Page:McCulley--Black Star's camapign.djvu/190

190 exhausted condition. There was no way, he thought, in which Landers and the women could escape from the roof except through the door at which the sheriff and Lawrence were pounding.

Verbeck waited until he felt refreshed, and then slipped down to the roof. Noiselessly he made his way across it toward the door. He came to a chimney, and stopped beside it, to watch and listen.

He had no weapon on him, and he knew that Landers had a vapor gun. One shot from that might render him unconscious, put him out of the fight. He could hear Landers and the women talking not very far from where he stood.

"They can't get through that door for some time," Landers was saying. "I'm going to telephone."

"He'll not come!" Mamie Blanchard wailed. "Why didn't we go down the stairs instead of up? We might have known we would have been caught in a trap."

"We'll see whether he'll come or not!" Landers said. "If the telephone is not out of commission"

During the hot summer months, the roof was used as a garden. There was a little building in one corner of it that was used as a refreshment stand, and there always was a telephone there.

Verbeck knew that Landers was rushing across the roof to the building. He heard him smash against the frail door, heard it crash in. The women, it was evident, remained near the door leading to the stairs that went below.

Leaving the shadow of the chimney, Verbeck crept forward toward the little structure where Landers had gone to telephone. He hoped to catch