The whole building was in an uproar now. Men were shouting, women shrieking, and children crying. They came swarming down the stairs, falling over one another, pushing, shoving, fighting to get out.
In the room where the fire started, which was now a sea of flames, Frank saw a figure groping with outstretched arms, clothing all ablaze.
Merriwell rushed in there, dragged the fellow out, beat at the fire with his bare hands, stripped off his coat, muffled some of the flames and finally extinguished them, just as he was swept down the stairs in the midst of a human river. In his powerful arms he carried the one he had rescued at the peril of his own life.
Out into the open air Merry was thrust. He clung to the moaning chap he had dragged from the flames.
"Send in an ambulance call!" he cried to a policeman. "This boy has been badly burned."
The eyes of Felipe Jalisco stared at him in wonderment, for all of the agony the lad was suffering.
"Why did you do it—you, my enemy?" he marveled. "Why didn't you leave me there to die? Then I would be out of your way and could give you no further trouble."
"That's not my way of doing business," said Merry, as he carried the Mexican lad to a place of safety and sat holding him in his arms until the ambulance came.
Fire engines shrieked and roared their mad way to the scene of the conflagration. The firemen hastened with their work, but the building was doomed.
When Jalisco had been removed in the ambulance, Merry sought for Bronson, and finally found him.