The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-07-23

seemed the cooler headed Of the two, for as Legar struck, snarling, at his face, he tucked low on his narrow perch and at the same moment whipped his revolver from the side pocket of his coat. Yet Legar, with a movement equally prompt, kicked viciously at the fingers clustered about the gun butt before the weapon itself could be brought into use. The next moment the weapon fell with a hiss and splash into the lake of molten metal beneath them.
 Then the struggle became one of tendon against tendon, of straining muscle against muscle, of empty handed mortal strength pitted against mortal strength. There, like animals of the wild, high in some Amazonian eyrie, the two strangely entangled figures fought and struggled and clawed and struck.
 It was as he maneuvered to bring about a change of position that the ever-watchful Legar, alert for the most trivial advantage, saw his chance. Swinging his body suddenly free from it's footing on the narrow ledge of metal where he stood, he pendulumed toward his momentarily unstable opponent, throwing his feet forward and upward, as he did so, with all the force of football player kicking double punt.
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 The force of this unlooked-for irn- pact was too much for the man in the mask. He tottered back, caught frantically at a soot-covered steel bar beside him, dropped the full length of it's diagonal course before he could make sure of his clutch, and came into violent collision with the heavy iron block of a crane ladle. There, half-stunned by the blow, he fell sprawling across polished steel cable which dropped floorward be- tween the block and its empty metal pot. He tried to clutch that cable as he fell, but his speed proved too great and his overtaxed fingers were too weak. As he fell along it's polished surface, however, it offered sufficient resistance to carry his limp body beyond the peril of that open lake of molten metal, which, his frantic brain kept telling him, meant death. And as he dropped weakly from the cable loop to a pile of molding sand lying between a casting box and an eupty spill trough, a score of watch ing men gave utterance to a shout of relief, and a score of waiting hands were there to help him to his feet.
 So intent were those astounded iron- workers on watching that perilous fall, however, that they paid scant atten- tion to the second figure climbing spi- derlike higher along the blackened ironwork of the blackened roof. They caught no glimpse of him as he scram- bled. sooty and panting, through the y.ntilating fiue that opened on the roof itself. Nor did any eyes follow him as he crept, gorillalille, along the perilous slope of that roof until he came to the end of the building. Along this end he found lightning rod, run ming from the peak of it's roof to the ground He promptly tested the strength of this wire, satisfying him. self carefully, foot by foot, by means of one hand and an iron hook which struck and chung to the metal with the vicious tenacity of an eagles claw.
 When he reached the ground, still breathing heavily, he looked cau- tiously about. Then, making sure he was unobserved, he slipped into the shadow of pile of iron ingots, once more waited and listened. and then, crouching low, crossed the foundry yard and climbed the high board fence surrounding it. And a moment later the darkness of the night had swallowed him up.
 Gro be continued next weekly