Лестер Дент - The Fantastic Island

A heart-stopping sound — the seething crackle of flames feeding through dry wooden floors — wafted to them faintly.

"We got to get out of here!" Renny blared.

"Right," Long Tom seconded.

"Come on, Renny," Doc directed. "We will try the door."

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Under the combined fist battering and shoulder lunging of Doc and Renny, the door shuddered … groaned … then collapsed like a hut in a tornado. Smokebillowed in as all 3 men burst out. It was slightly lighter in the hall in spite of the smoke.

"Stay close," Doc rapped, and leaped for the stairway.

Renny roared. "Holy cow! That's the wrong way!"

"The other way is down," Long Tom added.

Taking the steps several at a time, Doc — did not pause to explain. He disappeared in the smoke and darkness of the floor above and forged on up the next flight of stairs. His flake-gold eyes — ever alert — had seen something his aides had missed.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Doc had glimpsed Boris Ramadanoff scuttling around the bend of the stair landing above. The bronze man's giant strides slashed the distance between himself and the murderous little man. At the top of the roof flight, Doc was only a little behind.

Ramadanoff went out on the roof like an eel. He got the door shut behind him. A snap lock caught and held as Doc rammed the panel with terrific force.

After Doc had tried his strength on the door that once, he did not waste time on it again.

From the roof, Boris Ramadanoff shouted with raw gloating: "Stay there and burn!"

Doc did not hear. He had already vaulted the banister and landed on the smoke-filled floor below. He met Renny and Long Tom coming up.

"Down," he ordered. "Back into the room out of which we just came!"

"We can't, Doc!" Renny thumped.

"Fire's already cut us off from that floor!" Long Tom cried.

Creating its own draft, the firefunneled up the stairway below them. A few flights down, there was a crash as something collapsed.

"Down!" Doc ordered and led the way. Unquestioning, Long Tom and Renny followed him, shielding their eyes and slapping at flames that caught their clothes.

"This was our only chance," Doc threw out as they gained the room.

Long Tom's eyes were seared shut with smoke. "Doc, where are you?"

"This way!"

They followed his voice, crowding into the shaft out of which Doc had smashed his way a few minutes before to rescue them. Splintering wood showered down on their heads.

"The building's falling!" Renny roared.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

But it was only part of the building — the overhead partition which had been built in to seal off the shaftway. Doc had torn it out.

Doc said, "Follow me up. There's no ladder above. We will have to brace ourselves — feet and shoulders in the shaft — and shove with our hands. It is only 2 floors to the roof."

"Is the shaft open at the roof?" Long Tom gasped.

"If it is not, we will have to open it," Doc replied.

"What good is it gonna do to get on the roof?" Renny questioned hoarsely.

"Save your breath," Doc advised. "Climb."

The shaft was not open at the roof. While the fireroared and crackled behind them — and smoke packed about them like black mortar — Doc struck and heaved against the roof surface which capped the shaftway.

The bronze man's metallicmuscles were more enduring than the planks which opposed them. His prodigious hands tore out a hole big enough for his body to follow.

From the roof, a throbbing drone reached his ears. It was Boris Ramadanoff's gyro plane. It had taken Ramadanoff a few minutes to clear the airplane of its silk-cloth covering. But now the machine with its "windmill" revolving was wrenched along by the Navy-type catapult for a take-off.

The gyro pitched dangerously to one side as it cleared the catapult. The side pitch gave Boris Ramadanoff a nasty moment as the rooftops below tilted dizzily. But the whirling "windmill" blades steadied the plane, and Ramadanoff snatched an easy breath.

But he was totally unaware of the reason for that unexpected side pitch.

Many curious persons — crowding the street to watch the fire— could have told him the cause. Gasps left many throats as watchers saw something they could hardly believe. They saw the gyro float up from the roof, glinting red in the lurid reflected light of flames. That alone was exciting enough. An escape by airplane from a burning building!

The gasps which sprang from a multitude of lips, however, was not occasioned alone by the rising gyro. What brought the sound from throats was the figure of a man clingingto the tail skid of the gyro, causing the "windmill" plane to pitch alarmingly and the man's dangling body to swing from side-to-side.

The spectacle was visible for only an unreal instant. Then the lifting gyro and the man dangling in thin air from the understructure were blotted out by smoke.

If the awed watchers could have seen what followed, they would have received an even greater thrill. Climbing with an agility made possible only by tremendous muscles, Doc worked astride the fuselage and toward the open cockpit of the gyro.

Boris Ramadanoff uttered a hoarse yell when — warned by the behavior of the plane — he turned and saw the bronze man come into view. The presence of Doc on the plane after an iron door had slammed in his face — locking him in a burning building — smacked momentarily of the supernatural . At least to Ramadanoff, it did. As though bitten by demons, the bearded man reared up and plunged overboard from the opposite side of the cockpit.

His body dropped. He wore a parachute and this promptly bloomed, snubbing his fall.

Doc reached the cockpit and took the controls. Back to the burning building, he headed. The crowd in the streets got another thrill. They saw the gyro float in through smoke — blood-redin the reflections of the flame — and like a gigantic humming bird settle out-of-sight on the rooftop.

The excitement that the street watchers experienced was not a fraction of the one Long Tom and Renny felt, there on the blistering roof.

The crowd yelled itself hoarse when the gyro arose again. Most of them thought they were witnessing a sensational fire department rescue, although a few noisily expressed the opinion that the whole thing was a publicity stunt of some kind.

When Boris Ramadanoff bailed out of the gyro, his parachute lowered him into a narrow strip of parkway between Riverside Drive and the Hudson River. There was but one person to witness his landing. That individual being a bench derelict, sodden with alcohol. He merely stared, wild-eyed, believing the spectacle of the man crashing into the underbrush with something like a bed sheet fluttering over his head to be a variation of the old "pink elephant" theme.

Boris Ramadanoff, therefore, was enabled to land virtually unseen. Skinning out of his 'chute harness and scrambling through the park shrubbery, he scurried up the long flight of stone steps to the street level and caught a taxi on the Drive. On 10 thAvenue — directly West of the Times Square district — he directed the driver to the curb.

"Wait for me," he called and leaped out and ducked into a grimy doorway.

He was back soon, clutching a stiff object wrapped inside a trailing blanket.