More active than the paunch-burdened detective, he had sprinted down and back through the hallway of the twenty-second floor, without discovering anything, ere the police contingent had reached an agreement and the stairhead.
There remained two more floors, two final flights. A little hopelessly he swung up the first. And as he did so the blackness above him was riven by a tongue of fire, and a bullet, singing past his head, flattened itself with a vicious spat against the marble dado of the walls. Instinctively he pulled up, finger closing upon the trigger of his revolver; flash and report followed the motion, and a panel of ribbed glass in a door overhead was splintered and fell in clashing fragments, all but drowning the sound of feet in flight upon the upper staircase.
A clamor of caution, warning, encouragement, and advice broke out from the police below. But Maitland hardly heard. Already he was again in pursuit, taking the steps two at a leap. With a hand upon the newel-post he swung round on the twenty-third floor, and hurled himself toward the foot of the last flight. A crash like a rifle-shot rang out above, and for a second he fancied that Anisty had fired again and with a heavier weapon. But immediately he realized that the noise had been only the slamming of the door at the head of the stairs,—the door whose glazed panel loomed above him, shedding a diffused light to guide his footsteps, its opalescent surface lettered with the name of
HENRY M. BANNERMAN Attorney & Counselor-at-Law
the door of the office whose threshold he had so often crossed to meet a friend and adviser. It was with a shock that he comprehended this, a thrill of wonder. He had all but forgotten that Bannerman owned an office in the building, in the rush, the urge of this wild adventure. Strange that Anisty should have chosen it for the scene of his last stand,—strange, and strangely fatal for the criminal! For Maitland knew that from this eyrie there was no means of escape, other than by the stairs.
Well and good! Then they had the man, and—
The thought was flashing in his mind, illumining the darkness of his despair with the hope that he would be able to force a word as to the girl's whereabouts from the burglar ere the police arrived; Maitland's foot was on the upper step, when a scream of mortal terror—her voice!—broke from within. Half maddened, he threw himself bodily against the door, twisting the knob with frantic fingers that slipped upon its immovable polished surface.
The bolt had been shot, he was barred out, and, with only the width of a man's hand between them, the girl was in deathly peril and terror.
A sob that was at the same time an oath rose to his lips. Baffled, helpless, he fell back, tears of rage starting to his eyes, her accents ringing in his ears as terribly pitiful as the cry of a lost and wandering soul.
"God!" he mumbled incoherently, and in desperation sent the pistol-butt crashing against the glass. It was tough, stout, stubborn; the first blow scarcely flawed it. As he redoubled his efforts to shatter it, Hickey's hand shot over his shoulder to aid him…. And with startling abruptness the barrier seemed to dissolve before their eyes, the glass falling inward with a shrill clatter.