“Who are? Todd and those boys?” demanded Winthrop. “They mustn’t think of it! They’ll only make it worse. It is impossible to get your sister out of here with those drunken firemen in the building. You must wait till they’ve gone home. Do you hear me?”
“Pardon me!” returned Sam stiffly, “but this is my relief expedition. I have sent two of the boys to hold the bridge, like Horatius, and two to guard the motors, and the others are going to entice the firemen away from the engine-house.”
“Entice them? How?” demanded Winthrop. “They’re drunk, and they won’t leave here till morning.”
Outside the engine-house, suspended from a heavy cross-bar, was a steel rail borrowed from a railroad track, and bent into a hoop. When hit with a sledge-hammer it proclaimed to Fairport that the “consuming element” was at large.
At the moment Winthrop asked his question, over the village of Fairport and over the bay and marshes, and far out across the Sound, the great steel bar sent forth a shuddering boom of warning.
From the room above came a wild tumult of joyous yells.
“Fire!” shrieked the vamps, “fire!”
The two men crouching by the cellar window heard the rush of feet, the engine banging and bumping across the sidewalk, its brass bell clanking crazily, the happy vamps shouting hoarse, incoherent orders.
Through the window Sam lowered a bag of tools he had taken from Winthrop’s car.
“Can you open the lock with any of these?” he asked.