“Scissors,” she said; “but they found them and took them away.” Ford
pointed at the open grate.
“Where's the poker?” he demanded.
“They took that, too. I bent it trying to pry the bars. So they knew.”
The man gave her a quick, pleased glance, then turned his eyes to the
door that led into the room that looked upon the street.
“Is that door locked?”
“No,” the girl told him. “But the door from it into the hall is
fastened, like the other, with a spring lock and two bolts.”
Ford cautiously opened the door into the room adjoining, and, except for
a bed and wash-stand, found it empty. On tiptoe he ran to the windows.
Sowell Street was deserted. He returned to Miss Dale, again closing the
door between the two rooms.
“The nurse,” Miss Dale whispered, “when she is on duty, leaves that door
open so that she can watch me; when she goes downstairs, she locks and
bolts the door from that room to the hall. It's locked now.”
“What's the nurse like?”
The girl gave a shudder that seemed to Ford sufficiently descriptive.
Her lips tightened in a hard, straight line.
“She's not human,” she said. “I begged her to help me, appealed to her
in every way; then I tried a dozen times to get past her to the stairs.”
“Well?”
The girl frowned, and with a gesture signified her surroundings.
“I'm still here,” she said.
She bent suddenly forward and, with her hand on his shoulder, turned the
man so that he faced the cot.
“The mattress on that bed,” she whispered, “rests on two iron rods. They
are loose and can be lifted. I planned to smash the lock, but the noise
would have brought Prothero. But you could defend yourself with one of
them.”
Ford had already run to the cot and dropped to his knees. He found the
mattress supported on strips of iron resting loosely in sockets at the
head and foot. He raised the one nearer him, and then, after a moment of
hesitation, let it drop into place.
“That's fine!” he whispered. “Good as a crowbar.'” He shook his head in
sudden indecision. “But I don't just know how to use it. His automatic
could shoot six times before I could swing that thing on him once. And
if I have it in my hands when he opens the door, he'll shoot, and he may
hit you. But if I leave it where it is, he won't know I know it's there,
and it may come in very handy later.”
In complete disapproval the girl shook her head. Her eyes filled with
concern. “You must not fight him,” she ordered. “I mean, not for me. You
don't know the danger. The man's not sane. He won't give you a chance.
He's mad. You have no right to risk your life for a stranger. I'll not
permit it----”
Ford held up his hand for silence. With a jerk of his head he signified
the door. “They've stopped talking,” he whispered.
Straining to hear, the two leaned forward, but from the hall there came
no sound. The girl raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“Have they gone?” she breathed.
“If I knew that,” protested Ford, “we wouldn't be here!”
In answer to his doubt a smart rap, as though from the butt of a
revolver, fell upon the door. The voice of Prothero spoke sharply:
“You, who call yourself Grant!” he shouted.
Before answering, Ford drew Miss Dale and himself away from the line of
the door, and so placed the girl with her back to the wall that if the
door opened she would be behind it. “Yes,” he answered.
“Pearsall and I,” called Prothero, “have decided how to dispose of
you--of both of you. He has gone below to make preparations. I am on
guard. If you try to break out or call for help, I'll shoot you as I
warned you!”
“And I warn you,” shouted Ford, “if this lady and I do not instantly
leave this house, or if any harm comes to her, you will hang for it!”
Prothero laughed jeeringly.
“Who will hang me?” he mocked.
“My friends,” retorted Ford. “They know I am in this house. They know
WHY I am here. Unless they see Miss Dale and myself walk out of it in
safety, they will never let you leave it. Don't be a fool, Prothero!” he
shouted. “You know I am telling the truth. You know your only chance for
mercy is to open that door and let us go free.”
For over a minute Ford waited, but from the hall there was no answer.
After another minute of silence, Ford turned and gazed inquiringly at
Miss Dale.
“Prothero!” he called.
Again for a full minute he waited and again called, and then, as there
still was no reply, he struck the door sharply with his knuckles. On the
instant the voice of the Jew rang forth in an angry bellow.
“Keep away from that door!” he commanded.
Ford turned to Miss Dale and bent his head close to hers.
“Now, why the devil didn't he answer?” he whispered. “Was it because he
wasn't there; or is he planning to steal away and wants us to think
that even if he does not answer, he's still outside?” The girl nodded
eagerly.
“This is it,” she whispered. “My uncle is a coward or rather he is very
wise, and has left the house. And Prothero means to follow, but he wants
us to think he's still on guard. If we only KNEW!” she exclaimed.
As though in answer to her thought, the voice of Prothero called to
them.
“Don't speak to me again,” he warned. “If you do, I'll not answer, or
I'll shoot!”
Flattened against the wall, close to the hinges of the door, Ford
replied flippantly and defiantly:
“That makes conversation difficult, doesn't it?” he called.
There was a bursting report, and a bullet splintered the panel of the
door, flattened itself against the fireplace, and fell tinkling into the
grate.
“I hope I hit you!” roared the Jew.
Ford pressed his lips tightly together. Whatever happy retort may have
risen to them was forever lost. For an exchange of repartee, the moment
did not seem propitious.
“Perhaps now,” jeered Prothero, “you'll believe I'm in earnest!”
Ford still resisted any temptation to reply. He grinned apologetically
at the girl and shrugged his shoulders. Her face was white, but it was
white from excitement, not from fear.
“What did I tell you?” she whispered. “He IS mad--quite mad!”
Ford glanced at the bullet-hole in the panel of the door. It was on a
line with his heart. He looked at Miss Dale; her shoulder was on a level
with his own, and her eyes were following his.
“In case he does that again,” said Ford, “we would be more comfortable
sitting down.”
With their shoulders against the wall, the two young people sank to
the floor. The position seemed to appeal to them as humorous, and, when
their eyes met, they smiled.
“To a spectator,” whispered Ford encouragingly, “we MIGHT appear to
be getting the worst of this. But, as a matter of fact, every minute
Cuthbert does not come means that the next minute may bring him.”
“You don't believe he was hurt?” asked the girl.
“No,” said Ford. “I believe Prothero found him, and I believe there may
have been a fight. But you heard what Pearsall said: 'The man outside
will tell.' If Cuthbert's in a position to tell, he is not down an area
with a knife in him.”
He was interrupted by a faint report from the lowest floor, as though
the door to the street had been sharply slammed. Miss Dale showed that
she also had heard it.
“My uncle,” she said, “making his escape!”
“It may be,” Ford answered.
The report did not suggest to him the slamming of a door, but he saw no
reason for saying so to the girl.
With his fingers locked across his knees, Ford was leaning forward, his
eyes frowning, his lips tightly shut. At his side the girl regarded
him covertly. His broad shoulders, almost touching hers, his strong
jaw projecting aggressively, and the alert, observant eyes gave her
confidence. For three weeks she had been making a fight single-handed.
But she was now willing to cease struggling and relax. Quite happily
she placed herself and her safety in the keeping of a stranger. Half
to herself, half to the man, she murmured: “It is like 'The Sieur de
Maletroit's Door.”'
Without looking at her, Ford shook his head and smiled.
“No such luck,” he corrected grimly. “That young man was given a choice.
The moment he was willing to marry the girl he could have walked out of
the room free. I do not recall Prothero's saying I can escape death by
any such charming alternative.” The girl interrupted quickly.
“No,” she said; “you are not at all like that young man. He stumbled in
by chance. You came on purpose to help me. It was fine, unselfish.”
“It was not,” returned Ford. “My motive was absolutely selfish. It was
not to help you I came, but to be able to tell about it later. It is my
business to do that. And before I saw you, it was all in the day's work.
But after I saw you it was no longer a part of the day's work; it became
a matter of a life time.”
The girl at his side laughed softly and lightly. “A lifetime is not
long,” she said, “when you are locked in a room and a madman is shooting
at you. It may last only an hour.”
“Whether it lasts an hour or many years,” said Ford, “it can mean to me
now only one thing----” He turned quickly and looked in her face boldly
and steadily: “You,” he said.
The girl did not avoid his eyes, but returned his glance with one as
steady as his own. “You are an amusing person,” she said. “Do you feel
it is necessary to keep up my courage with pretty speeches?”
“I made no pretty speech,” said Ford. “I proclaimed a fact. You are the
most charming person that ever came into my life, and whether Prothero
shoots us up, or whether we live to get back to God's country, you will
never leave it.”
The girl pretended to consider his speech critically. “It would be
almost a compliment,” she said, “if it were intelligent, but when you
know nothing of me--it is merely impertinent.”
“I know this much of you,” returned Ford, calmly; “I know you are fine
and generous, for your first speech to me, in spite of your own danger,
was for my safety. I know you are brave, for I see you now facing death
without dismay.”
He was again suddenly halted by, two sharp reports. They came from
the room directly below them. It was no longer possible to pretend to
misinterpret their significance.
“Prothero!” exclaimed Ford, “and his pistol!”
They waited breathlessly for what might follow: an outcry, the sound of
a body falling, a third pistol-shot. But throughout the house there was
silence.
“If you really think we are in such danger,” declared Miss Dale, “we are
wasting time!”
“We are NOT wasting time,” protested Ford; “we are really gaining time,
for each minute Cuthbert and the police are drawing nearer, and to move
about only invites a bullet. And, what is of more importance,” he went
on quickly, as though to turn her mind from the mysterious pistol-shots,
“should we get out of this alive, I shall already have said what under
ordinary conditions I might not have found the courage to tell you in
many months.” He waited as though hopeful of a reply, but Miss Dale
remained silent. “They say,” continued Ford, “when a man is drowning his
whole life passes in review. We are drowning, and yet I find I can see
into the past no further than the last half-hour. I find life began only
then, when I looked through the bars of that window and found YOU!”
With the palm of her hand the girl struck the floor sharply. “This is
neither the time,” she exclaimed, “nor the place to----”
“I did not choose the place,” Ford pointed out. “It was forced upon me
with a gun. But the TIME is excellent. At such a time one speaks only
what is true.”
“You certainly have a strange sense of humor,” she said, “but when you
are risking your life to help me, how can I be angry?”
“Of course you can't,” Ford agreed heartily; “you could not be so
conventional.”
“But I AM conventional!” protested Miss Dale. “And I am not USED
to having young men tell me they have 'come into my life to
stay'--certainly not young men who come into my life by way of a
trap-door, and without an introduction, without a name, without even a
hat! It's absurd! It's not real! It's a nightmare!”
“The whole situation is absurd!” Ford declared. “Here we are in the
heart of London, surrounded by telephones, taxicabs, police--at least,
hope we are surrounded by police and yet we are crawling around
the floor on our hands and knees dodging bullets. I wish it were
a nightmare. But, as it's not”--he rose to his feet--“I think I'll
try----”
He was interrupted by a sharp blow upon the door and the voice of
Prothero.
“You, navy officer!” he panted. “Come to the door! Stand close to it so
that I needn't shout. Come, quick!”
Ford made no answer. Motioning to Miss Dale to remain where she was, he
ran noiselessly to the bed, and from beneath the mattress lifted one of
the iron bars upon which it rested. Grasping it at one end, he swung the
bar swiftly as a man tests the weight of a baseball bat. As a weapon it
seemed to satisfy him, for he smiled. Then once more he placed himself
with his back to the wall. “Do you hear me?” roared Prothero.
“I hear you!” returned Ford. “If you want to talk to me, open the door
and come inside.”
“Listen to me,” called Prothero. “If I open the door you may act the
fool, and I will have to shoot you, and I have made up my mind to let
you live. You will soon have this house to yourselves. In a few moments
I will leave it, but where I am going I'll need money, and I want the
bank-notes in that blue envelope.” Ford swung the iron club in short
half-circles.
“Come in and get them!” he called.
“Don't trifle with me!” roared the Jew, “I may change my mind. Shove the
money through the crack under the door.”
“And get shot!” returned Ford. “Not bit like it!”
“If, in one minute,” shouted Prothero, “I don't see the money coming
through that crack, I'll begin shooting through this door, and neither
of you will live!”
Resting the bar in the crook of his elbow, Ford snatched the bank-notes
from the envelope, and, sticking them in his pocket, placed the empty
envelope on the floor. Still keeping out of range, and using his iron
bar as a croupier uses his rake, he pushed the envelope across the
carpet and under the door. When half of it had disappeared from the
other side of the door, it was snatched from view.
An instant later there was a scream of anger and on a line where Ford
would have been, had he knelt to shove the envelope under the door,
three bullets splintered through the panel.
At the same moment the girl caught him by the wrist. Unheeding the
attack upon the door, her eyes were fixed upon the windows. With her
free hand she pointed at the one at which Ford had first appeared. The
blind was still raised a few inches, and they saw that the night was lit
with a strange and brilliant radiance. The storm had passed, and from
all the houses that backed upon the one in which they were prisoners
lights blazed from every window, and in each were crowded many people,
and upon the roof-tops in silhouette from the glare of the street lamps
below, and in the yards and clinging to the walls that separated them,
were hundreds of other dark, shadowy groups changing and swaying. And
from them rose the confused, inarticulate, terrifying murmur of a mob.
It was as though they were on a race-track at night facing a great
grandstand peopled with an army of ghosts. With the girl at his side,
Ford sprang to the window and threw up the blind, and as they clung to
the bars, peering into the night, the light in the room fell full upon
them. And in an instant from the windows opposite, from the yards below,
and from the house-tops came a savage, exultant yell of welcome, a
confusion of cries' orders, entreaties, a great roar of warning. At the
sound, Ford could feel the girl at his side tremble.
“What does it mean?” she cried.
“Cuthbert has raised the neighborhood!” shouted Ford jubilantly. “Or
else”--he cried in sudden enlightenment--“those shots we heard.”
The girl stopped him with a low cry of fear. She thrust her arms between
the bars and pointed. In the yard below them was the sloping roof of the
kitchen. It stretched from the house to the wall of the back yard. Above
the wall from the yard beyond rose a ladder, and, face down upon the
roof, awry and sprawling, were the motionless forms of two men. Their
shining capes and heavy helmets proclaimed their calling.
“The police!” exclaimed Ford. “And the shots we thought were for those
in the house were for THEM! This is what has happened,” he whispered
eagerly: “Prothero attacked Cuthbert. Cuthbert gets away and goes to the
police. He tells them you are here a prisoner, that I am here probably
a prisoner, and of the attack upon himself. The police try to make an
entrance from the street--that was the first shot we heard--and are
driven back; then they try to creep in from the yard, and those poor
devils were killed.”
As he spoke a sudden silence had fallen, a silence as startling as had
been the shout of warning. Some fresh attack upon the house which the
prisoners could not see, but which must be visible to those in the
houses opposite was going forward.
“Perhaps they are on the roof,”' whispered Ford joyfully. “They'll be
through the trap in a minute, and you'll be free!”
“No!” said the girl.
She also spoke in a whisper, as though she feared Prothero might hear
her. And with her hand she again pointed. Cautiously above the top
of the ladder appeared the head and shoulders of a man. He wore a
policeman's helmet, but, warned by the fate of his comrades, he came
armed. Balancing himself with his left hand on the rung of the ladder,
he raised the other and pointed a revolver. It was apparently at the two
prisoners, and Miss Dale sprang to one side.
“Standstill!” commanded Ford. “He knows who YOU are! You heard that yell
when they saw you? They know you are the prisoner, and they are glad
you're still alive. That officer is aiming at the window BELOW us. He's
after the men who murdered his mates.”
From the window directly beneath them came the crash of a rifle, and
from the top of the ladder the revolver of the police officer blazed in
the darkness. Again the rifle crashed, and the man on the ladder jerked
his hands above his head and pitched backward. Ford looked into the face
of the girl and found her eyes filled with horror.
“Where is my uncle, Pearsall?” she faltered. “He has two rifles--for
shooting in Scotland. Was that a rifle that----” Her lips refused to
finish the question.
“It was a rifle,” Ford stammered, “but probably Prothero----”
Even as he spoke the voice of the Jew rose in a shriek from the floor
below them, but not from the window below them. The sound was from
the front room opening on Sowell Street. In the awed silence that had
suddenly fallen his shrieks carried sharply. They were more like the
snarls and ravings of an animal than the outcries of a man.
“Take THAT!” he shouted, with a flood of oaths, “and THAT, and THAT!”
Each word was punctuated by the report of his automatic, and to the
amazement of Ford, was instantly answered from Sowell Street by a
scattered volley of rifle and pistol shots.
“This isn't a fight,” he cried, “it's a battle!”
With Miss Dale at his side, he ran into the front room, and, raising the
blind, appeared at the window. And instantly, as at the other end of the
house, there was, at sight of the woman's figure, a tumult of cries, a
shout of warning, and a great roar of welcome. From beneath them a man
ran into the deserted street, and in the glare of the gas-lamp Ford saw
his white, upturned face. He was without a hat and his head was circled
by a bandage. But Ford recognized Cuthbert. “That's Ford!” he cried,
pointing. “And the girl's with him!” He turned to a group of men
crouching in the doorway of the next house to the one in which Ford was
imprisoned. “The girl's alive!” he shouted.
“The girl's alive!” The words were caught up and flung from window to
window, from house-top to house-top, with savage, jubilant cheers. Ford
pushed Miss Dale forward.
“Let them see you,” he said, “and you will never see a stranger sight.”
Below them, Sowell Street, glistening with rain and snow, lay empty, but
at either end of it, held back by an army of police, were black masses
of men, and beyond them more men packed upon the tops of taxicabs and
hansoms, stretching as far as the street-lamps showed, and on the roofs
shadowy forms crept cautiously from chimney to chimney; and in the
windows of darkened rooms opposite, from behind barricades of mattresses
and upturned tables, rifles appeared stealthily, to be lost in a sudden
flash of flame. And with these flashes were others that came from
windows and roofs with the report of a bursting bomb, and that, on the
instant, turned night into day, and then left the darkness more dark.
Ford gave a cry of delight.
“They're taking flash-light photographs,” he cried jubilantly. “Well
done, you Pressmen!” The instinct of the reporter became compelling.
“If they're alive to develop those photographs to-night,” he exclaimed
eagerly, “Cuthbert will send them by special messenger, in time to catch
the MAURETANIA and the REPUBLIC will have them by Sunday. I mayn't be
alive to see them,” he added regretfully, “but what a feature for the
Sunday supplement!”
As the eyes of the two prisoners became accustomed to the darkness, they
saw that the street was not, as at first they had supposed, entirely
empty. Directly below them in the gutter, where to approach it was to
invite instant death from Prothero's pistol, lay the dead body of a
policeman, and at the nearer end of the street, not fifty yards from
them, were three other prostrate forms. But these forms were animate,
and alive to good purpose. From a public-house on the corner a row of
yellow lamps showed them clearly. Stretched on pieces of board, and mats
commandeered from hallways and cabs, each of the three men lay at full
length, nursing a rifle. Their belted gray overcoats, flat, visored
caps, and the set of their shoulders marked them for soldiers.
“For the love of Heaven!” exclaimed Ford incredulously, “they've called
out the Guards!”
As unconcernedly as though facing the butts at a rifle-range, the
three sharp-shooters were firing point-blank at the windows from which
Prothero and Pearsall were waging their war to the death upon the
instruments of law and order. Beside them, on his knees in the snow, a
young man with the silver hilt of an officer's sword showing through the
slit in his greatcoat, was giving commands; and at the other end of
the street, a brother officer in evening dress was directing other
sharp-shooters, bending over them like the coach of a tug-of-war team,
pointing with white-gloved fingers. On the side of the street from which
Prothero was firing, huddled in a doorway, were a group of officials,
inspectors of police, fire chiefs in brass helmets, more officers of
the Guards in bear-skins, and, wrapped in a fur coat, the youthful Horne
Secretary. Ford saw him wave his arm, and at his bidding the cordon of
police broke, and slowly forcing its way through the mass of people came
a huge touring-car, its two blazing eyes sending before it great
shafts of light. The driver of the car wasted no time in taking up his
position. Dashing half-way down the street, he as swiftly backed the
automobile over the gutter and up on the sidewalk, so that the lights
in front fell full on the door of No. 40. Then, covered by the fire from
the roofs, he sprang to the lamps and tilted them until they threw their
shafts into the windows of the third story. Prothero's hiding-place
was now as clearly exposed as though it were held in the circle of a
spot-light, and at the success of the maneuver the great mob raised an
applauding cheer. But the triumph was brief. In a minute the blazing
lamps had been shattered by bullets, and once more, save for the fierce
flashes from rifles and pistols, Sowell Street lay in darkness.
Ford drew Miss Dale back into the room.
“Those men below,” he said, “are mad. Prothero's always been mad, and
your Pearsall is mad with drugs. And the sight of blood has made them
maniacs. They know they now have no chance to live. There's no fear
or hope to hold them, and one life more or less means nothing. If they
should return here----”
He hesitated, but the girl nodded quickly. “I understand,” she said.
“I'm going to try to break down the door and get to the roof,” explained
Ford. “My hope is that this attack will keep them from hearing, and----”
“No,” protested the girl. “They will hear you, and they will kill you.”