“That’s the girl!” he smiled approvingly.
Cautiously he lowered himself over the edge of the car to grasp a bar of iron. It was at this instant that he heard a shriek from the car to the right. Turning about, he saw a slender girl dressed as a Gypsy, clinging to the side of her car with one hand while with the other she appealed to him for aid. She had torn the mask from her face. He recognized her at a glance—the girl who had saved his life in the den of the underworld.
“Afraid,” he told himself, “afraid of great heights, but not afraid to leap upon the arm of a villain with a knife.”
“Stay where you are,” he shouted, “I’ll be back.”
Rash promise. To catch at a rod here, at a bar there, to swing from bar to bar as an ape swings from branch to branch, going down, down to safety; all this was hard enough, but to ascend, with the fierce glare of the fire upon you—that would be next to impossible! Yet he had promised. He owed his life to that girl and he must fulfill his promise.
As he reached the hub of the wheel he could feel his strength waning. If he covered the remaining distance to the ground he could never return.
“Tillie,” he said soberly, “there is a bar going directly to the ground. Do you think you could grip it hard enough to slide down it without falling?”
The girl’s face went white. One glance at the pitiful creature above her, and courage returned.
“I—I’ll try.”
The next second her arms encircled the bar.