CHAPTER VIII

BY MEANS OF THE FIRE ESCAPE

Kirby Lane stood with fascinated eyes looking down at the glove,
muscles and brain alike paralyzed. The receiver was in his hand, close
to his ear.

A voice from the other end of the wire drifted to him. "Number,
please."

Automatically he hung the receiver on the hook. Dazed though he was,
the rough rider knew that the police were the last people in the world
he wanted to see just now.

All his life he had lived the adventure of the outdoors. For twelve
months he had served at the front, part of the time with the forces in
the Argonne. He had ridden stampedes and fought through blizzards. He
had tamed the worst outlaw horses the West could produce. But he had
never been so shock-shaken as he was now. A fact impossibly but
dreadfully true confronted him. Wild Rose had been alone with his
uncle in these rooms, had listened with breathless horror while Kirby
climbed the stairs, had been trapped by his arrival, and had fought
like a wolf to make her escape. He remembered the wild cry of her
outraged heart, "Nothing's too bad for a man like that."

Lane was sick with fear. It ran through him and sapped his supple