With the rending of wood the second followed the first and with a third which he wrenched loose Dennis smashed in the fragments of glass which still clung to the sash, then wriggled lithely through the aperture and disappeared. McCarty drew a long breath and turned to his former superior.
“I’d like to be following him,” he said wistfully. “If so be some guy is hiding in there—the same one that grabbed the lad—he’ll be desperate enough to kill, and Denny’s too slow-thinking and slow-moving to take care of himself! I’m heftier than him and ’tis long since I did any shinnying, but maybe that pipe would hold me after all!”
“A man with four medals from the fire department for meritorious conduct and conspicuous bravery doesn’t need a nursemaid, Mac!” the inspector responded with a laugh. “Personally, I don’t believe any one’s been in there for months before him but—what’s that?”
“That” was a sudden subdued commotion within, a long-sustained clatter followed by a reverberating thud and then a silence ominous in its intensity.
“I knew it!” McCarty dropped the hat and coat and made for the wooden barrier that sealed the main back door. “I’m going in if I break the whole damn’ place down! Denny! Denny! I’m coming!”
His reassuring roar was lost in the mighty smash of his fist on the rotting boards but after the first blow the inspector reached him and dragged him back.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” the latter demanded. “You’ll have the whole block aroused to find us breaking and entering! Riordan’s all right!—There, I hear somebody moving about inside. Listen!”
McCarty waited, panting and tense, and faintly there came to his ears the sound as of stumbling footsteps within and a scratching noise from a window at the left of the door which, being protected by an iron grill-work, had been left unboarded. A heavy green shade hung close against the inner side of the dirty windowpane, furrowed by many past rainstorms, and the stout bars seemed at a glance to be firmly imbedded in the broad stone sill but McCarty strode to them and began trying them one by one, while behind him the inspector drew his revolver and stood expectant.
“Look here, sir!” McCarty whispered. “’Tis fine burglar protection they’ve got in these houses! See how this bar slides up into its groove in the top of the casement, till you can pull it out below and down over the sill entirely? I’ll bet the next will work the same.—It does! If we’d taken the trouble to find this out at first—! Glory be, here’s Denny himself!”
The green shade had flown up and the face of Dennis appeared in a sickly yellow aura cast by his flashlight, but he promptly extinguished it and set to work on the catch of the window. As McCarty removed the fourth bar the sash opened upward and the two, who had meanwhile been exchanging grimaces pregnant with meaning gazed silently at each other for a full minute. Then McCarty found his voice.