HIS BIT
For a moment Steve leaned panting against the door, blinking in the
glare of the long, brightly lighted room. He was conscious of dozen
faces turning toward him, and of a man in khaki rising swiftly from a
table close at hand. In that first instant he could not seem to find his
voice, but his sodden, dripping, mud-caked figure, his white face,
streaked across one cheek with red, his wide, dilated eyes, evidently
were eloquent, almost, as speech.
“What is it?” snapped the man, moving quickly toward him. “What’s the
matter?”
“Fire!” gulped Haddon thickly. “Six men—out there—” he waved one arm.
“They’ve got cans of gasoline—or something. I followed them—from Loon
Island. They’re spies. I—heard them plotting to—burn the yard.—”
A babel of exclamations drowned his voice. There was a noisy scrape of
many chair-legs. As the men leaped up, cards dropped from laxed fingers
and fluttered to the floor. A chair fell backwards with a crash.
“A plot to burn the yard!” gasped the man before him. His face paled
beneath the tan; then flushed. Across one temple a tiny vein began to
throb. “That can’t be so! Why—”
“It’s true, I tell you!” cried the boy desperately. “I heard them
planning it. The leader’s a German spy. I saw him with von Bernstorff in
Washington a year ago. One of them’s already broken into a building down
the road. Unless you hurry it will be too late. You _must_ believe me!”
The man stared silently at him for an instant, one hand mechanically
gripping the butt of a Colt that swung at his hip. Then he whirled
around.
“Get busy, fellows,” he ordered with crisp decisiveness. “It may be a
false alarm, but the kid seems pretty sure of his facts.” He turned to
Steve again. “Which building is it? Third from the dock on the left?
Good. The rest of ’em may be anywhere. Charley, take eight men and slip
along by the dry docks. Look into every shop, but don’t waste time. The
rest of you come with me. Switch on the search lights, Dick. Hold up,
though. Wait about three minutes and then throw the switch. That’ll give
us time to spread around. Hustle, boys!”
The admonition seemed scarcely necessary. Before he had ceased speaking
each man had seized a rifle, buckled on a revolver and stood ready.
Except for that first moment of startled surprise, there had been no
stir or tumult. They were well disciplined and apparently realized the
need for speed and caution, for when the leader issued forth, they
followed him silently and swiftly.
Like twin lines of phantoms, the two squads glided into the open and
sped away to their positions. It was as if they meant to make up now for
the relaxed vigilance which had made this danger possible. Without a
word the smaller body disappeared into the darkness toward the water
front, and at a whispered command two men hurried off to take their
stand at the limits of the yard nearest the village. The remainder,
under the leader whose name was Kelly, scattered among the buildings to
the left of the road.
Steve went with this party and presently found himself with Kelly and
another man speeding toward the building near the end of the row which
he had seen the spy enter. From a broken sentence or two he learned that
the system of search lights had just been installed, but not formally
received from the contractor, and hence had not been turned on. That
explained the first darkness of the yard. But there was little time for
conversation and there was to be even less. For as they dashed up to the
front of the building, the windows which before had been mere patches of
blackness were sharply outlined now with the lurid, flickering glow of
fire.
A savage snarl came from Kelly’s throat and he leaped for the door,
master key in hand. The other man ran past him, pulled up at the corner,
and yanked out his gun. Twice it spat fire, the echoes of the shots
crashing through the silent yard with sharp distinctness.
“Get him?” snapped Kelly, flinging open the door.
“I did,” was the grim reply.
But it passed unheeded. Steve himself only recalled it afterward; for as
the door swung open a cloud of smoke belched forth and behind it they
could see a leaping, quivering wall of flame. At almost the same instant
there came a blinding flash and the whole yard was bathed suddenly in a
flood of clear, white light.
“The extinguisher, Joe—quick!” grated Kelly. “We’ve got to stop it
before this wind takes hold.” He whirled on Steve. “Chase back to the
bunkhouse, kid, and tell Dick to start the pumps and sound the alarm.
Run!”
Steve ran, and long afterwards he had only to close his eyes to bring
back every detail of that strange scene—for it was strange beyond
description. The search lights had come on, and the wide road flanked
with buildings was as brilliant as the busy street of any city, but as
silent as the grave and as empty of any signs of life. And yet, to the
boy, that surface emptiness and silence fairly pulsed with life—vivid,
vital, elemental life, which might flame up, white hot, at any instant
like the fire of a volcano bursting its thin crust of ashes. And as he
ran Steve waited tingling, almost breathless, for that outbreak.
It came just as he reached the bunkhouse steps—a pistol shot, sharp and
snapping. There was another and another still, and out of the tail of
his eye he glimpsed indistinctly the swift dash of some figures past the
rear of a building across the road. Racing up the steps, Steve panted
out his message. In a moment more the piercing wail of a siren screamed
shrilly through the night, followed quickly by the dull throbbing of
machinery.
Back in the road again, the boy paused for an instant, his heart beating
fast with excitement. The sense of empty quiet had vanished utterly.
Above him, from the engine-house stack, the high, piercing note of the
siren rose and fell shrieking a clamorous warning. From somewhere in the
yard a rifle shot came sharply to his ears. Ahead of him several guards
were thudding down the road towards the clouds of red-tinged smoke which
poured from the burning building with increasing volume.
He ran a few steps in that direction, slowed down for a lagging second
or two, spurted again, and ducked around the corner of a big machine
shop on the left of the road a little below the guard house. Back of
this ran the completed portion of a high board fence topped with barbed
wire which would ultimately encircle the entire yard. A moment before he
had glimpsed, slipping along that fence, the figure of a man whose
furtive movements roused instant suspicion. He might just possibly be
one of the guards, but to Steve, remembering the three he had seen
running that same way a little while before, it seemed much more likely
that he was one of the spies heading for the end of the fence and
freedom.
There was little time to think or plan or be afraid. It was pure
instinct which sent him flying to cut the creature off—instinct, and a
consuming fury against the treachery of these villains. He reached the
rear of the building at almost the same instant of his quarry. There was
no pause, no word; only a sob of exulting recognition jolted from
Steve’s lips as the whole weight of his solid bone and muscle struck the
fellow and they went down together.
In falling, he gripped the man about the body. Almost instantly he
realized that his hands were more than full. The play of steel muscles
beneath his fingers told him that much, even before those furious
writhings began, or the fierce blows which fell upon his head and
shoulders. Twice his hoarse cry for help rang out before he ducked his
head defensively under the other’s arm, and tightened the clutch of
interlacing fingers against the hollow of the fellow’s back.
Blows began to fall upon his neck and shoulders, fierce, heavy blows
that shook his whole body and jolted the wind in gasps through his
clenched teeth. The man heaved up almost to his full height, dragging
the boy by sheer strength over yards of roughstones and stubble, but
still he failed to loose that grip. Something sharp like the upturned
spike in a forgotten piece of planking tore through Steve’s clothes and
bit deeply into his thigh; his face, scraped by the rough pressure
against the man’s coat, burned like fire. But he hung on doggedly in
spite of pain and weariness and failing breath.
Then came a blow upon his neck, a cruel, dazing blow which made his
senses reel and brought tears of pain into his eyes. Would they never
come? he wondered dully. He could not strike back without loosening his
hold. He tried to move his head a little to protect his neck, but again
that iron fist beat down on his quivering flesh and wrenched from him a
moan of agony.
His senses swam; he felt his muscles laxing. Now searching fingers slid
across his shrinking neck and clutched his throat. Before the choking
grip had tightened a muffled cry of pain and dull fury burst from him—a
cry which, even to his dazed brain, seemed strangely echoed and
prolonged. Then came an instant winking out of everything. When
consciousness returned he could breathe again, but persistent hands were
busy prying loose the grip of his cramped fingers.
“You can’t do it!” he panted stubbornly. “I won’t—”
“Easy, boy, easy!” said a roughly soothing voice. “Let go, son; it’s all
right now. We’ve got him.”
Steve’s muscles relaxed instinctively, and as the spy’s body was drawn
from his grasp, his bruised shoulders dropped back wearily against a
supporting knee. Blinking, he stared upward at a vaguely familiar face
bending over him. It was a moment or two before he recognized it as the
face of the guard called Dick. Two others stood nearby and between them
sagged the body of the prisoner, whose limpness proclaimed no gentle
handling.
“Don’t let him—get away,” murmured Steve. “He’s—he’s the leader of the
bunch.”
“No fear, son,” Dick assured him grimly. Then his face changed. “Are you
hurt bad?” he asked anxiously.
A crooked smile twisted the boy’s lips, and he shook his head.
“Not—much,” he said slowly. “I—I’ll get up—in a second. Did—did the fire
get away from them?”
“Not yet,” answered the big guard. “They’re fighting it hard. At the
worst it’ll take only the two buildings to windward.”
He slid an arm around Haddon and lifted him to his feet, supporting him
carefully as they moved slowly back to the road. “Pure grit,” he
remarked over one shoulder. “The beast had him near murdered.”
A faint flush crept up into Steve’s face, but he was not thinking of the
praise, though this meant much to him. His mind had leaped a gap of many
thousand miles; and in imagination he saw a battered band of men in
khaki returning from a foray. Again that twisted smile curved his dry
lips. He was not one of them—might never be. But he had done his best
for them, and in his heart there glowed a sudden sense of humble
comradeship which was its own reward.