Penny Dreadfuls, 1897 · page 30 of 36
New Nick Carter Weekly #24 — page 30: what you’re looking at
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is - ~< = : | “ | | © , = ‘ 7 ois DAUR ATR 3 HOT. WY oO | ma NEW NICE making a capture. _of course was to get out of this building. He turned to descend the stairs up which he had just come, but was driven back by the dense smoke. The fire had evidently gained new headway somewhere below. _ Trim thought for an instant of shut- ting eyes and mouth and sliding down the banisters, not breathing until he had come to the street, but before he had attempted this EpKY experiment he heard acrash below, and as the smoke broke away for an instant he looked down and collapsed. There was no going out that way there- fore. = Heran to the front end of the hall and looked out of the window. | Firemen were again trying to raise the | ladder that had fallen away from them, but it would bé minutes before they could succeed in doing so. _ Meantime the building was burning like tinder. _.. “Trim saw that he would have to take to the roof, so up the stairs he went, and when he came to the top floor he saw that a trap door in the roof was open. _ Ittook him but a minute to leap up and catch the edge of the opening and pull himself through it; but he re-. st flected as. he ise SO that the fact that this that the fire was I Be 5 incendiary. as Phis hole. in the roof,’’ was the way ~~. his thoughts ran, ‘‘makes a perfect venti-. lator for the fam es below re toieas | a youldn’t surprise me at all to find n the 2 of Campo and his accom - San oS €3 ‘The rere was no time to think about that. ym the street, h showed | that the firem en were get- worse was, that just as Trim had begun as the were had { = tive could feel the slippery. 28 CARTER WEEKI -Canipo was in the city he had no doubt of in flanies, » saw that the first flight of stairs had. _ that this fire is another piece of crooked-. and if would have been sure death to try to escape by leaping to caus The next thing for the detective to do roof. _ On the other side there was no fire as yet, but there appeared to be no way of getting from the second roof to any piacs of safety. Nevertheless the roof of this adjoining building would be safer than the one. was on, “and accordingly Trim let himsell over the ed ve and dropped. He came upon a slanting roof and caught hold of the peak to. keep Ecol slipping down over the eaves. Then he crawled along to the chimney, which was at the gable end. Thirty or forty feet below him street. There seemed to be no way to get ‘down, for there was no fire escape on the side of the building, and the ladder which | the firemen were struggling with had 7 evidently become hopelessly damaged. ~~ For a noment Trim was puzzled. sf The fire was Baisag such terrible | headway that it would not be ma minutes before the building on which het was the —_ [—" = Se eS was clinging would catch and it would | burn like a basketful of shingles. He knew that it woald be folly to drop from the roof to the street, but as he was looking around for any possible way of escape, he saw that several tclegmape wires ran from a pole almost unc - the eaves of this building to auothies pole i further down the street. _ ‘If I were on the eaves,”? thought, ‘‘I believe I cot enough to land on th 10S hen. tf they held, I could. saat elon g ther n is > the pole and shin down that. It’s.the only way and I’ve got to try it.”. «9... The roof was steep and the. shingles old, so that under the best of citcum~ ‘stances it would have been a perilous ‘thing to go down from the gable-peak “to the eaves, and what made the matter to make this gement pane me ver abies. id. geareens ee thane aeatre ie! — = ; - a , | ded . i e * ~ . j - B tng ; c '< it err —_ : |. ss = ~ - & = & 1 FF = - ad ——— : Ls a : * - ms * oe « , : aad