Phantom Wires: A Novel
Page 26
CHAPTER XXVI
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 anuntimely and impotent and almost delirious passion to get out into theopen and fight--fight to the last, if need be, for all that narrowinglife still held for him. This feeling was followed by a quick sense offrustration as he realized his momentary helplessness and howcomprehensive and relentless seemed the machinery of intrigue opposinghim.
Yet, he told himself with that lightning-like rapidity of thought whichcame to him at such moments of peril, however intricate and vast themachinery, however carefully planned the line of impending campaign,the human element would be an essential part of it. And his lastforlorn hope, his final fighting chance, lay in the fact that whereverthe human element entered there also entered weakness and passion andthe possibility of accident.
What now remained to him, he warned himself as he hurriedly locked andbarred the two steel doors which shut off the first and secondpassageway, was to think quickly and act decisively. Somewhere, atsome 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 followup a case so temptingly suspicious. The police, in turn, could takeopen advantage of an intrusion so obviously unauthorized and ominous ashis own, and find in it ample excuse for investigating a quarter whichfor many months must have been under suspicion. But, under anycircumstances, well guarded as that poolroom fortress stood, itsresistance could be only a matter of time, and of strictly limitedtime, once the reserves were on the scene.
Durkin's first thought, accordingly, was of the roof, for, so far as heknew, all escape from the ground floor was even then cut off. Yet thefirst door leading from the vault chamber he found to be steel-boundand securely locked. He surmised, with a gasp of consternation, thatthe doors above him would be equally well secured. He remembered thatPenfield never did things by halves, and he felt that his only escapelay in that upward flight.
So he saw that it was to be a grim race in demolition; that while hewas to gnaw and eat his way upward through steel and brick, like astarving rat boring its passage up through the chambers of a hugegranary, his pursuers would be pounding and battering at the lowerdoors in just as frenzied pursuit.
He no longer hesitated, but moved with that clear-thoughted rapidity ofaction which often came to him in his moments of half-delirium.Turning to his tool-bag and scooping out his bar of soap, he kneadedtogether enough of the nitroglycerine from one of the stout rubber bagsto make a mixture of the consistency of liquid honey. This he quicklybut carefully worked into the crack of the obstructing door. Then heattached his detonator, and shortened and lighted his fuse, scuttlingback to the momentary shelter of the outer passage, making sure to bebeyond 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 rushof air and a sudden feeling of nausea.
But he did not wait. He groped his way in, relocked the passage doorand crawled on all fours through the smoke and heavy, malodorous gases.
The remnants of the blasted door hung, like a tattered pennon, on onetwisted hinge, and his way now lay clear to the ladder of grilledironwork leading to the floor above. But here the steel trapdoor againbarred his progress. One sharp twist and wrench with his steel lever,however, tore the bolt-head from its setting, and in anotherhalf-minute he was standing on the closed door above, shutting out thenoxious 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, foralready he could hear the crash of glass and the sound of sledges onthe door at the rear of the cigar-shop. Catching up a strand of whathe knew to be the most explosive of all guncottons--it wascellulose-hexanitrate--he worked it gently into the open keyhole andagain 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 remotewindow splintered and crashed to the floor, sucked in by theatmospheric inrush following the explosion-vacuum. He noticed, too, ashe mounted the narrow stairs before him, that he was bleeding at thenose. But this, he told himself, was no time for resting. For at thehead of the second stairway still another sheet of armored steelblocked his passage, and still again the hurried, hollow detonationshook the building. The ache in his head, behind and above the eyes,became almost unbearable; his stomach revolted at the poisonous gasesthrough which he was groping. But he did not stop.
As he twisted and pried with his steel lever at the lock of thetrapdoor that stood between him and the open air of the housetop, hecould already hear the telltale splintering of wood and sharp ordersand muffled cries and the approaching, quick tramping of feet. Hefought at the lock like a madman, for by this time the trampling feetwere mounting the upper stairs, and doors were being battered andwrenched from their hinges. He had at least made their work easy forthem; he had torn open the heart of Penfield's stronghold; he hadblazed a path for those officers of the law who had bowed before theinaccessibility 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 hadsurrendered its bolts, and the door swung open to his upward push. Thenight wind, cold and damp and clean, swept his hot and grimy face as hepulled himself up through the opening.
Even as he did so he heard the gathering sounds below him growingclearer and clearer. He squatted low in the darkness, and with afurtive eye ever on the dismantled trapdoor, groped his way,gorilla-like, closer and closer to the wall against which he knew thejanitor's ladder to be still leaning.
Then he dropped flat on his face, and wormed his way toward the nearestchimney, not twelve feet from him, for a wet helmet had emerged fromthe trap opening. A moment later a lantern was flashing and playingabout the rainy roof.
"We've got 'em! Quick, Lanigan; we've got 'em!" cried the helmetedhead exultantly, from the trapdoor, to someone below.
The next moment Durkin, prone on his face, heard the crack of arevolver and the impact of the ball as it ricochetted from theroof-tin, not a yard from his feet.
He no longer tried to conceal himself, but, rolling and tumbling towardthe eave-cornice, let himself over, and hung and clung there by hishands, while a second ball whistled over him.
He felt desperately along the flat brick surface, with his kickingfeet, wondering if he had misjudged his direction, sick with a fearthat he might be dangling over an open abyss. He shifted the weight ofhis body along the cornice ledge, still pawing and feeling, feverishlyand ridiculously, with his gyrating limbs. Then a joy of relief sweptthrough him. The ladder was there, and his feet were already on itssecond step.
As he ran, cat-like, across the lower apartment-house roof, he knewthat he stood in full range of his pursuers above, and he knew that bythis time they were already crowding out to the cornice-ledge. Therewas no time for thought. He did not pause to look back at them, toweigh either the problem or the possible consequences in his mind; heonly remembered that that afternoon he had noticed five crowded linesof washing swinging in multi-colored disarray at the back of thatmany-familied hive of life. He hesitated only once, at the sheer edgeof the roof, to make sure, in the uncertain half-light, that he wasabove those crowded lines.
"Let him have it--there he goes!" cried a voice above, and at that toowarning note his hesitation took wing.
Durkin leaped out into space, straddling the first line of soddenclothes as he fell. Even in that brief flight the thought came to hismind that it would have been infinitely better for him if the fallingrain had not weighted and flattened those
sagging lines of washing.Then he remembered, more gratefully, that it was probably only becauseof the rain that they still swung there.
As his weight came on the first line it snapped under the blow, as didthe second, which he clutched with his hands, and the third, which hedoubled over, limply, and the fourth, which cut up under his arm-pit.But as he went downward he carried that ever-growing avalanche ofcotton and woolen and linen with him, so that when his sprawling figuresmote the stone court it fell muffled and hidden in a web of tangledgarments.