Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FINDINGS IS KEEPINGS. the alley,” she panted, gazing at him plead- ingly and with clasped hands. ‘IT know,” muttered Vale. “Let me through. Do let me through. ‘The fire is only at the front of the house—”’ Like a flash she stooped beneath the rope and eluded him. Spannard uttered a rau- cous laugh. As the slight, stooping figure of the girl flashed diagonally across the intersection of the two streets, Vale sud- denly felt that he must go with her. She would risk her life if she tried to enter that studio building from the rear. He bawled a word to Spannard and started in pursuit. The next police rope and guard on Barrows Place was at the end of the block in this direction. The street was littered with hose and fire trucks. The girl dodged the several groups of hose- men without being halted. Vale pounded after her. He was still yards behind when Allaine darted into the alley. He followed her, trying to overtake the flying girl. He saw her dash open the gate in the low fence behind the building she had indicated. ‘Miss Maywell! Stop!” he shouted. When he plunged into the yard she was not there. The lower door of the studio building was closed. He fiung himself against it. The door was locked. He beat upon it with his night-stick in vain. Falling back from the building, Vale gazed upward. Hanging over his head was the ladder to the lower balcony of the fire- escape. Swiftly mounting from the first balcony to the next was a skirted figure. - “Great Scott!” ejaculated Vale beneath his breath. ‘“ She’s doing it! The plucky little jane!” As he swung himself up the hanging lad- der, he again glanced upward. Allaine had now reached the top-floor balcony of the fire-escape. A glare of stronger light sud- denly burst from the windows of the floor below her. This fourth floor must be all ablaze! “If she gets out of this without being scorched to a cinder she’ll have more luck than a little,” thought Vale, but he clam- bered recklessly in her wake. He had not yet reached the fourth floor level when the tingle of glass above an- 73 nounced the breaking of a window, and that the girl had opened a way into the studio at the top of the house. He saw her slim figure slip under the raised sash and dis- appear within. Vale clambered past the glowing windows of the fourth floor. Those broad panes seemed fairly to radiate the heat of the confined flames. He saw through them a churning mass of rose-hued smoke. He reached the open window of the top floor. There was no light in the room Allaine had entered. But a certain reflec- tion from the fire below lent some illumi- nation to the place. He stepped over the window-sill and strode toward the front of the house. : There was a rear room, a middle room, and the main studio front, which was lit by a big skylight. Cotton sheeting stretched overhead graduated the light from without in daytime. Just now a flickering glow shone through the glass panel of a door opening into the hall. The stairway from the floor below was all afire. Allaine Maywell stood before the tiled mantle. She was doing something to one of the ornate bits of tilework just above the shelf. She tugged at it—lifted it— shoved it endwise—and it came out in her hands! Her hand darted into the shallow space left behind the tile. She drew forth a docu- ment-envelope and turned swiftly to retreat. The whole building trembled. A crash followed, and that part of the floor near the hall door sagged perilously. A beam had burned through below and this floor promised to fall. Allaine shrieked, and would have fallen had Vale not been there to catch her. The - envelope fluttered from her grasp, but he secured this, too, as he upheld the girl. In the burst of fire-light that now illumined the room he read at a glance the docketing across the end of the envelope, written in a stiff, legal hand: Last WILL AND TESTAMENT OF CoLONEL Harpy MAyYWELL, DICTAMEN, Vale thrust the envelope into the inner pocket of his blouse. He picked the girl up bodily and started for the fire-escape. cComiclbooks.com