IT was with a dull feeling of despair that Drayton, recovering from the first momentary shock, heard Trenmore accept the chief’s condition for the freedom of their limbs.
“We’ll go with you quietly, chief, to the very door of your bloody slaughter-house. You’ve the word of Terence Trenmore for every one of us.”
And then Trenmore had looked from one to the other of his friends with a fiery glance that commanded their obedience. He was first to leave the cell, not even taking Viola’s hand, which she stretched out like a small child, brave but knowing its own helplessness.
Drayton went to her, and then, in the face of such near death he did what he would not have permitted himself to do had fate been more kind. He remembered that look in her eyes, before Terry had flung Cleverest across the cell, and putting his arm about the little sister of Trenmore, he drew her to him.
“Viola,” he said, very softly and with a great, quiet tenderness, “I love you, dear, so much that death with you is mere happiness!”
And she answered, “You are my world, Bobby Drayton! If death was needed to show us this love, then death can never rob us of it!”
“Skidoo,” said Bertram the burglar to the young lady he designated by that name. “I guess our numbers are up. I meant right by you, kid, and I’m darned sorry!”
“It ain’t your fault,” retorted Miss Skidoo, of the solemn, childlike eyes. “I guess I got a right to die with a good, straight guy like you!”
With ironical politeness, the chief of police broke in. “His Supremity might be willing to wait if he knew how much sad romance is going on here, but my own time is valuable. Two abreast, please—that’s right. You can continue your farewells as you walk. I guess I can stand it! Twenty-nine, turn out that light before you close the door.”
In front, between two of the rifle-bearing guards, marched Terence Trenmore. His dark, heavy face was sullen. His lids drooped over narrowed, fire-blue eyes. When his guards brushed against him, in a narrow passage, he shuddered away from them as one in mortal fear. They laughed, and one of them murmured, “The bigger they are the harder they fall, eh, Forty-nine?”
Having passed through two steel-lined corridors, the party of guards and prisoners came presently to a stair, ascended one flight and so reached the red marble passage of the administrative offices on the southern side. Tramping along this, they passed the open door of Mr. Virtue’s darkened “courtroom,” and came to the southern entrance of the Hall of Justice.
Quickest, who was now in the lead, laid his hand on the door to push it open. As he did so Trenmore, standing between his guards, spoke for the first time since leaving the cell. “Chief, before we go in I’ve a word for your ear alone.”
The chief shook his head, smiling. “Sorry, but I have no time to listen, my man.” And he pushed at the door so that it opened a trifle.
“I’ll say it aloud, then!” snapped Trenmore. “You can listen or not as you please. I gave my promise just now that I’d come unresisting to the very door of your slaughter pen. There is the door and here am I to take my word back again!”
For all his bulk, Trenmore had the speed of a springing tiger. He was on the chief before any one realized that he had begun to move. He had swung that startled official before him with one arm about his chest. His right hand dragged from the holster at his captive’s side a revolver of pleasantly efficient caliber. He clapped the muzzle to the chief’s head, behind the ear.
“Shoot now and be damned to you, you scum of the earth!” Trenmore roared. “But the first finger that crooks at a trigger, I’ll scatter this scut’s brains the way he’ll be dead before any of us!”
Twelve astonished and dismayed guards stood agape, with rifles half raised. After a moment two of them turned their weapons on Drayton and Bertram. The other prisoners, however, as much taken by surprise as the guards, were quiet enough.
The chief was quiet, too. He was helpless as in the grip of a gorilla, and he could feel the cold nose of his own weapon nuzzling behind his ear. He was not smiling now.
“You’ve a grain of sense after all,” observed Trenmore approvingly. “And now the chief and myself will be taking a bit of a walk. Just don’t interfere. And don’t you harm the hair of a head of one of my friends there—mind that now!”
He began sidling along the wall, still holding his human shield before him. In a moment more he had regained the red corridor and begun backing down it. After him came the guards. One of them, on a sudden thought, dashed back to the golden door and through it.
“Your friend’s gone for help,” said Trenmore to the chief conversationally. “He’s a bright lad and I’d counsel you to advance him. You need help the way you’d sell your mouse of a soul to get it; don’t you, my fine policeman? Don’t you? Answer me, you scum!”
“Y-yes!” gasped the chief.
The breath was half squeezed out of him, and his feet stumbled and dragged as he backed with his relentless captor along the corridor. And still the guards followed, step for step, rifles half raised, and in their midst the prisoners.
A minute and Trenmore had reached a break in the red wall. Beyond it was a short flight of stairs. Terry backed around the corner. With a little rush, the pursuing guard came after. They found him halfway up the flight, still dragging their reluctant chief. He had reached the landing at the top. Behind it was an arched doorway, of which the heavy bronze doors stood open, fastened back flat to the wall.
Feeling with his foot for the floor catch, Trenmore found it and trod down. The door, released, swung out a trifle. Standing to one side and again feeling backward with his foot, Terry caught the edge with his toe and gave the door a pull. It moved easily on well-oiled hinges. Next instant, without once having turned his back on the guard, he was able to get his shoulder behind the door and push it to. The other door he treated in the same way, leaving an aperture between.
Then, without warning and with lightning speed, he lowered the gun, stooped, picked the chief up by the ankles and collar, gave him one mighty swing and pitched him headlong down upon his allies.
The hurtling body struck two of the foremost, knocking them backward. There were shouts, and somebody’s rifle exploded accidentally. Another guard fired intentionally toward the stair head. But the space there was empty. The bullet splashed on the innocent bronze nose of a cupid in bas-relief, flying across a door shut tight and already bolted from the inside.
Trenmore, panting on the little balcony of the Threat of Penn, congratulated himself that earlier in the day he had observed those doors and those strangely placed inner bolts. Already men were banging and shouting outside; but Trenmore only chuckled.
“They’ll need dynamite for that little job,” he murmured happily. “I’m thinking the Servants put those doors there for just the purpose they’re now serving. Sword, you were made for the hand of a man, not the grip of this cold metal thing!”
He was examining the bronze fist that held the great sword upright. Though the heavy door shook and clanged to the besiegers’ futile blows, he was cool as if alone in the Temple. He had not yet even glanced down into the Hall of Justice.
Across the knuckles of the Hand of Penn ran a tiny line, green-edged with verdigris. It was a flaw, a crack in the age-old bronze.
His inspection completed, Trenmore sprang into action with the sudden wholeheartedness which was a disconcerting factor in his make-up. Throwing off his coat he removed a large handkerchief from the pocket, wadded it in his right hand and grasped the blade high up. Seizing the pommel in his left hand, slowly but with gathering force, he twiste............