They had imprisoned
her at the top of a "skyscraper" building and locked the lift, but Joe
climbed the fire escape and caught the beautiful girl in his arms. The
villains, who were on the watch, set fire to the building, and when Joe
attempted to climb out of the window with the heroine clinging round his
neck, the flames drove him back. As he stood there the wind swept a sheet
of flame towards Joe until it scorched his face. The pain was so real
that Joe opened his eyes and sprang up with a cry.
A man was standing over him, a man past middle age, short and broad in
figure, whose clean-shaven face directed attention to his protruding
jaw. He was wearing a blue serge suit which had seen much use.
"You are a sound sleeper, sonny," said the man, grinning at Joe's alarm.
"But when you wake--why you wake up properly; I'll say that for you. You
nearly broke my pipe, you woke up that sudden."
He made this remark with such a malicious grin that Joe, whose face was
still smarting, had no hesitation in connecting his sudden awakening with
the hot bowl of the man's pipe. It was a joke Joe had often seen played
on drunken men in Islington public-houses in his young days.
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