And then the first floorboard was defeated—he smashed through the last two inches with a tremendous blow of his heel.
Now to lift it. It was hard to get a proper grip on the splintered end, especially as a huge blister had appeared from nowhere on to his palm. In the end he stripped off his waistcoat and wrapped it round the splinters, straddling the board to get the greatest leverage.
He took a deep breath and slowly began to exert his strength.
Easy does it—the nails are big, but they are old and brittle —slow does it—listen to the roar of the fire—
steady does it— and don't forget that swine in the shrubbery—
The board came up with a crack like a pistol shot, catching Butler a blow in the balls that knocked him sideways against the files. A shower of old medical certificates cascaded over him.
He rolled away from the shelving, scattering the papers and gasping with pain and triumph. He hadn't realised that the original old floorboards were far wider than modern boards. With the hole he'd already dummy2.htm
made there now might be enough room, just enough room, for him to squeeze his way between the joists to safety.
But he'd have to hurry even so, for the volume of sound beyond the door, the continuous roar of the flames, was loud now: the demon was still reaching for him.
He staggered to his feet, immediately bending almost double as the injured testicles protested in agony.
But in the circumstances he could ignore their protest: self-preservation in the short term outweighed doubts about their future performance.
He grasped the smaller floorboard and began to enlarge the hole in the lath and plaster. By the grace of God it presented a piece of open floor below, between the beds; a bed might indeed break his fall, but under the force of 196 pounds of plummeting human being it would more likely collapse and injure him further.
Now the hole was as big as he could make it. He knelt down and threw first his coat and then his waistcoat through it, and then as an afterthought the faithful assegai, before easing himself into it.
It was a tight squeeze. His hips went through easily, but the oak pinched his chest and his shoulder blades cruelly. He could feel his feet kicking impotently In the air of the room below, like those of a hanged man in defective scaffold. He was stuck!
In the distance, clear through the broken window of the attic, he heard the siren of a fire engine.
Christ! To be caught like this would be almost as bad as frying! The siren triggered his own muscles into a paroxysm of effort: he felt his shirt bunch and then rip as he scraped through the gap. For a moment his hands took the strain, and then, as his body straightened, he allowed himself to fall with a crash into the pile of ceiling debris on the floor below.
There was no time for reflection, only for the few seconds he needed to repair his appearance: torn shirt covered by dirty, crumpled waistcoat; dirty, crumpled waistcoat covered by jacket; grimy sweat wiped hastily from face. As he raced past the adjoining dormitory he saw gobbets of burning material dropping into it from above—the firemen would have to work fast to save Eden Hall for posterity!
That was their concern—as he crashed out of the changing rooms and through the back door he heard their siren shrill much nearer, to be echoed by another in the distance. His concern was not to be caught on the premises, out of the fire into the frying pan.
At least the siren told him that they were approaching the hall from the front, so that the way was still clear for him to escape over the wall beside the cypresses. All the same it would be advisable to move cautiously, he thought: there was nothing like a fire engine to draw spectators from all sides. It was a miracle the place wasn't crawling with them already . . .
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The awkward point would come when he left the protective shadow of the outbuildings; there was a twenty yard gap between them and the evergreens when he would be clearly visible to anyone standing in the junior playing field. Cautiously he peered round the angle of the last of them, pressing himself against the brickwork.
Damn! There was someone out there—there was—
God damn! The fellow wasn't gawping at the fire: he was striding away quickly towards the wooden doorway set in the wall at the bottom of the field!
Butler's reflexes had him out of cover, across the path, over a low hedge of lavender and into the flowerbed beyond before he had properly computed the odds.
There was no mistaking that short, belted driving-jacket, even though he had only had one brief glimpse of it from the attic window.
His feet sank ankle-deep into the soft earth of the flowerbed, slowing him, and a rose bush plucked at him. Then he was through the bed and over another path, on to the turf of the playing field, running noiselessly towards the unsuspecting enemy.
He was reminded insanely of the game he played with his girls every weekend, "Peep the curtain" they called it. Any moment the man would turn round, and if he was caught moving he would have to go back to the beginning again— and any moment the swine must turn round!
It was as though it was that thought, rather than the sound of his footfalls, that gave him away: the man half glanced over his shoulder, jerked the glance further in sudden panic, and then bounded forward across the last few yards to the doorway, slamming the door behind him.
Butler was by then only a dozen strides behind him. There was no time to test whether the door was locked or merely on the latch. There wasn't even time to stop : there was only time to turn his shoulder into the door like a battering ram, with every ounce of his weight and speed behind it.
The door burst outwards with a crash and Butler hurtled into a muddy lane beyond, his legs skidding from under him. By the time he had gained his balance and his bearings the quarry had won back precious yards and was far down the lane.
Gritting his teeth, Butler rose from the mud and drove himself down after him. But the undignified sprawl in the mud had taken some of the steam out of him, leaving room for caution.
He had already left an elephant's trail of damage behind him, but there was at least a good chance the fire and the firemen between them would obliterate that. At the bottom of this lane, however, must be dummy2.htm
the side road from which he had approached the Halclass="underline" civilisation started again there, and to pursue his man further, assegai still in hand, would be to invite awkward attention. It looked as though he'd announced his escape without catching his man—without even getting a proper look at him.
As he laboured the last few yards the slam of a car door backed his worst fear, and as he turned the corner an engine fired.
It was the plain-looking van he'd seen parked in the distance earlier—with a burst of exhaust and a snarl that suggested there was more under the bonnet than had ever left the factory it shot away from the curb, leaving him panting with breathless rage.
He'd made a right bloody dubber of himself and no mistake—his dad's favourite phrase rose in his mind.
The ache came back to his crutch and to the blistered hand clutching the useless spear.
The van roared out of sight at the corner. Then, as he stared at the empty road, there was a shriek of brakes, one heart-stopping second of silence, and an explosive crash of metal and glass.
IV
"AND YOU THINK he said nothing? Nothing at all?"
Butler looked from Sir Frederick to Stocker. He had qualified his statement because from the back of the crowd he had not been able to make absolutely sure. But he was satisfied in his own mind that the fire engine had done a thorough job.
"They had to cut him out and they didn't bother to give him morphine first. If he was alive when he went into the ambulance it was touch and go."