“Too bad, I must go and call, to see if I can help him!” was Shirley's remark as he hung up the receiver. He repeated the news to Helene. Her eyes sparkled, as she said: “Ah, those symptoms resemble the ones you told me which came from that amo-amas-amat-citron, or whatever it was.”
“Not quite such a loving lemon, Miss Marigold,” he chuckled. “Amyl nitrite. The same soothing syrup which quieted our would-be robbers on Sixth Avenue, that night when we left his apartment. It will wear off in about three hours. I had a little glass container folded in my own handkerchief, which I put in his overcoat pocket as a parting souvenir, crushing it as I did so. I reasoned that undue anxiety which he displayed might cause him to mop his brow, close to that student-duel scar. One smell of the chemical on that handkerchief, in the quantity which I gave, was enough to quiet his worries. Now for the Somerset Apartment.”
He looked at his watch.
“It is eight fifteen. I want you to telephone up to Warren's apartment exactly at ten o'clock. Tell them—there should be a them, that I have been overcome in your apartment, and that they are the only people who can help you, or who know you. I believe that the idea of finding me unconscious, and getting me away will bring any and all of his friends who may be there. If Taylor is there with others, he will hardly leave them in the place when he goes. What I want is to be sure that the coast is cleared of people at that hour. Then I will make an investigation into his papers and other matters of interest. Can I count on you?”
A reproachful pouting of the scarlet lips was the only answer. Shirley left, this time hurrying uptown to a certain engine-house, whose fire captain he had known quite well in the old reportorial days.
It was beginning to snow once more. And as Shirley slipped out of the engine-house, carrying a scaling ladder which he had borrowed after much persuasion from his good-natured friend, he thanked his luck for this natural veiling of the night, to baffle eyes too curious about the campaign he had planned. He knew the posts of the policemen on this street, and sedulously avoided them.
The Warren apartment faced the Eastern side of the structure, and when he reached the front of the Somerset, he sought for a way in which to use his implement. A scaling ladder, it may be explained to the uninitiated, is about eight feet long—a single fire-proof bar, on which are short cross-pieces. At one end is a curiously curving serrated hook, which is used for grappling on the sills of windows or ledges above. It is the most useful weapon for the city fire-fighter, enabling him to climb diagonally across the face of a threatened structure, or even to swing horizontally from one window to a far one, where ladders and hose-streams might not reach.
A hundred feet to the West of the Somerset he found the excavations for a new apartment house. No watchman was in sight, in the mist of falling flakes, so the criminologist disappeared over the fence which separated the plot of ground from the sidewalk. Advancing with many a stumble through the blasted rock and shale, he obtained ingress to an alleyway in the rear. Following this brought him to the back of the Somerset. Shirley had an obstinate grandfather, and heredity was strong upon him. It seemed a foolhardy attempt to scale the big structure, but he raised the ladder to the window-sill of the second story, climbing cautiously up to that ledge.
On the second sill he rested, then stretched his scaler diagonally forward to the left. As he put his feet upon this, he swung like a pendulum across the space. It was a severe grueling of nerves, but his judgment of placement was good. When the ladder stopped swinging he clambered up another story, as he had learned to do on truant afternoons wasted at the firemen's training school, during the privileged days of journalistic work.
Floor after floor he ascended, until he reached the eighth, on which was Shirley's great goal. Here he exerted the utmost prudence, refraining from the natural impulse to look down at the great crevasse beneath him. His footing was slippery, but the thickening snowfall was a boon in white disguise, for it protected him from almost certain observation from the street below. Slowly he raised his eyes to a level with the illuminated window, and peered in.