The Lost House Part 7

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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.ses 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 ma.s.ses 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.