Disdaining the rungs, he slid down. He had hardly gathered his poise before the girl tumbled into his arms, one of the heavy wooden shoes she was carrying giving him a smart tap on the head.
“These men!” she gasped. “They saw me, and shouted.”
Dalroy imagined that the trio near the engine must have noted the swinging lantern and its sudden disappearance. With the instant decision born of polo and pig-sticking in India, he elected now not to essay the slanting roof just where they stood. Shouldering the ladder again, he made off toward a strip of shadow which seemed to indicate the end of a somewhat higher shed. He was right. Irene followed, and they crouched there in panting silence.
Nearly every German is a gymnast, and it was no surprise to Dalroy when one of their pursuers mounted on the shoulders of a friend and gained the top of the wall.
“There’s nothing to be seen here,” he announced after a brief survey.
The pair beneath must have answered, because he went on, evidently in reply, “Oh, I saw it myself. And I’m sure there was some one up here. There’s a sentry on No. 5. Run, Fritz, and ask him if a man with a lantern has passed recently. I’ll mount guard till you return.”
Happily a train approached, and, in the resultant din Dalroy was enabled to scramble down the roof unheard.
The ladder just reached the ground; so, before Fritz and the sentry began to suspect that some trickery was afoot in that part of the station, the two fugitives were speeding through a dark lane hemmed in by warehouses. At the first opportunity, Dalroy extinguished the lantern. Then he bethought him of his companion’s appearance. He halted suddenly ere they entered a lighted thoroughfare.
“I had better put on these clogs again,” he said. “But what about you? It will never do for a lady in smart attire to be seen walking through the streets with a ruffian like me at one o’clock in the morning.”
For answer, the girl took off her hat and tore away a cluster of roses and a coquettish bow of ribbon. Then she discarded her jacket, which she adjusted loosely across her shoulders.