cruiser was still emptying itself.
Everywhere before the saloon, it seemed to Martin, were darting forms.
From behind telegraph poles, from kneeling figures, came the spurting
flames of revolver shots. The reports were a sharp rattle. Martin
dropped to his knee and raised his arm. The gun in his hand leaped like
a live thing as he pulled the trigger. He was given entirely over to
the battle lust of the moment. He was cool, he was happy, he laughed
aloud, and he shot rapidly, with intent to kill, at the enemy figures
yonder.
The police whistles sounded insistently, more shrilly. Martin sensed
there was a commotion a block or so down the street—approaching police,
he knew.
The boatswain was on his feet and backing toward the dock. His voice
warned Martin——
“Avast there, nipper!”
Martin found his feet also and commenced to retreat. One of the enemy
figures was coming straight for them, ignoring the shots. There was
something distinctive, contemptuous, about that charge. Martin knew
the approaching figure was Carew. He took aim, crooked his finger,
and found his weapon empty. He drew back his arm and hurled the gun
straight at the other, and at the same instant the charging man shot.
And darkness enveloped Martin as he fell.