The Secret Mark

by Roy J. Snell

  CHAPTER XXIII INSIDE THE LINES

  "Come on," Lucile said, pulling at Florence's arm. "We've got to getthere. It must be done. For everything that must be done there is alwaysa way."

  They crowded their way back through the throng which was hourly growingdenser. It was distressing to catch the fragments of conversation thatcame to them as they fought their way back. Tens of thousands of peoplewere being robbed of their means of making a living. Each fresh blazetook the bread from the mouths of hundreds of children.

  "T'wasn't much of a job I had," muttered an Irish mother with a shawlover her head, "but it was bread! Bread!" "Every paper, every record ofmy business for the past ten years, was in my files and the office isdoomed," roared a red-faced business man. "It's doomed! And they won'tlet me through."

  "There's not one of them all that needs to get through more badly thanI," said Lucile, with a lump in her throat. "Surely there must be a way."

  Working their way back, the two girls hurried four blocks along Wellsstreet, which ran parallel to the river, then turned on Madison to fighttheir way toward a second bridge.

  "Perhaps it is open," Lucile told Florence.

  Her hopes were short-lived. Again they faced a rope and a line ofdetermined-faced policemen.

  "It just must be done!" said Lucile, setting her teeth hard as they againbacked away.

  An alley offered freer passage than the street. They had passed down thisbut a short way when they came upon a ladder truck which had been backedin as a reserve. On it hung the long rubber coats and heavy black hats ofthe firemen.

  Instinctively Lucile's hand went out for a coat. She glanced to right andleft. She saw no one. The next instant she had donned that coat and wasdrawing a hat down solidly over her hair.

  "I know it's an awful thing to do," she whispered, "but I am doing it forthem, not for myself. You may come or stay. It's really my battle. I'vegot to see it through to the end. You always advised against goingfurther but I ventured. Now it's do or die."

  Florence's answer was to put out a hand and to grasp a fireman's coat.The next moment, in this new disguise, they were away.

  Had the girls happened to look back just before leaving the alley theymight have surprised a stoop-shouldered, studious-looking man in the actof doing exactly as they had done, robing himself in fireman's garb.

  Dressed as they now were, they found the passing of the line a simplematter. Scores of fire companies and hundreds of firemen from all partsof the city had been called upon in this extreme emergency. There wasmuch confusion. That two firemen should be passing forward to join theircompanies did not seem unusual. The coats and hats formed a completedisguise.

  The crossing of the bridge was accomplished on the run. They reached theother side in the nick of time, for just as they leaped upon the approachthe great cantilevers began to rise. A huge freighter which had beendisgorging its cargo into one of the basements that line the river hadbeen endangered by the fire. Puffing and snarling, adding its bit ofsmoke to the dense, lampblack cloud which hung over the city, a tug wasworking the freighter to a place of safety.

  "We'll have to stay inside, now we're here," panted Lucile. "There's aline formed along the other approach. Here's a stair leading down to therailway tracks. We can follow the tracks for a block, then turn westagain. There'll be no line there; it's too close to the fire."

  "Might be dangerous," Florence hung back.

  "Can't help it. It's our chance." Lucile was halfway down the stair.Florence followed and the next moment they were racing along a wallbeside the railway track.

  A switch engine racing down the track with a line of box cars, oneablaze, forced them to flatten themselves against the wall. There wassomeone following them, the studious boy in a fireman's uniform. Hebarely escaped being run down by the engine, but when it had passed andthey resumed their course, he followed them. Darting from niche to niche,from shadow to shadow, he kept some distance behind them.

  "Up here," panted Lucile, racing upstairs.

  The heat was increasing. The climbing of those stairs seemed to doubleits intensity. Cinders were falling all about them.

  "The wind has shifted," Florence breathed. "It--it's going to be hard."

  Lucile did not reply. Her throat was parched. Her face felt as if it wereon fire. The heavy coat and hat were insufferable yet she dared not castthem away.

  So they struggled on. And their shadow, like all true shadows, followed.

  "Look! Oh, look!" cried Florence, reeling in her tracks.

  A sudden gust of wind had sent the fire swooping against the side of amagnificent building of concrete and steel. Towering aloft sixteenstories, it covered a full city block.

  "It's going," cried Lucile as she heard the awful crash of glass and sawflames bursting from the windows as if from the open hearth furnace of afoundry.

  It was true. The magnificent mahogany desks from which great,high-salaried executives sent out orders to thousands of weary tailors,made quite as good kindling that night as did some poor widow'swashboard, and they were given quite as much consideration by that badmaster, fire.

  "Hurry!" Lucile's voice was hoarse with emotion. "We must get behind it,out of the path of the wind, or we will be burned to a cinder." Catchingthe full force of her meaning, Florence seized Lucile's hand and togetherthey rushed forward.

  Burning cinders rained about them, a half-burned board came swooping downto fall in their very path. Twice Lucile stumbled and fell, but each timeFlorence had her on her feet in an instant.

  "Courage! Courage!" she whispered. "Only a few feet more and then theturn."

  After what seemed an age they reached that turn and found themselves in aplace where a breath of night air fanned their cheeks.

  Buildings lay between them and the doomed executive building. The firemenwere plying these with water. The great cement structure would becompletely emptied of its contents by the fire but it would stand thereempty-eyed and staring like an Egyptian sphinx.

  "It may form a fire-wall which will protect this and the next street,"said Florence hopefully. "The worst may be over."