His Great Adventure. Robert Herrick
of these papers out to you, and you can stack them ready to pack when the bag comes.”
Brainard opened the inner door and listened. There were faint sounds like sobbing within the safe.
“If she can cry, she’ll last,” he said to himself. “Now for it! Where in thunder can that fellow Peters be? I hope he hasn’t heard that the old man is dead!”
He began to shove the books and papers through the door, which he kept nearly closed, for fear that the reporter might detect the sounds that came from the safe, and ask questions. It was dark now, but he did not dare to turn on the electric lights, for the windows faced the street, and he feared men might already be watching the office.
He had transferred all the packages not packed, and was struggling at his heavy valise, when he heard a voice behind him, and started.
“I guess you thought I was never coming back,” Peters stammered breathlessly. He was dragging a small trunk through the little back door behind the safe. “It nearly broke my back getting this thing up those five flights of stairs.”
“Bring it this way, Peters!” Brainard shouted nervously, pushing the old man through the door into the outer office.
He banged the door shut just as a muffled scream issued from the safe.
“What’s that?” Peters asked, dropping the trunk to the floor.
“Somebody in the hall, I suppose,” Brainard replied coolly.
Fortunately the old man’s attention was distracted from the scream by the sight of the reporter. Farson had lighted another cigarette, and was swinging his legs and smiling amiably.
“Didn’t expect to see me, did you?”
“Who—”
“That’s all right. Your friend here seems to be in a hurry. He asked me to stay and help in the spring moving.”
“Come, get to work!” Brainard called out, on his knees before the trunk. “Cigars and explanations afterward!”
They slung the books and the packages of papers, which the reporter had neatly arranged, into the little trunk. Then they closed and locked it. Brainard unbolted the outer door.
“I wouldn’t make my exit by the front door,” the reporter advised. “I reckon you’d be spotted before you got to the street. There’s a back way, ain’t there?”
Brainard, thinking of the woman in the safe, hesitated.
“That’s how I brought up the trunk,” Peters said. “There’s nobody out there.”
Brainard opened the door to the inner office, and listened. It was quite still. Probably the woman had fainted.
“Come on!” he called, grasping one end of the trunk.
The reporter caught hold of the other, and Peters followed, tugging at the heavy bag. As they crossed the inner office, there was not a sound.
Brainard hesitated at the door, thinking that he must release the girl before he left; but as he stood before the safe, there was a squeal from within which indicated sufficient liveliness on the part of the stenographer. There would be time enough to attend to her after he had got his loot to the street. If she were released now, her temper might prove to be troublesome; so he joined the others on the landing, closing the little door behind him.
“The old man used to get out this way sometimes,” Peters observed.
“I reckon he never will again,” the reporter laughed.
The hall opened on a narrow, circular iron staircase, without a single light. Down this pit Brainard and the reporter plunged, tugging at the trunk, which threatened to stick at every turn. The old man got on more easily with the bag, which he merely allowed to slide after him. Brainard was soaked in perspiration; the reporter puffed and swore, but he stuck manfully at his job.
At last they tumbled out into the dark alley at the rear of the building. After he had caught his breath, Brainard inquired where he could find a cab.
“If I were you, young man,” the reporter replied, “I wouldn’t try being a swell. I’d take the first rig I could charter. There’s one over there now.”
He pointed down the alley, and waded off into the dark. Presently he returned with a plumber’s wagon.
“He says he’ll land your baggage at the ferry for four bits. You can ride or walk behind, just as you like.”
They loaded the trunk and the bag into the wagon, and the reporter, perching himself beside the driver, announced genially:
“I’ll see you aboard!”
“How much time is there left?” Brainard asked.
“Thirty-two minutes—you can do it easily in twenty-five.”
“Wait a minute, then!”
Brainard took Peters to one side, and said to him in a low voice:
“You remember that noise you heard up there in the office? It came from the girl—the stenographer. She got fresh while you were out, and I had to lock her up in the safe to keep her quiet. I think there is enough air to last her some time yet; but her last squeal was rather faint. Suppose you run up and let her out!”
Peters, with a scared look on his face, made one bound for the stairs.
“Hold on, man!” Brainard shouted after him. “You don’t know the combination. Here it is!”
He searched in his pockets for the slip of paper on which he had copied the figures, but in the dark he could not find it.
“This ain’t any automobile,” the reporter suggested. “You’d better put off your good-bys until the next time!”
“Try to remember what I say,” Brainard said to the frightened Peters, and began repeating the combination from memory. “I’m pretty sure that’s right. Say it over! There, again!”
The shaking man repeated the figures three or four times.
“Good! Keep saying it over to yourself as you go upstairs, and I’ll telephone the office from the ferry and see if you’ve got her out.”
But Peters had already disappeared into the darkness within the building. Brainard climbed into the plumber’s wagon, the man whipped up his horse, and they jolted out of the alley. As they came in sight of the ferry building, the reporter compared his watch with the clock, and remarked:
“Eight minutes to the good—fast traveling for a plumber!”
“Just look out for my stuff while I telephone!” Brainard exclaimed.
All the way to the ferry he had been anxious about the girl in the safe. He had already resolved that if he found Peters had failed to open the safe, he would go back and run the risk of capture.
When the operator rang up the number of Krutzmacht’s private office, there was an agonizing wait before any one answered. Finally a woman’s voice, very faint, called:
“Who is it?”
Prudence counseled Brainard to assume that the voice was that of the stenographer, and to hang up the receiver. But he wished to make sure that it was the woman herself, and so he asked:
“Are you feeling all right, miss?”
“You thief!” came hissing over the wire to his ear. “You won’t get—” And there was no more.
She had dropped the receiver, probably for action. When Brainard stepped from the telephone booth, he looked uneasily in the direction of Market Street, as if he expected to see the stenographer flying through the hurrying crowd. The reporter beckoned to him.
“Your trunk has gone aboard the ferry.