II
When Clement came to himself he was conscious of extreme darkness, an agonizing pain in his head where that sandbag had landed, and also considerable pain where his bonds bit into wrist and leg.
He also felt from the sounds drifting up to him that he was in a room at the top of the gluemaker’s house, and probably a lumber room from the musty smell of it.
It must be confessed that his first responsible emotion was not thankfulness for an escape from what should have been death, but a very hearty disgust at the way he had allowed himself to be captured. In fact, when he realized how he had thrown away his chance and maybe delivered Heloise into the hands of Mr. Neuburg and his gang, he lost his nerve, and with a terrific output of strength tried to free himself from his bonds.
He had seen heroes in the “movies” and Mr. Houdini free themselves from their shackles often enough, and it had seemed a simple matter. The men who had fixed his bonds, however, would have spoiled any movie hero’s business. Not only could he not throw them off, but the struggle to do so, so increased the pain of them and that of his head, that in the end he fainted.
He was forced back to consciousness by the frightful sensation of blood recirculating in his limbs. He writhed and moaned. An oath sounded at his side, something was flung over his head, and handcuffs were snapped on to his wrists. Clement struggled with the thing about his head, while shuffling footsteps hurried across the boards but he only got the rug—that is what it proved to be—away from his eyes in time to see the legs and back of a tall, thin man flash out of the door. A strong lock snapped home. Louis, the gluemaker, was not risking identification.
When he had recovered sufficiently, Clement sat up and took stock of the situation. He was, as he had thought in the roof room of the gluemaker’s. It was a big room, crowded with old junk. The room was lit by a narrow window of the kind known to architects as a “lie-on-your-stomach,” that is, it rose from the floor boards to end at the slant of the roof about two feet above. By the light coming in through the dirty panes the morning was well on, but whether it was past his hour to see Heloise—9:30—he could not say.
He was sitting in the center of this room, with some fresh food and water beside him. The gang then did not want him to starve. He also saw that the gang had thought of him in other ways. The thin man who had just bolted through the door, had been with him for no other reason than to remove the tight ropes, and substitute manacles of an easier kind.
He had snapped a pair of police handcuffs on his wrists, as Clement knew, but before that he had put another pair on his ankles; these were linked by a heavy chain to a staple in the wall. The chain was padlocked.
Clement lifted the jug of water with both hands, took a long drink, and then examined the handcuffs on his wrists. In less than a minute one wrist was free. It was quite simple. These handcuffs were ratcheted to take several sizes in wrists. In his hurry the thin man had not pushed the ratchet of the right cuff beyond the first notch. Clement was what might be called a third notch man—hence he had no difficulty in slipping his wrist out.
The leg irons presented a graver problem. Unable to get them off with his hands, he searched about for some means of removing them. He was lucky. With difficulty he unearthed from a box full of odd tools, a hacksaw. With this slowly and patiently, and with his attention always alert for movements in the house, he sawed through the connecting links of the ankle irons.
It was a tedious and painful business. He heard the mid-day “break” sound from scores of factory sirens, but he worked on trying not to think of what might be happening to Heloise.
She would remain on in Quebec, he told himself. She could not hurry away, she would not leave without seeing him. He tried to convince himself of this. He would see her in spite of this trap. And after he had talked with her the whole bad business would be ended.
If he thought of Mr. Neuburg and his cunning, he said to himself, “He thinks he has me here safely. He won’t attempt to attract attention by hustling things.”
It was after two o’clock when he got free. Nobody had come up to him. He had thought this would be the case since a day’s supply of food had been left with him. Concealing the ankle cuffs under his socks, and that on his left wrist up his sleeve, he lay down and looked out of the window.
It was overlooking the yard he had studied yesterday from the cliff behind. In that yard nothing was stirring save the “puff-puff-puff” of the steam pipe. From this window to the yard was a sheer drop of some seventy feet. On the other hand, the thin, topmost upright of the fire escape was two feet away from the window, and level with it—if he dared risk that.
He meant to. He forced the dirt-gummed window open, and, laying flat on his stomach, wriggled his body inch by inch out of the narrow window. It was soul chilling. To find himself poised there half in and half out of that tube of a window, with nothing to aid him, and with that horrible drop beneath him, unnerved him. He felt himself slipping, going. For one moment he seemed to be clawing the empty air, with the feeling that nothing could save him. He was dropping—
Then in a flash his nerve came back. He lunged forward and grasped the slender iron girder of the escape, and there for an agonized moment he hung swaying, helpless. He made a giant effort. The thin iron of the fire escape support creaked and appeared to bend toward him. He heard the structure groan. His feet came away suddenly, and his knees and thighs struck the iron pole with excruciating pain. But the instinct of preservation caused his limbs to act almost, it appeared, on their own initiative. Just as his hands seemed about to be torn loose by his weight, his legs circled the iron support and gripped. He slid downward. In a moment he was crouching on the top platform of the fire escape behind a rain-water barrel.
He remained there for a few minutes, regaining his breath and his nerve, surveying the side of the cliff up which he must presently go. Then he looked downward—and saw a man on the flat roof beneath the fire escape.
The man had come out from the window of the house that was flush with the roof. He stood, a slim, lithe figure, gazing idly about him. He was occupied with nothing more significant than the after-lunch exercise of picking his teeth. Clement knew who the man was. It was Siwash Mike. He hoped Siwash Mike was one of those who liked to take an afternoon siesta on his bed.
Siwash Mike stood there, easy, feeling, no doubt, that the world was a good place to live in. Then he apparently decided what he was going to do. He turned and reentered the house. Clement, thanks to his rubber-soled shoes, was down another floor on the escape by the time he emerged again. That was the fourth floor, through the window of which Clement had seen Siwash himself enter the house yesterday.
The action of Siwash was now not satisfactory. Siwash was dragging behind him a deck chair. Siwash—it was horrible to see it—had under his arm a bundle of magazines with highly colored covers.... Siwash was going to make an afternoon of it on that roof. An afternoon of it—and Clement must leap from the escape to that roof, and cross it in order to reach the cliff.
It was a bitter moment.
But Clement meant to get across that roof and up that cliff. And, what is more, he meant to do it quickly. He could not afford to waste any more time away from Heloise’s side. Indeed, he dare not waste time here. At any moment some one might go up to the attic, find him gone, and raise the alarm....
Raise the alarm! The thought flashed through Clement’s mind not with a thrill of anxiety but with the thrill of a happy idea. With his eyes on the now reposeful head of Siwash Mike, he felt the jalousies of the window behind him. As yesterday, they were unfastened. He opened one, slipped his hand in—yes, the window was wide open also.... In another moment he was inside that window, and had closed the jalousies behind him. Before him were the stairs, descending steeply into yawning darkness. He went to the head of these. With his hands he made a trumpet about his mouth. He opened his mouth. With the full power of his lungs he yelled, “Siwash! Siwash!”
He nipped back to the jalousies. He looked down at Siwash Mike. The half-breed was standing, glaring towards the house, his body tense and alert. Clement nipped to the head of the stairs. He yelled again in a tone of terrific alarm, “Siwash! Help!”
He heard a tumult below. When he got to the jalousies Siwash was no longer on the roof. In a flash of seconds Clement was; had swung from the escape to the flat roof; had dashed along that roof and had leaped to the ledge of the low cliff. He was three parts up the cliff before the fierce face of the half-breed appeared at the little window of the attic.
The face appeared, scowled ferociously, then the right arm shot out. The automatic in the hand came down, sighting on Clement’s climbing figure. Clement shut his eyes and felt sick. He was a mark that could scarcely be missed.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes.
Siwash’s face was turned away from him; he appeared to be arguing vehemently with some one behind him in the attic. As Clement looked, a long, thin arm with an incredibly bony hand stretched itself past Siwash’s shoulder, and clutched avidly at the automatic pistol. Clement did not waste time then. He was up the remainder of the cliff as fast as his best climbing could take him. He was through the builder’s yard at a run, though a man yelled at him to know his business.... And in a near street he caught a taxi and went to the Château Frontenac as rapidly as petrol could carry him.
As he went into the lobby he was stopped by the porter. “We’ve been looking for you, Mr. Seadon,” the man said. “Looking for you everywhere. A lady was asking for you.”
“A lady!” cried Clement, stopping in his stride. “What lady?”
“Oh, the one that left this morning,” said the porter.
“The one that went this morning?” echoed Clement stupidly.
“Yes, the one that left for Montreal.”
Clement glared at him. “You can’t mean Miss Reys, Miss Heloise Reys, who was here with a companion?” he cried.
“That’s the lady I mean,” said the cataclysmic porter. “She was asking for you right up to the moment she left.”