Final Flirtation by Pearl Darling

Author:Pearl Darling [Darling, Pearl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pearl Darling
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

The air in the room grew cold as Freddie sat waiting, staring at the walls, wondering how on earth he could escape from the dingy room. Whilst he knew heat dulled the senses, also the cold stiffened the body. In desperation he pulled out his mechanized tinder box and trudged to the fireplace.

His char caught immediately in the tinder box, throwing up a long flame that lengthened from the draught to the chimney. But there were no logs in the grate. In desperation he held the tinderbox high into the chimney, but escaping up the chimney was impossible, the stacks narrowed to an impossible width, far narrower than the shoulders of a man that topped six feet, unless he was hunched over his cane. Freddie sighed. Rufus Fighty had definitely not covered this problem in his article on how to rescue an attic wife. He obviously hadn’t anticipated being locked in by the resident family.

The flame from the tinderbox did not have long to burn. It flamed sideways as he brought it down from the innards of the chimney, almost catching him in the face. Sharply, he turned his face away, and then turned slowly back. The flame still streamed towards him—away from something. And then the char burnt out.

There was another char in the tinderbox, but Freddie didn’t need it. As quietly as possible he walked back to the bed and picked up his cane. With a quick twist of the handle, the outer wooden casing to the cane fell away, leaving a long straight sword in its place.

Freddie knelt on the marble grate and thrust his sword at the back plate. The metal of the sword clanged against the back plate with a low ‘tong’ that reverberated round the room. Cursing, he fell forward and pressed against the iron slab, stopping it ringing.

If the back plate had been set up against a solid stone back then it would not have given such a resounding sound as it vibrated.

Gritting his teeth, Freddie lifted up the heavy copper grate and pulled it out of the fireplace. He winced as it scraped across the marble hearth, freezing in place as the floor outside the bedroom door creaked.

But the door didn’t turn and the one-armed butler did not come in.

He left the grate on the floorboards and turned back to kneel into the fireplace, feeling with his hands in the darkness for the cold iron corners of the fire back. The corners finished at his head. Vainly he pulled with his hands, but the solid metal would not move, even though a draught blasted past his face. He patted at the floor with his hands, finally grasping the hilt of his sword stick. Reaching right in to the fireplace, he slid the sword directly down between the fire back and stone, and heaved.

The fire back moved half a foot, with a heart thumping clang. Freddie scrabbled out of the fire and threw himself to the floor in front of the bedroom

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.