The youth went to the single door of the room, inserted the point of the bar between door and frame near the lock, and the next moment the dry wood gave way, splintering all around the lock. The door came open at a touch.
“Sup—suppose they stop us?” breathed Jennie, trembling.
“Let ’em try!” exclaimed the valiant Scorch, and led the way into the dark hall.
They marched downstairs, the girls clinging together and trembling, without a soul appearing to dispute their advance. The outside door was chained; but Scorch had no difficulty in opening it. And so they passed on out into the grimy street just after sunrise.
The house was merely an old, ill-kept lodging house, the person who ran it being under some sort of obligation to Senator Montgomery. The girls never learned what street it was on.
“My taxi’s waiting,” said Scorch, proudly, hurrying them around the corner. “Come on, before it eats its head off and breaks me.”
“Oh, I’ve got money, Scorch!” cried Nancy.
“All right. You may need it later.”
The taxi-cab driver paid no attention to the girls as they got in. Scorch took his seat beside him, and they were off. In a very few minutes they stopped at Garvan’s Hotel, in a much better-looking neighborhood, and Scorch paid for the cab.
“Come on, now, and let me do the talking,” said the red-headed youth. “That gray man is ahead of us; but he isn’t the whole thing around this hotel. They know me better than they do him.”