Through the Wall Part 74

Coquenil walked slowly around the chamber, peering carefully into cracks between the logs, as if searching for something. As he went on he held the candle lower and lower, and presently got down upon his hands and knees and crept along the base of the pile.

"What _are_ you doing?" asked Alice, watching him in wonder from the archway.

Without replying, the detective rose to his feet, and holding the candle high above his head, examined the walls above the wood pile. Then he reached up and sc.r.a.ped the stones with his finger nails in several places, and then held his fingers close to the candlelight and looked at them and smelled them. His fingers were black with soot.

"M. Paul, won't you speak to me?" begged the girl.

"Just a minute, just a minute," he answered absently. Then he spoke with quick decision: "I'm going to set you to work," he said. "By the way, have you any idea where we are?"

She looked at him in surprise. "Why, don't _you_ know?"

"I _think_ we are on the Rue de Varennes--a big _hotel_ back of the high wall?"

"That's right," she said.

"Ah, he didn't take me away!" reflected M. Paul. "That is something.

Pougeot will scent danger and will move heaven and earth to save us. He will get Tignol and Tignol knows I was here. But can they find us? Can they find us? Tell me, did you come down many stairs?"

"Yes," she said, "quite a long flight; but won't you please----"

He cut her short, speaking kindly, but with authority.

"You mustn't ask questions, there isn't time. I may as well tell you our lives are in danger. He's going to set fire to this wood and----"

"Oh!" she cried, her eyes starting with terror.

"See here," he said sharply. "You've got to help me. We have a chance yet.

The fire will start in this big chamber and--I want to cut it off by blocking the pa.s.sageway. Let's see!" He searched through his pockets. "He has taken my knife. Ah, this will do!" and lifting a plate from the table he broke it against the wall. "There! Take one of these pieces and see if you can saw through the rope. Use the jagged edge--like this. That cuts it.

Try over there."

Alice fell to work eagerly, and in a few moments they had freed a section of the wood piled in the smaller chamber from the restraining ropes and stakes.

"Now then," directed Coquenil, "you carry the logs to me and I'll make a barricade in the pa.s.sageway."

The word pa.s.sageway is somewhat misleading--there was really a distance of only three feet between the two chambers, this being the thickness of the ma.s.sive stone wall that separated them. Half of this opening was already filled by the wood pile, and Coquenil proceeded to fill up the other half, laying logs on the floor, lengthwise, in the open part of the pa.s.sage from chamber to chamber, and then laying other logs on top of these, and so on as rapidly as the girl brought wood.

They worked with all speed, Alice carrying the logs bravely, in spite of splintered hands and weary back, and soon the pa.s.sageway was solidly walled with closely fitted logs to the height of six feet. Above this, in the arched part, Coquenil worked more slowly, selecting logs of such shape and size as would fill the curve with the fewest number of cracks between them.

There was danger in cracks between the obstructing logs, for cracks meant a draught, and a draught meant the spreading of the fire.

"Now," said M. Paul, surveying the blocked pa.s.sageway, "that is the best we can do--with wood. We must stop these cracks with something else. What did you wear?" He glanced at the chair where Alice had thrown her things. "A white cloak and a straw hat with a white veil and a black velvet ribbon.

Tear off the ribbon and--we can't stand on ceremony. Here are my coat and vest. Rip them into strips and--Great G.o.d! There's the smoke now!"

As he spoke, a thin grayish feather curled out between two of the upper logs and floated away, another came below it, then another, each widening and strengthening as it came. Somewhere, perhaps in his sumptuous library, De Heidelmann-Bruck had pressed an electric b.u.t.ton and, under the logs piled in the large chamber, deadly sparks had jumped in the waiting tinder; the crisis had come, the fire was burning, they were prisoners in a huge, slowly heating oven stacked with tons of dry wood.

"Hurry, my child," urged Coquenil, and working madly with a piece of stick that he had wrenched from one of the logs, he met each feather of smoke with a strip of cloth, stuffing the cracks with shreds of garments, with Alice's veil and hat ribbon, with the lining of his coat, then with the body of it, with the waist of her dress, with his socks, with her stockings, and still the smoke came through.

"We _must_ stop this," he cried, and tearing the shirt from his shoulders, he ripped it into fragments and wedged these tight between the logs. The smoke seemed to come more slowly, but--it came.

"We must have more cloth," he said gravely. "It's our only chance, little friend. I'll put out the candle! There! Let me have--whatever you can and--be quick!"

Again he worked with frantic haste, stuffing in the last shreds and rags that could be spared from their bodies, whenever a dull glow from the other side revealed a crack in the barricade. For agonized moments there was no sound in that tomblike chamber save Alice's quick breathing and the shrieking tear of garments, and the ramming thud of the stick as Coquenil wedged cloth into crannies of the logs.

"There," he panted, "that's the best we can do. _Now it's up to G.o.d!_"

For a moment it seemed as if this rough prayer had been answered. There were no more points in the barricade that showed a glow beyond and to Coquenil, searching along the logs in the darkness by the sense of smell, there was no sign of smoke coming through.

"I believe we have stopped the draught," he said cheerfully; "as a final touch I'll hang that cloak of yours over the whole thing," and, very carefully, he tucked the white garment over the topmost logs and then at the sides so that it covered most of the barricade.

"You understand that a fire cannot burn without air," he explained, "and it must be air that comes in from below to replace the hot air that rises. Now I couldn't find any openings in that large room except two little ventilators near the ceiling, so if that fire is going to burn, it must get air from this room."

"Where does this room get _its_ air from?" asked Alice.

Coquenil thought a moment. "It gets a lot under that iron door, and--there must be ventilating shafts besides. Anyhow, the point is, if we have blocked this pa.s.sage between the rooms we have stopped the fire from turning, or, anyhow, from burning enough to do us any harm. You see these logs are quite cold. Feel them."

Alice groped forward in the darkness toward the barricade and, as she touched the logs, her bare arm touched Coquenil's bare arm.

Suddenly a faint sound broke the stillness and the detective started violently. He was in such a state of nervous tension that he would have started at the rustle of a leaf.

"Hark! What is that?"

It was a low humming sound that presently grew stronger, and then sang on steadily like a buzzing wheel.

"It's over here," said Coquenil, moving toward the door. "No, it's here!"

He turned to the right and stood still, listening. "It's under the floor!"

He bent down and listened again. "It's overhead! It's nowhere and--everywhere! What _is_ it?"

As he moved about in perplexity it seemed to him that he felt a current of air. He put one hand in it, then the other hand, then he turned his face to it; there certainly was a current of air.

"Alice, come here!" he called. "Stand where I am! That's right. Now put out your hand! Do you feel anything?"

"I feel a draught," she answered.

"There's no doubt about it," he muttered, "but--how _can_ there be a draught here?"

As he spoke the humming sound strengthened and with it the draught blew stronger.

"Merciful G.o.d!" cried Coquenil in a flash of understanding, "it's a blower!"

"A blower?" repeated the girl.

M. Paul turned his face upward and listened attentively. "No doubt of it!

It's sucking through an air shaft--up there--in the ceiling."

"I--I don't understand."

"He's _forcing_ a draught from that room to this one. He has started a blower, I tell you, and----"

"What _is_ a blower?" put in Alice.