CHAPTER XIII.
FOILED BY A FALL.
Such was the haste of the officer to get to ground that he started down the spike row in the chimney regardless of the fact that a slip for him might spell dire consequence. It was not exactly a slip, however, that actually brought him to grief, but the outpulling of one of the big nails, owing to the drag of unusual weight, and resulting in about a twenty-foot fall. Had it not been for the assumed leadership of the ponderous policeman, either or both of the boys who might have immediately preceded him would either or both probably have ceased to take any further interest in the doings of earth.
Billy, next in the line of descent, almost took a drop himself, when he heard the gasp of alarm and the thud of the heavyweight on the stone pavement below.
The fallen man was unconscious when the boys reached his side, and blood was flowing in thin streams from his nostrils. He groaned when an attempt was made by Henri to raise his head for pillowing on the boy’s coat, which he had removed for the purpose.
“One of us had better go for help right away,” suggested Billy, “and I guess it will be me, for you are better on the nursing part of the job.”
With the utterance the self-elected seeker for aid ran at a lively clip up the passage toward the street front.
The runner was hardly through the spring-locked door before Henri, left behind as nurse, noted in his patient signs of returning consciousness. Indeed, the policeman had opened his eyes and was staring at his attendant.
“Where am I?” he hoarsely questioned.
“You will remember it yourself in a minute or two,” cheerfully replied Henri. “Take a brace, cap., and you’ll be going again like a top before the supper bell rings.”
“Now I have it,” cried the victim of the jarring fall; “we were just closing in on that wild man when he jumped onto the derrick. Why are we not at the wharf to stop that boat?”
“Take it easy, cap.,” cajoled Henri; “you’ve had a bit of a tumble, but you’ll be there on time. Don’t worry.”
The policeman raised himself on his elbows, fired by a spirit averse to delay, twisted himself about, and succeeded in making a back rest against the chimney.
“What has become of the other boy?” was his next inquiry.
“Gone for a doctor or anybody else that he can pick up in a pinch,” advised Henri. “But you can see for yourself—here he comes now.”
Billy was accompanied by a tall, slender man with a clean-shaven face, swinging a leather case in his hand in the usual professional way, and indicating readiness for any surgical or remedial emergency.
Bringing up the rear were two policemen in uniform and a short-legged apothecary from the nearest drug store.
The company entire sounded a note of recognition when they saw the injured man sitting at the foot of the chimney base.
“Strogoff, by my soul,” ejaculated the doctor; “this young messenger said that a policeman had been hurt, but I had no reckoning that it was the fighting sergeant of headquarters staff. Let me have a look at you, man.”
“Ah,” he said, after quick examination, “a little concussion, that is about the extent of it; no bones broken; lucky, sergeant, that you were so well-cushioned by nature, and good feeding, I might add. You will be sore from this shake-up, but far from the hospital, my dear sir.”
“Here, give me a hand,” broke in the sergeant, addressing the officers standing behind the physician. “Now,” he continued, stiffly rising with the assistance rendered, “I want the pair of you to use your legs to best gait and give order of detention to the master of the wharf back of these buildings, to hold at all hazards the collier there loading. Go!”
With the doctor’s arm aid on one side and the druggist’s on the other, the sergeant was led, slowly and limping, out to the street.
Hailing a hack, passing through the square, Strogoff, aided by vigorous boosting, climbed in and motioned the boys to follow.
“Drive like the devil around to the river front,” he commanded the reinsman on the box, and the way the vehicle rattled over the pavement showed that the officer inside was not considered the kind of individual with which to trifle.
When the sergeant reached the wharf, a big transport occupied the offing, upon which troops were embarking, and small mountains of military supplies also being loaded with all possible dispatch.
Strogoff’s brother officers, who had been sent in advance to the wharf, had made no progress in their mission, owing to the martial preemption of the premises, and the sergeant’s attempt at argument with the irate lieutenant-colonel directing the getaway proceedings fell upon deaf ears.
It was not until the transport was in mid-channel and swiftly steaming up the river that the wharf master could be reached.
The sergeant, for the time being, had no regard for his aching head and back, and with renewed vigor was on the trail of the suspect who had given him the slip on the warehouse roof. “You saw the way that ape got into the coal boat, didn’t you?” was the first interrogation fired at the wharf master.
“I’m not blind,” responded the official addressed.
“Has the collier cleared yet?”
“No, and it will not until morning.”
This last answer to his questioning set the sergeant up in confidence that he would be soon dragging Hamar out of a dust pit.
The vessel which he was seeking was readily located, out at anchor, by an obliging stevedore, and the three officers, accompanied by our boys, reached the hulk in the wharf master’s launch.
It was in the deepening dusk that the searching party went aboard of the dingy craft, and the skipper was inclined to be surly until the rays from the mainmast lantern were reflected in the shining badges of authority on the breasts of two of the officers.
“What’s wanted?”
“A fugitive from justice.”
Strogoff’s declaration was snappy. He did not approve of the sullen attitude of the skipper.
“I will call the crew; you can choose your man.”
“The rascal I am after came on board with a sack of coal this afternoon.”
“That oaf,” sneered the shipper, “have him hide and hair for all of me. Druski, ho, Druski,” he called.
From between the decks slouched the brawny mate of the vessel.
“Druski,” repeated the skipper, “is the dolt still below?”
“No,” answered the mate; “I kicked him, along with two hiding heavers, out of the bunkers two hours ago, just before the transport forced us to move. One of the heavers carried a good lot of dunnage over his shoulder, but he did not steal it here.”
Another sailor just at the moment came over the side, completing shore leave. “While you are asking, sir,” he stated to the skipper, “I saw the three of them go aboard the transport. A matey with me on the wharf said the big bark was short-handed in the engine room, and anybody with a pair of shoulders was liable to be nabbed.”
“Three of them!”
The big sergeant made a bee-line for the informer. He reeled off a minute description of Ricker.
Looking to the skipper for permission to speak, and getting a nod, the sailor expressed the view that one of the three might fit the illustration if he were dressed differently.
“One net for them all,” almost shouted Strogoff, “and in the stew they will make a pretty kettle of fish. Look alive; into the launch with you!”
The little steamer was showing all its lights, fore and aft, as it hummed through the pitchy darkness, heading straight for the wharf.
Piling into the hack the five were driven furiously to police headquarters—there is no speed limit in Warsaw—where the sergeant reported the situation in brief to his long-headed superior in the inner circle of surveillance.
“Show me the way to catch the transport,” declared Strogoff, bringing his knuckles down with a bang on the table, “and I will show you the spy who blew up the storehouse!”
The chief was on his feet in an instant. “Telephone the shipping bureau,” he sharply ordered, as a desk man responded to an insistent buzz signal, “and ascertain if a high-speed dispatch boat is available for immediate service.”
Five minutes had elapsed when the desk man reappeared. “Sorry, sir,” he said, saluting, “but numbers four, seven and nine, the only fast travelers retained here, are to-night somewhere near Plock, and are not due to return inside of six hours. No other steam vessels in harbor but the slow colliers.”
“Ask them, then,” impatiently commanded the chief, “if the transport can be reached by wire this side of Vloclavek?”
Another wait of several minutes. Again the voice at the door:
“No, sir; the vessel has no wireless apparatus, and the first land station is Vloclavek.”
“Might as well be Siberia,” lamented the sergeant; “those foxes will be off the boat long before the land telegraph can spot them.”
The chief made no reply. He was wrapped in meditation, with lowering brow and thin lips compressed.
Then his eyes lifted and his entire expression changed.
“There is nothing on land or sea, sergeant,” he triumphantly asserted, “that can outspeed an aeroplane.”