CHAPTER XX.

FIVE SECONDS FROM DEATH.

Somehow—he never knew how—Nick found his way to the top of the house. Here he was obliged to pause for a moment. His heart was pounding and his breath came short. Some little rest he _must_ have!

“Hello! There’s something thudding overhead!” he gasped. “By Heaven! It is somebody trying to break through that trapdoor in the roof! It may be some of the firemen!” he added hopefully. “That means that we shall get the girl and the others yet. Hurrah for the firemen of New York!”

A door was burst open on his right and a girl rushed forth, wild with excitement.

“Oh, Howard!” she cried. “I’m so thankful you are here! Quick! Quick! My father!”

Then, in the gloom and lurid glare of the fire, she found she was talking to a stranger, and she hesitated to say more.

But Nick Carter quickly reassured her, and his cheery tones acted like a stimulant, as he called out:

“Don’t be afraid, and be ready! Leave your father to me! We must get out by the roof. There is no other way. The firemen are up there. They’ll soon break through with their axes. Don’t you hear them hammering on the trapdoor?”

“No,” she cried. “It isn’t the firemen. It’s Howard—Mr. Milmarsh! He can’t open that trap! Oh, can’t we help? Can’t we do something?”

The name Milmarsh was spoken by this girl as if he were a close friend! It struck the detective with peculiar force, and he resolved more than ever that the young man, as well as the girl, must be saved. Here was the end of his strange case, if only he could get every one clear of the fire!

But other things soon crowded these thoughts out of his mind—which, indeed, they had held only for a second or two. He rushed into the attic and seized a small pine table. This made a platform for him under the trapdoor, and enabled him to reach up and shoot back the bolt.

“It’s open!” he shouted.

Then he pushed his head through and found himself looking into the face of—either T. Burton Potter or Howard Milmarsh, he did not know which, for certain.

The grime on the detective’s face had changed it so completely that he was not surprised that there was no recognition in the eyes of the man looking down at him. Indeed, the man did not see him. He only peered past him into the gloom, where the girl stood.

“Where is your father, Bessie?” he asked. “I’m coming down.”

“No, stay where you are!” interposed Nick. “You can be more helpful up there. I’ll bring her father.”

Old Roscoe Silvius, haggard from illness, sat up on a bed in the adjoining room. Nick wrapped him in a blanket and had him out before the old man knew what was happening.

It was not an easy task to lift the helpless old man through the trap. But Howard Milmarsh helped from above, and it was accomplished in less time than might have been expected.

“Now, you!” cried the detective to the girl. “I’ll lift you.”

Bessie Silvius helped herself a great deal, and in a moment was on the roof, by the side of her father and Howard Milmarsh—as, for convenience, we will continue to call the young man.

Nick followed the girl with one active spring, and, standing upright on the roof, looked around. One glance was enough to show him that their only hope of escape lay in crossing the roof of the next house, and so reaching a place where they might descend to the street.

The next house was the one which had suffered most by the fire, and the roof looked as if it might fall in at any moment. Therein lay most of their peril.

“Go ahead with the young lady,” directed the detective, as Howard looked at him inquiringly. “I will bring her father. Push on!”

Howard drew the girl away, and Nick lifted the old man, carrying him on a stalwart shoulder along the shaky roof. Fortunately, the roof was flat, and there was only a low parapet dividing it from the next house, one that it was easy to step over.

It was here that the real peril began, however. The house was a mere blazing shell. In many places the roof had burned through, revealing fire and blazing rafters below in the awful hell-like pit.

At every step there was danger of a plunge into the abyss of death below. But, with the luck that often attends daring and desperation, they reached the third house in safety.

“We shall have to climb down the front,” said Nick. “The firemen ought to have a ladder there by this time. But there’s a sloping roof to be negotiated. We must be very careful, or it will send us headlong to the street, after all.”

“I’ll go first,” offered Howard.

Before Nick could object—if he had intended to do so—Howard Milmarsh had crawled up the steep and slippery slate roof, and was holding to the ridgepole.

Reaching down, he took Bessie Silvius’ hand and pulled her up to the ridge, so that she could slide down the other side of the flat part of the roof.

“Wait a moment!” called Howard to the detective. “I’ll come back and help you!”

“No! You and the young lady get to the ground as soon as you can. I do not need any help. But this roof is getting worse every minute. There is no time for argument.”

This was obvious. The slates were splitting off in the growing heat, and the rafters below were burning fiercely. It would be only a question of seconds when everything would tumble in at once.

Having seen that Howard and the girl had obeyed him, Nick then attacked the fearsome task of climbing the roof with the weight of the old musician, and getting down the other side.

He accomplished the feat, and then saw that Howard Milmarsh was on the ladder at the top, ready to help him. The girl had already been carried or had climbed herself to the ground and safety.

“No, no!” cried Carter to Howard. “Go down! I can manage. The ladder won’t bear three of us.”

It called for all the iron nerve possessed by the detective to crawl across the remainder of the roof, carrying the dead weight of Roscoe Silvius, and it was a ticklish thing to work his way over the edge of the building to the ladder. One false step would have hurled both headlong down.

But that false step was never taken. The detective seldom made anything of the kind at any time. There was no fireman at the top of the ladder to assist him by relieving him of his burden.

He knew that was because Milmarsh had not yet reached the bottom, but he could not afford to wait. The entire roof was likely to collapse at any instant.

Slowly he began to descend. As he placed his foot on the third rung from the top, he heard the ladder crack loudly about halfway down.

“Quick!” came the shout from below. “The ladder’s sprung! Slide down! It’s your only chance!”

But that was just what Nick, having only one hand free, could not do. He kept on moving downward as fast as he could, step by step. There was nothing else to be done.

It was a period of breathless suspense. There were no more cries from below. The great crowd was watching this one man fighting death to save another, and they felt instinctively that any unnecessary noise might disturb him.

Suddenly one broad-shouldered young man rushed out from the throng held back by a cordon of police. It was Chick!

Dodging the police and firemen who tried to stop him, he gained the foot of the ladder and went swarming up like a monkey.

Almost immediately he was standing just below Carter, and speaking to him with the coolness that was characteristic of both of them in moments of fierce peril.

Just as Chick got there the ladder began to sag in the middle!

“Drop him on my shoulder, chief!”

“All right! Glad you’re here!”

Carefully, but not too fast, the weight of the old man was transferred to Chick’s arm and shoulder.

“I have him!” announced Chick. “I’ll have to walk down with him. But you slide! Just wait till I’m nearly down. Then come!”

Chick had already begun to move while he spoke, and he was at the bottom in such a short time that his feat would have done credit to any old sailor of the ancient windjammer days.

Nick was not far behind him. He walked down the rungs till a shout told him his assistant was off the ladder. Then, gripping the sides, he slid down like a streak.

He had not a fraction of a second to spare! The ladder cracked in the middle just as he passed the weak place. He had to drop a few feet, as it was.

“Get back there!” roared the fire chief, through his megaphone.

The warning was none too soon. As the crowd sprang away, the roof and upper walls of the middle house fell with a crash, and a great volcano of smoke, sparks, and dust flew up into the air.

Some of the débris fell among the crowd. It could not be otherwise. Cries of fright and pain arose here and there, and there was danger of a panic.

But the police were efficient—as New York police always are—and soon there was comparative order, as those who were injured were carried away in the ambulances which had been waiting on the chance that they might be needed.

Neither Nick Carter, Chick, nor Patsy Garvan were hurt. The girl and her father had disappeared, but the detective felt sure they were being cared for by somebody, and it did not worry him. What he wanted was to find the man he had been hunting so long, Howard Milmarsh.

Chick and Patsy both knew what was passing in the mind of their chief, and they, too, were looking about for Milmarsh.

“There he is!” shouted Patsy. “I wonder if he’s hurt!”

Nick Carter wondered this, too, as he saw Howard Milmarsh leaning on the iron fence of a house a little distance away, across the street, with his head resting on his hand.

“It didn’t get you, did it?” asked Nick, hurrying over to him.

“No. I’m all right! A little shaken, that’s all. But we saved Bessie! That’s the main point!”

“Hum!” grunted Patsy significantly. “When a fellow’s stuck on a girl, he don’t care for much else—eh, Chick?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” grinned Chick, who felt happy over the way everything had turned out. “What do I know about girls?”

Nick slipped an arm around Howard Milmarsh’s shoulder, and there was sympathy in his strong, smoke-begrimed face, which drew forth response from the other at once.

“A brick struck me on the head,” he said, with an involuntary groan. “It hurt my head. But it’s nothing serious.”

“You need rest and quiet for a while, and I’ll see that you get it. Come with me.”

Howard Milmarsh was willing to accept anybody’s kindly ministrations now. The reaction had come, and he felt as weak as a little child. Without answering, he suffered himself to be led away, Carter on one side of him, and Chick on the other, while Patsy ran ahead to see that the chauffeur was there with the big motor car.

When they had lifted the now half-fainting young man into the car and disposed him comfortably with the rugs that were always in the car, Chick and Patsy got in with him.

Nick took his place by the side of the chauffeur. As the car started, on its way to the detective’s home, Nick tried to compose his mind and comprehend the strange happenings that had brought to him the heir to the Milmarsh millions.

“‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will,’” he quoted softly to himself.