Chapter 3

"Yes, I'm going to stay here to-night. As it's a mere formality, I
shall want a room to sit in, and if you have no objection I'll take
Number 3 on the rear corridor."

"I'm sorry, but Number 3 is totally unfit for use, as you've already
seen."

"Oh, I'm not particular. Put a table in and a good light, and I'll
get along with the rest. I have something to do. Number 3 will
answer."

The landlord shifted his feet, cast a quick scrutinizing look at the
other's composed face, and threw back his head with a quick laugh.

"As you will. I can't make you comfortable on such short notice, but
that's your lookout. I've several other rooms vacant."

"I fancy that room," was all the reply he got.

Mr. Quimby at once gave his orders. They were received by Jake with
surprise.

Fifteen minutes later Hammersmith prepared to install himself in
these desolate quarters. But before doing so he walked straight to
the small parlor where he had last seen Miss Demarest and, knocking,
asked for the privilege of a word with her. It was not her figure,
however, which appeared in the doorway, but that of the landlady.

"Miss Demarest is not here," announced that buxom and smooth-tongued
woman. "She was like to faint after you gentlemen left the room, and
I just took her upstairs to a quiet place by herself."

"On the rear corridor?"

"Oh, no, sir; a nice front room; we don't consider money in a case
like this."

"Will you give me its number?"

Her suave and steady look changed to one of indignation.

"You're asking a good deal, aren't you? I doubt if the young lady--"

"The number, if you please," he quietly put in.

"Thirty-two," she snapped out. "She will have every care," she
hastened to assure him as he turned away.

"I've no doubt. I do not intend to sleep to-night; if the young lady
is worse, you will communicate the fact to me. You will find me in
Number 3."

He had turned back to make this reply, and was looking straight at
her as the number dropped from his lips. It did not disturb her set
smile, but in some inscrutable way all meaning seemed to leave that
smile, and she forgot to drop her hand which had been stretched out
in an attempted gesture.

"Number 3," he repeated. "Don't forget, madam."

The injunction seemed superfluous. She had not dropped her hand when
he wheeled around once more in taking the turn at the foot of the
staircase.

Jake and a very sleepy maid were on the floor above when he reached
it. He paid no attention to Jake, but he eyed the girl somewhat
curiously. She was comparatively a new domestic in the tavern,
having been an inmate there for only three weeks. He had held a few
minutes' conversation with her during the half-hour of secret inquiry
in which he had previously indulged and he remembered some of her
careful answers, also the air of fascination with which she had
watched him all the time they were together. He had made nothing of
her then, but the impression had remained that she was the one
hopeful source of knowledge in the house. Now she looked dull and
moved about in Jake's wake like an automaton. Yet Hammersmith made
up his mind to speak to her as soon as the least opportunity offered.

"Where is 32?" he asked as he moved away from them in the opposite
direction from the course they were taking.

"I thought you were to have room Number 3," blurted out Jake.

"I am. But where is 32?"

"Round there," said she. "A lady's in there now. The one--"

"Come on," urged Jake. "Huldah, you may go now. I'll show the
gentleman his room."

Huldah dropped her head, and began to move off, but not before
Hammersmith had caught her eye.

"Thirty-two," he formed with his lips, showing her a scrap of paper
which he held in his hand.

He thought she nodded, but he could not be sure. Nevertheless, he
ventured to lay the scrap down on a small table he was passing, and
when he again looked back, saw that it was gone and Huldah with it.
But whither, he could not be quite sure. There was always a risk in
these attempts, and he only half trusted the girl. She might carry
it to 32, and she might carry it to Quimby. In the first case, Miss
Demarest would know that she had an active and watchful friend in the
house; in the other, the dubious landlord would but receive an open
instead of veiled intimation that the young deputy had his eye on him
and was not to be fooled by appearances and the lack of evidence to
support his honest convictions.

They had done little more than he had suggested to make Number 3
habitable. As the door swung open under Jake's impatient hand, the
half-lighted hollow of the almost empty room gaped uninvitingly
before them, with just a wooden-bottomed chair and a rickety table
added to the small cot-bed which had been almost its sole furnishing
when he saw it last. The walls, bare as his hand, stretched without
relief from base-board to ceiling, and the floor from door to window
showed an unbroken expanse of unpainted boards, save for the narrow
space between chair and table, where a small rug had been laid. A
cheerless outlook for a tired man, but it seemed to please
Hammersmith. There was paper and ink on the table, and the lamp
which he took care to examine held oil enough to last till morning.
With a tray of eatables, this ought to suffice, or so his manner
conveyed, and Jake, who had already supplied the eatables, was
backing slowly out when his eye, which seemingly against his will had
been traveling curiously up and down the walls, was caught by that of
Hammersmith, and he plunged from the room, with a flush visible even
in that half light.

It was a trivial circumstance, but it fitted in with Hammersmith's
trend of thought at the moment, and when the man was gone he stood
for several minutes with his own eye traveling up and down those
dusky walls in an inquiry which this distant inspection did not seem
thoroughly to satisfy, for in another instant he had lifted a glass
of water from the tray and, going to the nearest wall, began to
moisten the paper at one of the edges. When it was quite wet, he
took out his penknife, but before using it, he looked behind him,
first at the door, and then at the window. The door was shut; the
window seemingly guarded by an outside blind; but the former was not
locked, and the latter showed, upon closer inspection, a space
between the slats which he did not like. Crossing to the door, he
carefully turned the key, then proceeding to the window, he
endeavored to throw up the sash in order to close the blinds more
effectually. But he found himself balked in the attempt. The cord
had been cut and the sash refused to move under his hand.

Casting a glance of mingled threat and sarcasm out into the night, he
walked back to the wall and, dashing more water over the spot he had
already moistened, began to pick at the loosened edges of the paper
which were slowly falling away. The result was a disappointment; how
great a disappointment he presently realized, as his knife-point
encountered only plaster under the peeling edges of the paper. He
had hoped to find other paper under the blue--the paper which Miss
Demarest remembered--and not finding it, was conscious of a sinking
of the heart which had never attended any of his miscalculations
before. Were his own feelings involved in this matter? It would
certainly seem so.

Astonished at his own sensations, he crossed back to the table, and
sinking into the chair beside it, endeavored to call up his common
sense, or at least shake himself free from the glamour which had
seized him. But this especial sort of glamour is not so easily
shaken off. Minutes passed--an hour, and little else filled his
thoughts than the position of this bewitching girl and the claims she
had on his sense of justice. If he listened, it was to hear her
voice raised in appeal at his door. If he closed his eyes, it was to
see her image more plainly on the background of his consciousness.
The stillness into which the house had sunk aided this absorption and
made his battle a losing one. There was naught to distract his mind,
and when he dozed, as he did for a while after midnight, it was to
fall under the conjuring effect of dreams in which her form dominated
with all the force of an unfettered fancy. The pictures which his
imagination thus brought before him were startling and never to be
forgotten. The first was that of an angry sea in the blue light of
an arctic winter. Stars flecked the zenith and shed a pale lustre on
the moving ice-floes hurrying toward a horizon of skurrying clouds
and rising waves. On one of those floes stood a woman alone, with
face set toward her death.

The scene changed. A desert stretched out before him. Limitless,
with the blazing colors of the arid sand topped by a cloudless sky,
it revealed but one suggestion of life in its herbless; waterless,
shadowless solitude. She stood in the midst of this desert, and as
he had seen her sway on the ice-floe, so he saw her now stretching
unavailing arms to the brazen heavens and sink--No! it was not a
desert, it was not a sea, ice-bound or torrid, it was a toppling
city, massed against impenetrable night one moment, then shown to its
awful full the next by the sudden tearing through of
lightning-flashes. He saw it all--houses, churches, towers, erect
and with steadfast line, a silhouette of quiet rest awaiting dawn;
then at a flash, the doom, the quake, the breaking down of outline,
the caving in of walls, followed by the sickening collapse in which
life, wealth, and innumerable beating human hearts went down into the
unseen and unknowable. He saw and he heard, but his eyes clung to
but one point, his ears listened for but one cry. There at the
extremity of a cornice, clinging to a bending beam, was the figure
again--the woman of the ice-floe and the desert. She seemed nearer
now. He could see the straining muscles of her arm, the white
despair of her set features. He wished to call aloud to her not to
look down--then, as the sudden darkness yielded to another
illuminating gleam, his mind changed and he would fain have begged
her to look, slip, and end all, for subtly, quietly, ominously
somewhere below her feet, he had caught the glimpsing of a feathery
line of smoke curling up from the lower debris. Flame was there; a
creeping devil which soon--

Horror! it was no dream! He was awake, he, Hammersmith, in this
small solitary hotel in Ohio, and there was fire, real fire in the
air, and in his ears the echo of a shriek such as a man hears but few
times in his life, even if his lot casts him continually among the
reckless and the suffering. Was it _hers_? Had these dreams been
forerunners of some menacing danger? He was on his feet, his eyes
staring at the floor beneath him, through the cracks of which wisps
of smoke were forcing their way up. The tavern was not only on fire,
_but on fire directly under him_. This discovery woke him
effectually. He bounded to the door; it would not open. He wrenched
at the key; but it would not turn, it was hampered in the lock.
Drawing back, he threw his whole weight against the panels, uttering
loud cries for help. The effort was useless. No yielding in the
door, no rush to his assistance from without. Aroused now to his
danger--reading the signs of the broken cord and hampered lock only
too well--he desisted from his vain attempts and turned desperately
toward the window. Though it might be impossible to hold up the sash
and crawl under it at the same time, his only hope of exit lay there,
as well as his only means of surviving the inroad of smoke which was
fast becoming unendurable. He would break the sash and seek escape
that way. They had doomed him to death, but he could climb roofs
like a cat and feared nothing when once relieved from this smoke.
Catching up the chair, he advanced toward the window.

But before reaching it he paused. It was not only he they sought to
destroy, but the room. There was evidence of crime in the room. In
that moment of keenly aroused intelligence he felt sure of it. What
was to be done? How could he save the room, and, by these means,
save himself and her? A single glance about assured him that he
could not save it. The boards under his feet were hot. Glints of
yellow light streaking through the shutters showed that the lower
story had already burst into flame. The room must go and with it
every clue to the problem which was agitating him. Meanwhile, his
eyeballs were smarting, his head growing dizzy. No longer sure of
his feet, he staggered over to the wall and was about to make use of
its support in his effort to reach the window, when his eyes fell on
the spot from which he had peeled the paper, and he came to a sudden
standstill. A bit of pink was showing under one edge of the blue.

Dropping the chair which he still held, he fumbled for his knife,
found it, made a dash at that wall, and for a few frenzied moments
worked at the plaster till he had hacked off a piece which he thrust
into his pocket. Then seizing the chair again, he made for the
window and threw it with all his force against the panes. They
crashed and the air came rushing in, reviving him enough for the
second attempt. This not only smashed the pane, but loosened the
shutters, and in one instant two sights burst upon his view--the face
of a man in an upper window of the adjoining barn and the sudden
swooping up from below of a column of deadly smoke which seemed to
cut off all hope of his saving himself by the means he had calculated
on. Yet no other way offered. It would be folly to try the door
again. This was the only road, threatening as it looked, to possible
safety for himself and her. He would take it, and if he succumbed in
the effort, it should be with a final thought of her who was fast
becoming an integral part of his own being.

Meanwhile he had mounted to the sill and taken another outward look.
This room, as I have already intimated, was in the rear of an
extension running back from the center of the main building. It
consisted of only two stories, surmounted by a long, slightly-peaked
roof. As the ceilings were low in this portion of the house, the
gutter of this roof was very near the top of the window. To reach it
was not a difficult feat for one of his strength and agility, and if
only the smoke would blow aside--Ah, it is doing so! A sudden change
of wind had come to his rescue, and for the moment the way is clear
for him to work himself out and up on to the ledge above. But once
there, horror makes him weak again. A window, high up in the main
building overlooking the extension, had come in sight, and in it
sways a frantic woman ready to throw herself out. She screamed as he
measured with his eye the height of that window from the sloping roof
and thence to the ground, and he recognized the voice. It was the
same he had heard before, but it was not _hers_. She would not be up
so high, besides the shape and attitude, shown fitfully by the light
of the now leaping flames, were those of a heavier, and less-refined
woman. It was one of the maids--it was _the_ maid Huldah, the one
from whom he had hoped to win some light on this affair. Was she
locked in, too? Her frenzy and mad looking behind and below her
seemed to argue that she was. What deviltry! and, ah! what a
confession of guilt on the part of the vile man who had planned this
abominable end for the two persons whose evidence he dreaded.
Helpless with horror, he became a man again in his indignation. Such
villainy should not succeed. He would fight not only for his own
life, but for this woman's. Miss Demarest was doubtless safe. Yet
he wished he were sure of it; he could work with so much better
heart. Her window was not visible from where he crouched. It was on
the other side of the house. If she screamed, he would not be able
to hear her. He must trust her to Providence. But his dream! his
dream! The power of it was still upon him; a forerunner of fate, a
picture possibly of her doom. The hesitation which this awful
thought caused him warned him that not in this way could he make
himself effective. The woman he saw stood in need of his help, and
to her he must make his way. The bustle which now took place in the
yards beneath, the sudden shouts and the hurried throwing up of
windows all over the house showed that the alarm had now become
general. Another moment, and the appalling cry--the most appalling
which leaves human lips--of fire! fire! rang from end to end of the
threatened building. It was followed by women's shrieks and men's
curses and then--by flames.

"She will hear, she will wake now," he thought, with his whole heart
pulling him her way. But he did not desist from his intention to
drop his eyes from the distraught figure entrapped between a locked
door and a fall of thirty feet. He could reach her if he kept his
nerve. A slow but steady hitch along the gutter was bringing him
nearer every instant. Would she see him and take courage? No! her
eyes were on the flames which were so bright now that he could
actually see them glassed in her eyeballs. Would a shout attract
her? The air was full of cries as the yards filled with escaping
figures, but he would attempt it at the first lull--now--while her
head was turned his way. Did she hear him? Yes. She is looking at
him.

"Don't jump," he cried. "Tie your sheet to the bed-post. Tie it
strong and fasten the other one to it and throw down the end. I will
be here to catch it. Then you must come down hand over hand."

She threw up her arms, staring down at him in mortal terror; then, as
the whole air grew lurid, nodded and tottered back. With incredible
anxiety he watched for her reappearance. His post was becoming
perilous. The fire had not yet reached the roof, but it was rapidly
undermining its supports, and the heat was unendurable. Would he
have to jump to the ground in his own despite? Was it his duty to
wait for this girl, possibly already overcome by her fears and lying
insensible? Yes; so long as he could hold out against the heat, it
was his duty, but--Ah! what was that? Some one was shouting to him.
He had been seen at last, and men, half-clad but eager, were rushing
up the yard with a ladder. He could see their faces. How they
glared in the red light. Help and determination were there, and
perhaps when she saw the promise of this support, it would give nerve
to her fingers and--

But it was not to be. As he watched their eager approach, he saw
them stop, look back, swerve and rush around the corner of the house.
Some one had directed them elsewhere. He could see the pointing
hand, the baleful face. Quimby had realized his own danger in this
prospect of Hammersmith's escape, and had intervened to prevent it.
It was a murderer's natural impulse, and did not surprise him, but it
added another element of danger to his position, and if this woman
delayed much longer--but she is coming; a blanket is thrown out, then
a dangling end of cloth appears above the sill. It descends.
Another moment he has crawled up the roof to the ridge and grasped it.

"Slowly now!" he shouts. "Take time and hold on tight. I will guide
you." He feels the frail support stiffen. She has drawn it into her
hands; now she is on the sill, and is working herself off. He
clutched his end firmly, steadying himself as best he might by
bestriding the ridge of the roof. The strain becomes greater, he
feels her weight, she is slipping down, down. Her hands strike a
knot; the jerk almost throws him off his balance. He utters a word
of caution, lost in the growing roar of the flames whose hungry
tongues have begun to leap above the gutter. She looks down, sees
the approaching peril, and hastens her descent. He is all astrain,
with heart and hand nerved for the awful possibilities of the coming
moments when--ping! Something goes whistling by his ear, which for
the instant sets his hair bristling on his head, and almost paralyzes
every muscle. A bullet! The flame is not threatening enough! Some
one is shooting at him from the dark.