The Wheel of Death/Chapter 19

It was a novel situation, even for Richard Wentworth, to be seated upon an old iron safe which slowly descended through the floor of the back office of so disreputable a restaurant. It might seem to be a reckless act. But it was probably the last thing which his enemies would expect him to do, and it was by doing the unexpected thing that he often won success. Nevertheless he knew that danger might be met in the unknown, and his senses were keenly alert as the safe descended into almost complete darkness.

Some light came through the aperture in the floor above as the safe came to rest and the mechanism ceased its vibration. But there was not enough for him to see what the place contained nor the walls which surrounded it. He saw the face of Ram Singh peering down from above and knew that his retreat was well guarded.

With Grogan safely locked up in Grant's Tomb, he felt confident that Ram Singh could hold the room above against any attack, at least until he had time to climb back through the hole and join him.

But what of the place he was in? In order to remove himself from the faint light which descended from the hole above, he slipped quickly off the safe and crouched, motionless, in the dark a little to one side. He found himself standing upon what seemed to be a cement floor covered with straw.

Gradually, as eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, he was able to distinguish vague outlines of boxes. In addition, he discovered a faint line of light close to the floor. That line evidently came from beneath a door which must open into a room below the kitchen.

For some few minutes Wentworth remained perfectly motionless while he bent every effort to listen. Several times he thought that he could distinguish breathing near him and once more the straw rustled. Of course the rustling of the straw might have been caused by a rat. But, unless the rat had asthma, he did not believe that he could hear its breathing. Again he heard what seemed to be a faint indrawn breath and again the straw rustled slightly. He was confident that someone was in that dark room, not more than a few feet away.

Very quietly he drew a flashlight from his pocket, but delayed using it until he had learned a little more by means of his ears. In his other hand he held his pistol, ready for use if the flashlight revealed any immediate threat.

Above him the drunken woman was trying to sing a sentimental song and a chair scraped on the restaurant floor.

Suddenly the voices of the two men became audible. They were arguing excitedly, on the other side of the door below which the line of light appeared.

"You shouldn't of lowered the safe," one of them argued. "You can't open it, and you'll get bloody hell."

"Maybe I can work the combination," the other returned excitedly. "I've got to get a sniff of the stuff, or I'll go nuts!"

The other man swore, said he would have nothing to do with it and that he was going back to the kitchen. "Grogan will be back any minute, and I know what's good for me," he added.

The brief dialogue told the entire story of why the iron safe had been lowered to the dark room below. A wretched drug addict, dying for a pinch of heroin, had lowered the safe in the slight hope that he could work the combination and obtain some of the drug to relieve his nerves.

Very soon the door would probably be opened and the presence of an intruder would be discovered. Of course a drug addict is not a very formidable antagonist except that he may be exceedingly rash and will kill, if he has the chance, without any hesitation. He is, however, at a great disadvantage when matched against a real fighter with steady nerves. Wentworth was quite confident that he could handle such a man, either by wit or by force. But he did not want to meet him before he knew who it was that was breathing so close to him.

It was then that the accident happened which might easily have ended so disastrously. Without any warning his flashlight was knocked from his hand. He was robbed of the one means which would show him instantly who and what was near him.

Instantly he raised his pistol to strike, not caring to fire at an unseen person. And with his free hand, the hand which had held the flashlight, he reached swiftly forward to seize what might be before him, so that he could strike accurately in the dark.

His reaching hand grasped rough cloth beneath which was a shoulder. The raised pistol commenced to descend upon the place where the head should be.

Then it stopped! Never before had his wit acted more quickly to save him from making a mistake. The shoulder was so small that it could only be that of a boy— or a girl!

But if Wentworth stopped his attack, his antagonist did not. Small hands beat upon him, striking his head and chest wildly. Hard little boots began kicking and found his shins as often as they missed. He could not bring himself to beat into unconsciousness so small an antagonist and he could not run away. The only remaining course was to come to closer quarters. He dropped his pistol into his side pocket and seized the boy or girl in his arms.

It was a girl. He discovered that just as soon as he lifted her from the floor. And he discovered more. The coarse coat and ragged trousers confirmed what he had suspected. In the dark he was holding little Molly Dennis, still dressed in the street urchin's clothes which she had worn when he had taken her back to Grogan's Restaurant. "Molly!" he whispered. "Be still! This is your old pal, Dick Wentworth."

But she was too frightened and excited to hear him, or at least to understand. She fought on, trying to slap and scratch.

And then there was light. The door into the next room was open, and a man was standing in the doorway with an oil lamp in his hand.

Wentworth, struggling to hold Molly so that she could not scratch him and at the same time so as not to hurt her, caught a second glimpse of the man with the oil lamp. In the man's other hand was a pistol, one of those ugly little things which are so short that they can be concealed in the palm of the hand and which are made for cowardly killings at very short range.

There was nothing for Wentworth to do except to drop Molly. In the first place he had to get her out of harm's way as much as possible, in case the man opened fire. In the second place he had to let go of her in order to get at his own pistol.

It was just as he dropped her that she recognized him and, instead of getting away from him, she came close to him. Her face was even dirtier than when Ram Singh had so cleverly made it up, and it was both saucy and bewildered as she looked up at him.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I didn't know it was you." She began to smile whimsically and looked at the man with the lamp and the pistol as if he did not matter at all. "Now everything will be all right," she said softly.

But Wentworth shoved her away from him with one hand, hoping that her optimistic belief was well founded. The man was trembling so that both the gun and the lamp were shaking. He was desperately in need of his drug, and his nerves were shot to pieces. His twitching finger might discharge the weapon accidentally at any moment, or he might take it into his head to shoot out of pure viciousness.

"Whatcha doing here?" the man demanded, keeping his pistol pointed at Wentworth.

"Came down here to get some snow," replied Wentworth quickly. "Grogan's away and I know how to open the safe."

The man looked eager, but hesitated while Wentworth considered the advisability of attempting a quick draw. If his pistol had been in its holster, he could have drawn and fired with confidence. But he had dropped it in his side pocket, and it is almost impossible for a man to pick a pistol out of his side pocket quickly enough, when his opponent has him covered.

Even so, Wentworth might have attempted it, if it had not been for Molly. If anything happened to him, it was almost certain that she would meet with disaster. Certainly her father would give his life for a crime which had been committed by another man.

"Go ahead!" ordered the man after a pause. "Open the safe if you can do it."

"Hold the lamp by the dial," replied Wentworth, knowing quite well that he could disarm the drug addict with ease if he could get close enough to him.

But although the man was now a pitiful addict, he was, or had been, one of the underworld killers and he knew his trade. He shook his head and said that there was enough light from where he stood.

Wentworth approached the safe and began to twist the dial of the combination. He knew that Ram Singh was watching from above but, unfortunately, the addict continued to stand in the doorway, from which position he could not be seen through the hole in the floor above. Wentworth could have called his servant, who would unhesitatingly have dropped through the hole to come to his assistance, but would certainly have received the first bullet from the man's pistol. Although Wentworth could then have fired the next shot and ended the matter, he would not sacrifice his servant to save himself.

There was one more probability which had to be taken into consideration by Wentworth while he slowly turned the dial. It was probable, almost certain he believed, that the man would shoot him down as soon as he opened the door of the safe. Everything being considered, it was necessary that this man should be disarmed or killed at once. And Wentworth had to do it himself.

He considered the matter and came to a decision during the last few seconds that he was twirling the dial. He was working with his right hand but, as a pistol shot, he was ambidextrous and, if anything, shot a little better with his left hand than with his right.

Slowly his left hand, the unsuspicious hand, crept into his side pocket and gripped the pistol. Then suddenly he seemed to rise in the air as he sprang away from the safe.

Crack! The little pistol of the drug addict barked. There was a roar in reply, as Wentworth fired while at the very height of his bound into the air. The other man's bullet missed by an inch or so, but the heavy shot from Wentworth's gun struck the addict in the shoulder. The wounded man lurched backward through the open door, as the lamp he had held dropped with a crash upon the floor....

Such was the cause of the great fire at Grogan's Restaurant— the fire which wiped out every vestige of the evil place and left the firemen playing their hose upon a mass of glowing embers. The oil lamp broke, and the oil, igniting, ran into a heap of straw at the base of a pile of wooden boxes which had once contained dope of various kinds. The room, once so dark, was ablaze in a very few seconds, and there was nothing available which could possibly extinguish the flames.

Wentworth realized the danger immediately and leaped for Molly. Behind his back he heard the slamming and locking of the door which opened into the next room, the only exit except the square hole in the floor above. And, as he picked her up, slight and fragile, he heard something still more ominous. He heard the grating of the mechanism which lifted the heavy safe. From the next room the drug addict had started the machinery which would lift the iron safe and block the hole above!

As quickly as possible he carried the girl to the rising safe and reached it just in time. He lifted her up and placed her on top of the safe when there was just sufficient room to do so without having her crushed as the heavy iron box entered the square hole.

"Ram Singh!" he called through the last few inches of space. Defend her with your life and take her to Van Sloan missie sahib!"

As the safe slid into the aperture, very faintly but very earnestly the reply came to him: "Han sahib!"

While the heat of the flames beat upon his face, he knew that the Hindu would carry out that last order of his at the risk of his life, if a long knife and muscles of steel could accomplish the task.

But was it his last order? Wentworth was almost surrounded with leaping flames, and the only two exits were barred. The heat was almost unbearable and becoming greater. In that inferno life could only continue for a very few minutes longer. The door into the next room was on fire, but it could not possibly burn down in time to save his life.

He seemed to be hopelessly trapped and, in the center of the room where he was farthest from the flames, he quietly laughed to himself. So this was the end. The next adventure would be death, the greatest adventure of all!

That little laugh seemed to do Wentworth good. He came very abruptly into action again. He would be damned if he would be beaten. There was just one chance. He lifted his pistol again. There were seven cartridges left in the magazine and one in the barrel. From the center of the room he fired eight shots into the lock of the door, placing them all within the diameter of a fist. Then, with a great spring, he threw himself, right shoulder first, into the door.

The door gave way and fell into the next room with Wentworth on top of it, his hair singed and his clothes smoking. Bruised but vigorous, he picked himself up, climbed a rickety, narrow stairs and found himself in the kitchen. Here there was as yet no fire, but the room was filled with smoke and, in front, the restaurant was a mass of flames.

The back window of the kitchen was open and belching smoke into a small fenced yard. With the smoke Wentworth climbed through the window and dropped to the ground outside. It was a matter of only a few minutes for him to scramble over the fence and race along a lane to the street.

He reached his car just as Ram Singh was lifting Molly into the tonneau, having refused to put her down for one instant from the moment that he had snatched her from the top of the rising safe while the fire was eating through the floor upon which he stood.

But he dropped her abruptly upon the floor of the car as his master touched him on the shoulder.

"Khudda bara hai!" exclaimed Ram Singh emotionally, while tears of joy streamed down his face.

"Yes, God is great," agreed Wentworth, smiling while he slipped unconcernedly into the driver's seat. "But He favors those who help themselves."