“We’d better get out of here if we can,” I said. “You’ve made too much rumpus for it to be safe.”
“Don’t get it up in your neck, little man,” he told me. “Hold on to my coattails and I’ll pull you out.”
The big tramp. If it hadn’t been for Jack and me he wouldn’t have had any coattail by now.
We moved to the door, listened there, heard nothing.
“The stairs to the third floor must be up front,” I whispered. “We’ll try for them now.”
We opened the door carefully. Enough light went past us into the hall to show a promise of emptiness. We crept down the hall, Red and I each holding one of the girl’s hands. I hoped Jack would come out all right, but he had put himself to sleep, and I had troubles of my own.
I hadn’t known that Larrouy’s was large enough to have two miles of hallway. It did. It was an even mile in the darkness to the head of the stairs we had come up. We didn’t pause there to listen to the voices below. At the end of the next mile O’Leary’s foot found the bottom step of the flight leading up.
Just then a yell broke out at the head of the other flight.
“All up—they’re up here!”
A white light beamed up on the yeller, and a brogue addressed him from below: “Come on down, ye windbag.”