The Firebug

  CHAPTER XXIV FERRIS WHEEL AND FIRE

  Forest City was on fire. The wind was directly behind the blaze. Beforeit, beckoning it on, were tons of confetti, board walks, dry as tinder,and flimsy structures of stucco and lath. Nothing could save this playplace of the frightened thousands.

  Realizing this, and fearing death from the blaze, the throngs that but amoment before were screaming with merriment now raced screaming andshouting with fear toward the back of the park where there were no exits,but where flimsy board fences would offer little resistance to their madonrush.

  To add to the terror of the moment, the powerhouse was at once attackedby the unhindered blaze. The cables were burned. Every chain, everycable, every wheel of the place suddenly stopped. The moving platformwhich bore the gondolas of the City of Venice majestically on their way,came to a sudden halt. The men, women and children who crowded thegondolas were obliged to leap into the water and to battle their way asbest they could through the maze of plaster-of-paris castles, humblehomes and shops toward the faint spot of light which marked the exit.This spot of light was but the glare of the fire, for all lights hadburned out with the cable.

  Only the glare of burning buildings lighted the awe inspiring scene thatfollowed. The roller coaster, pausing with a sudden jerk in its mad rush,left some merrymakers stranded on light trestles, and others so tilted ona down glide that they were standing more on their heads than their feet.

  There came the screams of women who had lost their way in some strangeplace of entertainment and mirth. In this throng were women in thinball-room costumes; boys and girls with roller skates clanking on theirfeet; performers from the outdoor stage, dressed in little more thantinsel and tights, and all pushing and shoving, screaming and prayingthat they might reach the far end and break away into wider spaces beyondbefore the fire was upon them.

  And the fire. Having started in the offices, it has leaped joyfully on tothe power-house and thence to the Palace of Fools. The faces on thestatue of two fools are seized with a sudden pallor. They become yellowand jaundiced, then turn suddenly black. Then of a sudden they assume avery ruddy hue. As quickly after that they crumble to nothing and fall, amass of dust. Johnny and Mazie will not meet Pant and little TillieMcFadden beneath the statue of two fools to-night. No, nor on any othernight.

  And what had happened to Pant and Tillie McFadden? Up to the last fewterrible moments they had been having the time of their young lives. Upand down, under and over, they had rushed through space on the rollercoaster. With all the solemn majesty of a trip to Europe they had riddenthrough the City of Venice. For a time they had wandered upon theboard-walk. It was during this walk that Pant had caught sight of afamiliar figure, a slim girl with a red rose pinned on her breast. He hadwatched her for but a moment when he was made sure by her skipping step,which was more a dance than a walk, that she was the dancing girl who hadsaved his life that night in the den of the underworld. Just as he hadbeen about to put his hand on her shoulder, a screeching mob of revelershad come swooping down upon her and, as a torrent of water bears away aleaf, had carried her away.

  "Ah well," he had sighed, "I will come upon her again." At that he hadturned to Tillie McFadden, who was standing staring at the Ferris wheelwith the fascination of a child.

  "Want to go on there?"

  She nodded.

  "Come on, then."

  They had waited their turn, had gotten aboard and had gone up over anddown, up over and down again, and were starting on their third round whenthe cry: "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" high pitched and shrill, sounded above theshouts and screams of the revelers.

  "Sit right where you are," said Pant reassuringly, as the little girl,frightened by the cries and the sight of leaping flames, started from herseat. "The fire is a full block away from us. Long before it reaches uswe will have reached the ground, leaped from this cage and scamperedaway."

  The wheel turned about at a snail-like pace, stopping and starting,stopping and starting again. As they mounted higher and higher, theflames, led on by great masses of confetti which acted like a fuse,leaped from building to building, coming ever nearer, nearer, nearer!Pant became truly alarmed. At last they reached the very highest pointand here the great wheel came to a sudden stop. Pant knew, from thenature of the stop, that here they would stay, and his consternation wascomplete. There they were, swinging in the air a hundred feet from theground, with a raging conflagration racing madly toward them and withonly steel rods and bars between them and the ground.

  Johnny Thompson was at that moment in a scarcely less perilous position.Having followed the firebug a distance of fifty feet up that ricketystairway, he had paused to flash on his light, only to discover to hisintense horror that the man, crouching on a small landing not ten feetabove him, was engaged in aiming a knife with a ten-inch blade directlyat his head.

  Had he not been Johnny Thompson, he would have perished on the spot.Trained for every emergency, he leaped clean of the stairs, but holdingfirmly to the rail of the bannister. The next instant the knife wentclanging against the wall.

  For a moment, in utter darkness, the boy clung there. Then, hearing theman he hunted again begin the ascent, he swung back upon the stairs andfollowed.

  In that moment he allowed himself a few darting thoughts as to how theaffair would end. His purpose was to get that man! True enough; but how?This he could not answer, nor could he resist the desire to follow. Sofollow he did, step by step, circle by circle, up, up, up, to dizzyheights. The tower had no windows. He could not see the fire, nor couldhe realize by what leaps and bounds it was fighting its way toward thatvery tower.

  "Tillie," said Pant as he saw that the Ferris wheel had made its finalstop and had left them high in air, "I am by nature a cat. I have livedin the jungles with great cats. There is one thing a cat can do supremelywell--climb. I can climb. I can go down those rods and take you with meif you can but cling to my back. Can you?"

  For answer, the girl leaped upon his back to cling there with suchtenacity that her nails cut his flesh.

  "That's the girl!" he smiled approvingly.

  Cautiously he lowered himself over the edge of the car to grasp a bar ofiron. It was at this instant that he heard a shriek from the car to theright. Turning about, he saw a slender girl dressed as a Gypsy, clingingto the side of her car with one hand while with the other she appealed tohim for aid. She had torn the mask from her face. He recognized her at aglance--the girl who had saved his life in the den of the underworld.

  "Afraid," he told himself, "afraid of great heights, but not afraid toleap 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 barto bar as an ape swings from branch to branch, going down, down tosafety; all this was hard enough, but to ascend, with the fierce glare ofthe 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. Ifhe 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 withoutfalling?"

  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.

  Following on the heels of his man, a hundred and fifty feet in air,Johnny came at last to an open balcony above which a great cupola reareditself to the sky. In his mad fear the firebug had already begun mountingthe stair in the cupola. As for Johnny, he paused to consider. It waswell that he should.

  As he looked down a sudden shudder shook his form like a chill. The fire,leaping across a roof more than a hundred feet below him, was alreadylicking at the wooden foundation of the very tower on wh
ich he stood.Even in a vain attempt to retrace his steps, a whiff of smoke borne upfrom below told him that in a brief space of time the tower would be aroaring chimney of flames. What was to be done? Leaving the unfortunateculprit in the cupola to his well deserved fate, whatever it might be, heturned his every thought to ways of escape. There appeared but one, andthat all but impossible. But there was no choice. Sitting calmly down, hepulled off his shoes, then climbing over the railing, disappeared at apoint directly above one corner of the tower.

  While Tillie McFadden, with no further harm than a few scratches andbruises, was making her way to the ground, Pant was performing whatseemed a mad feat. He was battling his way upward on the wheel. Here hegripped a rod to swing outward and upward, there climbed straight upwhere a real cat must have failed, and then, leaping quite free from anysupport, flew through the air to grip a rod ten feet away.

  Up, up, up he climbed until, utterly exhausted, he dropped in the boxoccupied by the girl.

  For ten seconds he lay there panting. The fire, roaring like a volcano,sent flames two hundred feet in air, scorching their cheeks and showeringthem with sparks. In a moment Pant was himself again.

  Snatching the girl's cape from her, he consigned it to the flames.

  "Your arms about my neck, your feet about my waist," he ordered, "anddown we go."

  He was instantly obeyed, and down indeed they went. Though that girl maylive two lifetimes, never again will she experience a ride like that.With the breath of the fire beating upon them, they swung from rod torod, shot through space, glided and slid until with a final terriblebump, they came to solid earth and went racing away after the fastdisappearing throng.