THE two men who sat at the table in the front room overlooking the icy lake were as sinister a pair as Bully Carson could have picked up anywhere, and they were not disposedto heed the young fellow who lay bound on the floor by the door.
“Le’s carry him upstairs, Bill, and shet him in that back room, where he can’t make himself heard by anybody passin’ ’long the road; we either got to do that or gag him.”
“But—see here! You’re making an awful mistake, donchuknow! I’m not the fellow you were told to get, donchuknow. This is a hideous mistake, fellows.”
It was the Duke who was making this piteous appeal.
But he had little hope that it would be heeded, since up to this time he had not been listened to and had been given such shameful treatment; moreover, there was small hope that he would be rescued soon by his friends. The Pavilion had been chosen by him because he knew it was far down the lake and isolated.
It was a lakeside place of entertainment, unoccupied in the winter as a rule. The previous winter the Duke had hired it, and it was understood he had some sort of occupancy claim on it this winter.
The men were still disposed to be rough with him.
“We’ve heard all we want out of you,” he was told; “so, shet up! You was pointed out to us plain.”
“By Bully Carson?”
“No matter about that. Here, Bill; we’ll put him upstairs. Either that, or we got to gag him.”
They took him upstairs and locked him in the little room, just as he was. Then they went back to the lower room, with its table, its pack of cards, and the bottle of whisky that was on it.
That whisky had been furnished by Bully Carson; and their prisoner, according to Carson’s directions, was to be drugged with it; but they liked the taste and smell of the liquor too well to waste it in that way; they meant to drink it themselves.
Sitting down at the table again, they sampled the contents of the bottle and applied themselves to the cards; the day was at its close, and they fancied themselves in the greatest security for an hour or more.
Acting up to Bully Carson’s instructions, they had waylaid the Fardale cadet as he came swinging up the lake on his skates, not long before. They thought they knew him; Carson had pointed him out to them, so they were sure there was no mistake, even when he declared there was.
They had made their mistake naturally. The Duke had been standing close by Chip Merriwell, on a street corner, when Carson had indicated the latter; they had simply looked at the wrong man when Carson was talking.
They knew what was expected of them. When they had forced intoxication on their prisoner, they were to depart, and leave him in the Pavilion, to be seen there by Colonel Gunn and any others who chanced to be with the colonel.
They found the cards interesting, and the liquor more so. They had not intended to light the lamp they found on the table; but decided to do so when their caution became less active. They couldn’t see to play without a light, and stakes were then on the table.
How long they played they did not know, but they went very speedily to the bottom of the liquor bottle. They began to quarrel, each accusing the other of cheating. Drawing a knife, one lunged at the other with it, across the table; the other rose and flung back to avoid the blow.
The table was overturned with a crash, and the lamp went to the floor; it shattered, and the kerosene caught from the burning wick. In a moment the room was filled with flames.
Stunned for an instant by what threatened, they made a feeble attemptto fight out the fire; then they threw open the door, and, running out into the road, they fled.
In the room into which he had been flung, the Duke had been trying to get the cords off his wrists; he was in a vile temper. He piled anathemas on Bully Carson and on the men downstairs. If Carson had not been a fool, and chosen fools for this work, this mistake could not have been made. He had planned it and given Carson the money to carry it out, and this was the result. He had come skating down the lake, wondering how near he could be to the Pavilion and be safe when the trick was pulled off; and the ruffians had seized him, instead of the one chosen, who was Chip Merriwell.
The treatment he was receiving was meant for Chip.
What made his fate more bitter was his belief that there had been a clever turning against him of the tables; he thought the ruffians had been tampered with by Chip after Carson had hired them, and that this was done deliberately by them, for pay. So he heaped his curses on Chip as well as on Carson and the two stupid fools.
Then came the fire, and the terror it conveyed to the occupant of the upper room.
He heard the quarreling below, then the crashing of the overturned table and the yells of the men when they tried to stay the fire. He heard them throw the door open and run away like the cowards they were, forgetful of him and of his fate.
The Duke screamed with fear when he heard them go.
For a moment the terror of his situation almost overcame him; he felt sick and faint, his heart pounded up until it seemed almost in his throat; a panicky fear clouded his mind.
This passed. There was some courageous fiber in the Duke. He had been spoiled in his training; he was always made to think he was finer and better than any one else, was always petted and flattered, and constantly treated by servants and even friends as if he were a superior being. If there had not been some good stuff in the Duke, he would have been far worse than he was at present.
As soon as he could control his jumping nerves, the Duke tried again to get free of the cords that held his wrists; but he could not do it. He could not break the cords, and struggling only drew the knots tighter.
Rolling over against the door, he drew up his legs and began to dash his heels against the panels, trying to break through.
The fire was roaring so that he could hear it plainly when he was not making too much noise, and the smoke that had begun to creep through the rooms reached him.
“Help!” he screamed, as he hammered with his heels against the door. “Help! Help!”
That some one passing in the road well out beyond might hear him, was his hope. He was beginning to hope, too, that the fire would be seen in the village in time for fire fighters to get out to it before it had made a finish of him.
As if in answer to his calls, he soon heard the jingling approach of a sleigh, and from the sound of the bells he could tell that the horses were galloping.
The fire had reached the stairway which led to the room where the Duke lay; he could see, under the door, the fiery licking of red tongues of flame, as gusts of air drove the flames higher; and now the smoke, getting into his room more and more, was troublesome, and threatened soon to be suffocating.
He was yelling himself hoarse, bawling for help to the occupants of the sleigh. When he heard them shoutingto each other outside in the snow, his screams to attract their attention became screeches.
He had been heard; he could soon tell that.
At the same time it was being said that no one could get up to the second floor; there were no ladders to be had, and the stairs were on fire.
Some one jingled away in the sleigh, going to the village to get ladders; the others, it seemed, were waiting for the ladders, or for the coming of the Fardale fire department.
The Duke knew that before the slow-moving local fire department could get there, or the sleigh return with ladders, he would be beyond the need of aid.
“Help!” he screamed.
His feet, flailing, could not shatter the stout panels of the door.
A little later, when the hot breath of the fire seemed trying to reach through the door to him, he heard a voice. It was followed by a crash that drove the door inward.
Chip Merriwell, head and shoulders wrapped round with a sleigh robe soaked in melted snow, groped into the room; he had come through the fire-filled stairway with it round him; he had dared the fury of the flames to reach and help the Duke, when Carson and Avery, and all the Duke’s own followers, refused the risk, claiming that whoever tried it would be burned to death. The stairs were like a furnace.
“There’s the hall yet,” Chip gasped. “Here!”
“My feet and hands are tied!” the Duke shouted.
Chip got his knife out and cut the cords.
“Here!” he panted. “Can you walk? I’ll help you. Pull your coat up around your head. The hall here is free yet, and we can reach one of the windows.”
“It’s Merriwell!” said the Duke, bewildered.
He had been thinking Chip had sent him there, and he wondered about this; yet it was dull wonder, and a very active thankfulness. No one rejects the hand that is stretched out to save.
He did not need Chip’s aid; he even scrambled ahead, along the hall, driven by fear; and he was at one of the windows, smashing it, when Chip came up. He was about to throw himself out through the window.
“No!” said Chip. “We can take time; we’re safe now, unless the house falls. The fire is following, but we’re well ahead of it here. I’ve got the driving lines from the sleigh for ropes.”
He pushed the Duke through, after passing a length of the leather reins around the Duke’s body, under his arms, and hung to the loops he had set, while the Duke slid downward to the ground.
Securing the lines to the support of a wall bracket, Chip Merriwell followed and dropped; but the sleigh robe and his clothing smoked from the heat.
“Burned much, Chip?” some one was asking, as he reeled into the arms that were stretched out to assist him.
“No,” he gasped; “I—I think not; I think I’m all right!”
“Well, it sure was close; you didn’t have much time! The old Pavilion is going.”
Ten minutes later it was a flaming tinder box, with a tornadolike roar as the fire drove skyward, and a glare that reddened the snow for great distances around.
To be continued in the next issue of WIDE-AWAKE MAGAZINE, out January 25th.