NICK CARTER's Girl Detective #2, CASE of the VAMPIRE FIREBUG (a 1900 Dime-Novel DETECTIVE tale)

SECOND in the Dime-Novel GIRL DETECTIVE series...
Jack Burton, the "young Samson" of the NICK CARTER Detective School
and
ROXY, the streetsmart flower girl,
are in...
NICK CARTER's Girl Detective #2...
The Case of the VAMPIRE FIREBUG...

This time the turn-of-the-last century "Nancy Drew" aids her young detective student friend, Jack Burton HOT ON THE TRAIL of a fiendish ARSONIST, setting serial fires throughout NEW YORK CITY in the 1900s.

Another THRILLING ADVENTURE of death-defying ESCAPES... CLEVER DETECTIVE WORK.. and Bold bravery from a spunky young detective, ROXY, the flower girl.

EXCERPT:
Roxy was free—Roxy’s eyes glowed like diamonds.
They took in every detail of the immediate environment in one comprehensive sweep.
She had hurled the package out of the man’s reach—not to get it aloft but to keep it out of his reach.
A post scramble, a dart up a stairway—these ways were open—but they were too slow and indirect for the eager flower girl and the natural-born first-class detective.
From a wheel swung from an extending pole on the top porch a rope dangled.
It was used to hoist coal and kindling from rear area vaults.
For this Roxy promptly darted. Climbing was second nature to her.
In springing clutches she left the ground, and the fellow, aimed for the steps, saw at once that before he could blunder half the distance aloft she would anticipate him in reaching the goal, with time to spare.
Perhaps he was a climber himself. At all events, with a dash he reached the rope, and grasped it with one of those great, sprawling hands of his.
Fifteen feet up, Roxy felt it stretch taut as a piano wire, and the post above creak and bend.
Twenty feet aloft, she discerned that her pursuer was even more agile than herself. He was absolutely sliding up the rope, so fast and steadily did he mount.
He resembled some giant gorilla, on her track—his great paw-like hands were monstrosities.
His eyes had a glow that made her shudder. They roved about in the semi-darkness like lumps of yellow fire.
His face was the hardest she had ever seen—Roxy felt she was dealing with no ordinary criminal. There was madness in him.
She knew it, as he continued to come up the rope quickly, as she discerned that he was gaining upon her.
Roxy paused, but only for an instant.
It was a pause to dart one hand in and out of her bodice.
There she carried a little knife for trimming her bouquets, snipping straggling stems, cutting out faded rose leaves.
It was keen-edged as a razor. Roxy swung out, bent down, and drew it across the rope.
Almost instantly there was a straining swish. A howl of rage followed it:
“Confusion!” bellowed her rapidly descending pursuer, tumbling backward with a loose end of rope still clutched uselessly in his hand.
She heard him land with a shock, but saw him instantly bound erect and dart for the steps.
Centering all her energies now in getting to that third story porch, Roxy climbed like a sailor carrying signals of distress aloft.
She reached the point aimed at, swung over the paling, and directed her keen glance across the little railed-in space.
“Here it is.”
The package lay where it had landed. Roxy took it up and looked for a stairway.
There was none—she was blocked in!
In a flash she saw that this especial porch had no outlets except a great broad window opening upon it.
She ran to the railing. Debating flight by post or rope, she drew back suddenly.
“Ha!” hissed a malignant voice.
The head of the man she had baffled came up over the palings. He had climbed a post from the porch below.
Roxy drew back, thrown off her balance by his unexpected promptness and agility.
He blocked escape the one way open.