Human life is nothing to me.

"I poisoned Watson Scott. I bribed the chauffeur of Warren Hatch to send him crashing over the bank. Next I will strike Sudbury Bragg. My plan is made. I am ready. The railroad shall not be built. Great accidents shall happen in Merriwell's mine. An evil spell shall fall on it. Men will die or flee from it in terror. All Merriwell attempts shall fail. In the end I will mock him and bring him to a terrible death."

Barely had Lazaro spoken these boastful words when the door fell with a crash, and Frank Merriwell himself, with his friends behind him, stood in the doorway. He had cast aside the wig and a part of his disguise, and the startled trio of rascals recognized him before he spoke.

"Lazaro," he cried, "your tongue has betrayed you, and your vile plotting is done. Even if Scott and Hatch live, you'll get twenty years, at the very least. The house is surrounded by police. There is no escape! Surrender!"

With a furious oath, Del Norte rushed at Frank, drawing a knife. He struck at Merry's heart, but his wrist was seized and the knife was twisted from his grasp.

Hodge and Browning crowded into the small room. A struggle followed, in the midst of which there was a crash and a flare of fire.

The oil lamp had been overturned. Burning oil was flung all over the room, and the flames leaped up eagerly.

In the midst of this excitement Bantry Hagan managed to get out of the room. He saw policemen coming up the stairs, and he ran along the hall, intending to flee up another flight. In the hall he struck against Merriwell, who had Lazaro pinned to the floor.

Frank was knocked aside and his hold on the villain broken.

At the same moment he heard a cry of distress from Browning.

"Great heavens! Hodge is afire! He'll be burned to death!"

Hodge, Frank's dearest friend, was in frightful peril. That cry caused Merry to leave Lazaro, thinking there could be no escape for the man.

Browning had torn some of the bedding from the bed, and this he wrapped about Bart, a.s.sisted by Frank. Thus the flames were quickly smothered and Hodge was saved.

"That's a bad fire in this coop!" cried one of the police. "The old trap will go."

"Get the people out!" shouted Frank. "Save the people, even though Lazaro escapes!"

"He'll not get out without being nabbed," declared Sam Bronson.

The whole building was in an uproar now. Men were shouting, women shrieking, and children crying. They came swarming down the stairs, falling over one another, pushing, shoving, fighting to get out.

In the room where the fire started, which was now a sea of flames, Frank saw a figure groping with outstretched arms, clothing all ablaze.

Merriwell rushed in there, dragged the fellow out, beat at the fire with his bare hands, stripped off his coat, m.u.f.fled some of the flames and finally extinguished them, just as he was swept down the stairs in the midst of a human river. In his powerful arms he carried the one he had rescued at the peril of his own life.

Out into the open air Merry was thrust. He clung to the moaning chap he had dragged from the flames.

"Send in an ambulance call!" he cried to a policeman. "This boy has been badly burned."

The eyes of Felipe Jalisco stared at him in wonderment, for all of the agony the lad was suffering.

"Why did you do it--you, my enemy?" he marveled. "Why didn't you leave me there to die? Then I would be out of your way and could give you no further trouble."

"That's not my way of doing business," said Merry, as he carried the Mexican lad to a place of safety and sat holding him in his arms until the ambulance came.

Fire engines shrieked and roared their mad way to the scene of the conflagration. The firemen hastened with their work, but the building was doomed.

When Jalisco had been removed in the ambulance, Merry sought for Bronson, and finally found him.

"Did you get Lazaro?" he asked.

"Couldn't find the fellow," was the regretful answer. "In that mad turmoil it was impossible to do a thing."

"I wonder what has become of him?" said Frank.

"There is your answer!" shouted Bruce Browning, clutching Merry's arm with one hand and pointing with the other to one of the upper windows of the doomed tenement.

A man appeared in that window. Behind him was a glare of fire, and the red light showed the man distinctly. His hair was white as the driven snow.

For a moment it seemed that the man contemplated leaping. Those below shouted for him to wait, and the firemen hastened with a ladder. He was seen to turn and shade his face from the heat with his lifted arm. Then he disappeared from the window.

Barely had this occurred when some of the inner portions of the building fell and the flames poured forth from a score of windows. Within thirty seconds the whole place was a roaring furnace.

"That's the last of Alvarez Lazaro!" said Bart Hodge, who had escaped serious injury and was watching in company with Browning and Merriwell.

"His murderous plotting is finished. He'll never trouble you again, Frank."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PATIENT AND THE VISITOR.

In a private ward of a New York City hospital lay Felipe Jalisco so hidden with bandages that scarcely more than his eyes could be seen. The patient's hands and wrists were likewise hidden by bandages.

The door of the room opened gently, and a white-gowned, white-capped, soft-footed nurse stepped in.

"A visitor to see you," she said, in a low tone.

She was followed at once by Frank Merriwell, who stepped quickly to the side of the cot, a look of deep sympathy and regret in his brown eyes as he gazed down at the patient.

The dark eyes that looked back at him seemed filled with wonderment and surprise.

Stooping over the cot, Merriwell spoke in his gentlest tones.

"How are you, my poor boy?" he said. "They would not let me see you before, saying it was best that you should be quiet and unexcited."

From amid the bandages a soft voice answered:

"They tell me I shall get well, Senor Merriwell, but I shall be horribly scarred during all the rest of the life which I may live. It is good to live, but it is terrible to be hideous."

"I am sorry for you, Felipe," declared Merry, in a tone that told of the utmost sincerity.

For a single moment it seemed that the boy on the cot doubted.

"Why should you for me be sorry?" he asked. "It was I who swore to kill you."