CHAPTER XXIII
"GOOD-BYE, MY CAPTAIN!"
The first part of the climb was easy.
Unmindful of the cheers that followed the submarine boy raced up the ladder.
Then he struck the belt of heavy smoke. Flames, too, leaped out at him. He went through that zone of red with all possible speed, yet swift as he was, he felt as though he were being roasted.
Then, at a greater height, the boy was forced to close his mouth, barely breathing, for the smoke surrounded him. He felt as though he were stifling, but he kept on.
Up on the sill the watching crowd below saw him. Then Jack Benson leaped inside.
Ah! He could breathe, here, just a bit more, though the smoke had followed him.
At the further end of the room, by the door that opened upon the corridor, the flames were eating their way up through from the floor below. There was a red barrier there that shut off any hope of retreat by the corridor.
Yet these things Jack Benson saw only as his gaze swiftly swept the room.
Mlle. Nadiboff lay in an unmoving, unconscious heap on the floor, some ten feet back from the window. She was in evening dress, as though prepared to descend to dinner.
"She can't go through the line of fire in that rig," muttered Jack, even while his head reeled from the weight of smoke on his lungs.
Furiously he sprang at the bed, snatching off the blankets. These he threw on the floor, rolling the Russian woman up in them.
Then he bent over to lift her. Ordinarily he could have performed the task with ease, for his young arms were strong. But now, three-quarters strangled by the smoke he had inhaled, Jack fairly tottered, with the insensible human form in his arms, back to the window:
As he stepped out upon the ladder Jack vaguely heard the cheers that volleyed up at him.
To most of those below it looked as though he were moving easily. But Hal, waiting on the rungs of the ladder, just below the fearful belt of smoke and flames, saw differently at a glance.
Holding firmly to his burden, Jack started down carefully, but as swiftly as his quaking knees would permit.
"Come along! Steady with you!" bellowed up Hal Hastings, as he fought his way up to his chum.
An instant later Hal growled out
"Let her go. I have her—safe!"
Hal was just above the smoke belt, and his own head was reeling, now. Tongues of flame leaped out at them all. Speed alone could save them from one of the most painful of deaths.
Down through the belt they moved. As they neared the ground willing hands reached out to catch them.
"Pull those blankets off the girl! They're afire," shouted one man, and was obeyed. Mlle. Nadiboff, after the blankets had been stripped away, was carried off, still unconscious though safe as far as fire was concerned.
The clothing of both the submarine boys had caught and was smouldering. Both Jack and Hal submitted to being thrown on the ground and rolled until the last spark had been extinguished.
"Bring milk—a lot of it, for these young men," ordered a physician who stood in the crowd. For Jack and Hal, on their feet again, leaned almost helplessly against Farnum and Pollard. Their lungs were so filled with smoke that both boys felt as though they could never breathe again.
When the milk was brought, however, and forced down their throats under the doctor's orders, they found that this somewhat oily fluid brought back a good deal of the missing power to breathe. After a while both boys began to move about again. Yet both felt a strange feeling of oppression and weakness.
"For the rest, your feelings will simply have to wear off," the physician told them. "You'll be all right in time. And it was a fine, manly piece of work that you both did."
After nearly an hour of stubborn work the firemen saved the main building, though that southern wing was practically destroyed.
When the danger was over hotel discipline asserted itself once more. News was passed that the belated dinner was ready, and the lately excited guests filed in for their meal, though many complained of a loss of appetite.
Neither Jack nor Hal felt like eating then. They sat by Messrs. Farnum and Pollard, though the submarine boys contented themselves with sipping more milk.
"That was one way of answering the enemy's threats," laughed the shipbuilder, in an undertone.
"We don't know that Mlle. Nadiboff was in any way connected with the threats," replied Jack, in an equally low tone.
"She belongs in the enemy's ranks," observed David Pollard, dryly.
As the quartette were leaving the table one of the negro waiters stepped up to them.
"De lady dat was brought down outah de fiah done wanter see Marse Benson in de parlor," announced the waiter.
"Mlle. Nadiboff?" inquired Mr. Farnum. "Then I guess we had all better go in Jack, I'm going to keep you in my sight."
As they entered the parlor the submarine people saw three or four women standing about a sofa on which lay the pretty Russian.
At sight of the newcomers the Russian signed to the attendants of her own sex to raise her, and then to withdraw. Jack went forward to the sofa, his friends taking seats on the opposite side of the room.
"Pardon my not rising, my Captain," begged Mlle. Nadiboff, as Jack Benson left his friends to go forward and greet her. "I find I have not my full strength yet."
Since she offered her hand, Jack, under the circumstances, took it simply, then released it. He stood before her in the uniform that had suffered in the fire.
"I am told that you, my Captain, nearly lost your own life in saving my less than worthless one," continued the Russian woman. "It was a strange thing for you to—considering. Will you believe me when I tell you that I greatly respect your courage and your manhood?"
"Yes," bowed Jack. "Though it was nothing but a sailor's easy trick."
"You would make little of it, would you, my Captain?" smiled Mlle. Nadiboff, plaintively. "True, you risked much for a life that has been worth but little. Still, I sent for you to do more than assure you of my appreciation of your generosity."
As she spoke, the young woman thrust one hand into the bosom of her dress. She drew out a little envelope which she held in her hand for a few moments.
"You have been threatened, my Captain?" she whispered, looking up at him.
"Oh, ye-es," assented Captain Jack Benson, shrugging his shoulders.
"And by very desperate people."
"So far," smiled the boy, "they have injured only themselves."
"Yet you do not know how far their vengeance can reach."
"Nor shall I lose any sleep thinking over it," Captain Jack replied, looking down at her with his baffling smile.
"Your enemies had one trick prepared for you," whispered the Russian, "that you might have found it hard to meet."
"Yes?"
"Of course you do not suspect it, but we have even one of the waiters here—a worthless, reckless black—in our pay."
"It may have been he who thrust the paper under our door before—before the fire?" ventured Jack.
"It was," nodded Mlle. Nadiboff, seriously. "And it was the same waiter who, on receiving this envelope from me, would have mixed the contents with the next cup of coffee served you in the dining room of this hotel. But I am overcome by your generosity, my Captain. Take this envelope—and do not place what it contains in your coffee."
Though Jack Benson may have started inwardly, his hand did not tremble in the least as he reached out and took the envelope, which he dropped into one of his pockets.
"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said, simply.
"There is nothing about me, my Captain, that you can admire," spoke the Russian woman, sadly. "I have not led the right kind of life. But I have just that grain of good in me that enables me to admire one as fine and manly as I have found you to be. You have given me my life—a worthless one, at best. So I give you your life—and may you make as splendid use of it as you have started out to do. And now, good-bye, my Captain. You cannot continue to know such as I."
Despite what he knew of this dangerous woman, Jack Benson felt himself touched.
"What is going to become of you, Mademoiselle?" he asked. "Will you be dragged down in the snares that have entrapped your confederates!"
"I do not know. How could I know?" she asked, looking quickly up at him. "Yet, if my accomplices escape, and find that I have served you, my Captain, do you know the forfeit they will exact?"
"Your life?" whispered Benson.
"Yes!"
"Then, if I can, I am going to help you to escape them," promised the submarine boy. "Yet that can happen only on your most solemn word—given, pardon me, in a moment of absolute honesty—that you will never again play the spy, for the secrets of the United States Government."
"Oh, I will promise that," replied Mlle. Nadiboff, quickly. "Yet I hardly need to. After what I have done, just now, no one in my peculiar line of work would ever trust me again. I shall be shunned, hereafter, if not destroyed, by those who have worked with me."
"I shall do my best to get you safely away from Spruce Beach," promised
Jack Benson. "Have you more to say to me, Mademoiselle?"
"Nothing, but good-bye, my Captain."
She held out her hand. Once more Jack took it, bending low over it. Tears shone in her eyes, but Jack did not see them, for he turned, going back to his friends.
Not until they were well away from the parlor did Jack Benson offer any account of the interview that had just taken place.
"Let me have that envelope, then," requested Jacob Farnum, gravely.
"What are you going to do with it, sir?" Jack asked, as he passed it over.
"Do with it?" repeated his employer. "I'm going to take it to the nearest druggist, and find out what the stuff is."
"We'd better take this latest news to our friend Trotter," suggested
David Pollard.
"By all means," nodded Farnum. "And I'll meet the rest of you there."
The little house wherein the Secret Service, men had taken up their headquarters was not far away. When the inventor and the submarine boys rang the bell Mr. Packwood admitted them.
"Step right into the next room," advised Mr. Packwood. "You'll find some one there you know."
A the submarine folks entered the room they saw Trotter seated at a table on which were writing materials. At the other side of the table standing very erect, and in a very respectful pose, was the Japanese, Kamanako.