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The tenement was shut in. Promptly it poured itself forth upon fire-escape ladders, front and rear, with shrieks and wailing. In the street the crowd became a deadly crush. Police and firemen battered their way through, ran down and over men, women, and children, with a desperate effort.
"Thank Heaven," sighed Aggie, then she turned to Jimmy and addressed him in rapid, decided tones. "Now, dear," she said, "I'll just put the new baby to bed, then I'll give you the other one and you can take it right down to the mother." Jimmy made a vain start in the direction of the fire-escape. Four detaining hands were laid upon him.
We descended Telegraph Hill by Dupont Street as far as Pacific Street. So steep was the way that, at intervals, the modern fire-escape would have been a welcome aid to our progress. Sidewalks, always of plank and often not broader than two boards placed longitudinally, led on to steps that plunged headlong from one terrace to another.
And, because she believed in a combination of faith and deeds, she took three nails and the linen-room flatiron, and nailed shut the window onto the fire-escape.
"You ought to have been here, mother," cried Archibald in tones of ecstatic excitement. "We had a fire down the street in that apartment house and before the firemen came Mr. O'Hara went in and got out a woman and some children who had been overcome by smoke. He had to lower them from a fire-escape, and he got every one of them out before the engine could get here. I saw it all.
His own revolver was out now, and he sent a bullet into the fellow's shoulder. Shepard's left arm dropped limply. He dashed toward the door and forced his way past, firing wildly at such close range that it almost burst the gallant policeman's ear drums. Up the ladder he scurried like a wild animal, firing as he climbed. Burke was right behind him. Shepard ran for the fire-escape.
If there had been some such uncanny thing as he had found in his room at hotels, a workable fire-escape in the form of notched cable or a canvas shoot, he would have availed himself of it as a proof well, of his present delicacy.
This building, much higher than the corner house, was used as a private sanitarium or hospital by one of the highest-priced specialists in the city. The fire-escape, therefore, was in perfect condition, and safe as such a spidery stairway could be made, with strong rails and good treads. Porky whispered a word of command, and noiselessly the boys ascended.
He could discern the faint outlines of this; and hanging to the gutter he dropped to the fire-escape, and a moment later he was down in the back yard; and yet two moments later he was over two fences and going through a rabbit's burrow of a passageway that went beneath a house into the street behind his own. He did not pause to reconnoiter.
"Well, anyway," P. Sybarite went on with elaborate ease, "I saw this man climb your fire-escape and so I came after him." The woman frowned as she weighed this likely story; and P. Sybarite was at pains to conceal any exultation he may have felt over the prompt response of his vivid imagination to the call of exigence. Would she or wouldn't she accept that wildly fanciful yarn of his?
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