“Help! help! Let us out!” came in the voices of two men, a Russian and a German; and the door was quickly unlocked. The men leaped out like wild beasts, hurling Grimes flat in their eagerness to escape. “Now the other door!” said Gilbert, in a hoarse whisper, so thick was the smoke in his throat; but Grimes was too dazed to answer, and, rising, the keeper ran after the pair who had just been liberated. Gilbert was going after him, when his foot touched something and sent it spinning against a side wall. It was a prison key, the one Grimes had dropped. Hurriedly he picked it up, and ran for the last room at the end of the corrider. Here were three men fighting madly to pull down the iron barrier with their bare hands, while a fourth was at the window bars. “Let us out!” cried one, in broken English. “Do not let us roast to death!” “I will open the door,” answered Gilbert. “Stand back!” And he thrust the key into the lock. It did not fit very well, and all the time he was trying to turn it the men continued to shriek and dance around like maniacs. At last the bolt slipped back; and out came the men pell-mell, the fellow from the window following the three others. “Is Nuggy Polk here?” cried Gilbert; but none of the men answered him, and an instant later he found himself alone in the corridor, which was again filling with smoke as the wind shifted once more. Gilbert was on the point of abandoning the search, when it came to his mind to take one look into the ward before leaving it. Quickly he sprang past the door, and his eyes swept over the couches and the corners of the apartment. Nobody was there; and then his eyes travelled to a small side window, opening upon what was a small balcony. But this balcony was now barred from use. A cry of horror escaped the young lieutenant. At the window was Nuggy Polk. The young man had tried to escape by crowding between two of the bars. His neck had been caught in the opening; and, with his head on one side and his body on the other, he was a close prisoner. CHAPTER XXXI GILBERT RETURNS GOOD FOR EVIL “Nuggy Polk!” gasped Gilbert; and for an instant he could say no more. “Sa--save me!” panted the prisoner. “Don’t let me bu--burn up!” “I will do what I can for you,” answered the young lieutenant. He leaped to the window, and took hold of the bars. They were an inch thick, and resisted every effort he made to bend them. He examined the sockets, to find each solidly imbedded in the stones of the window frame. “Break them--somehow!” pleaded Nuggy Polk. “O Pennington, please don’t leave me!” “I’ll do what I can for you, Polk.” Again Gilbert glanced around the apartment. The smoke was so thick he could see but little, and it made the tears flow down his cheeks in a stream. At the opposite end of the prison the flames crackled fiercely, and they were swiftly coming closer. Whatever was to be done must be done quickly, or it would be too late.