Chapter 24

THE FLAMES DO THEIR WORK.

Early that evening old Spooner returned, accompanied by an even more disreputable-looking old man than himself.

Felipe heard them slowly and laboriously fumbling their way up the dark stairs, recognized the sound of Spooner's cane, and flung open the door of his room that the light of his oil lamp might aid them.

"Bless you, boy!" panted old Spooner. "These stairs are dark--heathenishly dark."

"I see to-night you have with you a friend, señor,"' observed the Mexican boy.

"Yes, poor fellow. I have seen him much on the streets. He stays with me frequently. He is deaf and dumb."

"Two beggar cronies," muttered Felipe, in Spanish, as he closed the door after they had vanished shufflingly into old Spooner's room. "Now I know quite well how the old man lives, but it is a poor living he gets."

Once or twice Felipe fancied he detected faint, suspicious sounds in the hall; but when he listened at the door he heard nothing more.

He did not see a number of shadowy figures which came up those unsteady stairs in a marvelously silent manner and vanished into the room occupied by old Spooner.

It was quite late when the listening boy fancied he heard a familiar step on the stairs. In a twinkling he was close to the door. Two persons were coming.

Then sounded a sharp, familiar knock, upon which Felipe flung open the door, crying:

"Welcome, señors! I had begun to fear you would not come to see me this night."

"Oh, we're here, me boy," chuckled Hagan, as he entered, with Alvarez Lazaro at his heels. "It's suspicious our friend Lazaro became on account of a queer thing. He's been shadowed by the police since yesterday. Now you can't guess why he grew suspicious?"

"I cannot," confessed Jalisco, closing and locking the door.

"The coppers stopped watching him," laughed the Irishman. "Although he tried to discover some one chasing him about, not a soul took the trouble. When I met him all ready to come here, he told me the action of the police worried him and made him suspicious."

"Had they continued to watch me," said Lazaro, "I could have given them the slip and laughed; but when I could discover no one watching, I knew not what to do."

"It's all right," nodded Hagan, as he took a seat on the bed. "Devil a soul followed us here."

Lazaro did not sit down, although the boy offered the only chair and urged him to take it.

"No," he said; "I choose to stand. I shall not remain long, but I came to give you news that will cheer your heart. Señor Hagan says he has told you of the sudden illness of Señor Watson Scott and of the accident which happened to Señor Warren Hatch. Thus you see, Felipe, already two of the great men who were going to build Frank Merriwell's railroad in Sonora are flat on their backs, and why both of them are not dead is more than I can understand. Señor Scott must have a constitution like iron, for he drank all the coffee in which I dropped a powder that should have ended his life."

"Then it was you who did it?" cried Felipe.

"Yes; I have begun the work of ruining Merriwell's plans, bringing him to poverty and wretchedness and destroying him at last. Did I tell you once that I was the bosom friend of Porfias del Norte? I am Del Norte himself!

"Del Norte, a youth, died in that cave; but Del Norte, the old man you see before you, rose from it. I am Del Norte, the old man; but to the world I am Alvarez Lazaro, the avenger of Del Norte. I have sworn to destroy Merriwell and make him suffer even as I suffered. I am losing no time. I began with the purpose of blocking Merriwell's railroad scheme. Human life is nothing to me.

"I poisoned Watson Scott. I bribed the chauffeur of Warren Hatch to send him crashing over the bank. Next I will strike Sudbury Bragg. My plan is made. I am ready. The railroad shall not be built. Great accidents shall happen in Merriwell's mine. An evil spell shall fall on it. Men will die or flee from it in terror. All Merriwell attempts shall fail. In the end I will mock him and bring him to a terrible death."

Barely had Lazaro spoken these boastful words when the door fell with a crash, and Frank Merriwell himself, with his friends behind him, stood in the doorway. He had cast aside the wig and a part of his disguise, and the startled trio of rascals recognized him before he spoke.

"Lazaro," he cried, "your tongue has betrayed you, and your vile plotting is done. Even if Scott and Hatch live, you'll get twenty years, at the very least. The house is surrounded by police. There is no escape! Surrender!"

With a furious oath, Del Norte rushed at Frank, drawing a knife. He struck at Merry's heart, but his wrist was seized and the knife was twisted from his grasp.

Hodge and Browning crowded into the small room. A struggle followed, in the midst of which there was a crash and a flare of fire.

The oil lamp had been overturned. Burning oil was flung all over the room, and the flames leaped up eagerly.

In the midst of this excitement Bantry Hagan managed to get out of the room. He saw policemen coming up the stairs, and he ran along the hall, intending to flee up another flight. In the hall he struck against Merriwell, who had Lazaro pinned to the floor.

Frank was knocked aside and his hold on the villain broken.

At the same moment he heard a cry of distress from Browning.

"Great heavens! Hodge is afire! He'll be burned to death!"

Hodge, Frank's dearest friend, was in frightful peril. That cry caused Merry to leave Lazaro, thinking there could be no escape for the man. Browning had torn some of the bedding from the bed, and this he wrapped about Bart, assisted by Frank. Thus the flames were quickly smothered and Hodge was saved.

"That's a bad fire in this coop!" cried one of the police. "The old trap will go."

"Get the people out!" shouted Frank. "Save the people, even though Lazaro escapes!"

"He'll not get out without being nabbed," declared Sam Bronson.

The whole building was in an uproar now. Men were shouting, women shrieking, and children crying. They came swarming down the stairs, falling over one another, pushing, shoving, fighting to get out.

In the room where the fire started, which was now a sea of flames, Frank saw a figure groping with outstretched arms, clothing all ablaze.

Merriwell rushed in there, dragged the fellow out, beat at the fire with his bare hands, stripped off his coat, muffled some of the flames and finally extinguished them, just as he was swept down the stairs in the midst of a human river. In his powerful arms he carried the one he had rescued at the peril of his own life.

Out into the open air Merry was thrust. He clung to the moaning chap he had dragged from the flames.

"Send in an ambulance call!" he cried to a policeman. "This boy has been badly burned."

The eyes of Felipe Jalisco stared at him in wonderment, for all of the agony the lad was suffering.

"Why did you do it--you, my enemy?" he marveled. "Why didn't you leave me there to die? Then I would be out of your way and could give you no further trouble."

"That's not my way of doing business," said Merry, as he carried the Mexican lad to a place of safety and sat holding him in his arms until the ambulance came.

Fire engines shrieked and roared their mad way to the scene of the conflagration. The firemen hastened with their work, but the building was doomed.

When Jalisco had been removed in the ambulance, Merry sought for Bronson, and finally found him.

"Did you get Lazaro?" he asked.

"Couldn't find the fellow," was the regretful answer. "In that mad turmoil it was impossible to do a thing."

"I wonder what has become of him?" said Frank.

"There is your answer!" shouted Bruce Browning, clutching Merry's arm with one hand and pointing with the other to one of the upper windows of the doomed tenement.

A man appeared in that window. Behind him was a glare of fire, and the red light showed the man distinctly. His hair was white as the driven snow.

For a moment it seemed that the man contemplated leaping. Those below shouted for him to wait, and the firemen hastened with a ladder. He was seen to turn and shade his face from the heat with his lifted arm. Then he disappeared from the window.

Barely had this occurred when some of the inner portions of the building fell and the flames poured forth from a score of windows. Within thirty seconds the whole place was a roaring furnace.

"That's the last of Alvarez Lazaro!" said Bart Hodge, who had escaped serious injury and was watching in company with Browning and Merriwell. "His murderous plotting is finished. He'll never trouble you again, Frank."