It was during one of these intermissions, when Ransom went downstairs to sleep, that the two houses across the road were set on fire. The light illuminated the whole avenue, flaring through the windows of the lounge. Two of Johnstone's men approached as the flames burned through the roofs, and then backed away from the heat.
Watching from the window, Ransom caught a glimpse in the brilliant light of a squat, hunchbacked figure standing by the edge of the lawn between the houses, almost within the circle of flames. Pacing up and down beside it was a lithe catlike creature on a leash, with a small darting head and the movements of a nervous whip.
At noon, when Ransom woke, the streets were silent again. Diagonally across the avenue were the remains of the two houses burned down during the night, the charred roofbeams jutting from the walls. Ransom went into the kitchen and ate a light breakfast of salad and coffee. When he left the house five minutes later, he saw a large truck standing outside the Reverend Johnstone's drive.
Ransom walked down to it, glancing into the empty houses. Larchmont was now a terminal zone, its deserted watchtowers and rooftops turning white under the cloudless sky. The lines of cars, some with their windows smashed, lay along both sides of the road, covered by the ash settling from the refuse fires. The dried trees and hedges splintered in the hot sky. The smoke from the city was heavier, and a dozen thick billows rose into the air.
The truck by the Johnstones' house was loaded to its roof with camping equipment and crates of supplies. A shotgun rested on the seats by the tailboard. Edward Gunn knelt by the rear bumper, shackling on a small two-wheeled water trailer. He nodded at Ransom and picked up the shotgun, pocketing his keys as he walked back to the drive.
"There goes another one."
He pointed into the haze toward the city. Billows of white smoke mushroomed over the roofs, followed by tips of eager flame, almost colorless in the hot sunlight. There was no sound, but to Ransom the burning house seemed only a few hundred yards away.
"Are you leaving?" Ransom asked.
Gunn nodded. "You'd better come too, doctor." His beaked face was thin and gray, like a tired bird's. "There's nothing to stay for now. Last night they burned down the church."
"Perhaps that was an accident," Ransom said.
"No, doctor. They heard the minister's sermon yesterday. _That's_ all they left for us." With a bitter gesture he indicated the second truck being readied for departure further up the drive. Behind it a large motorlaunch sat on a trailer. Fastened amidships was the battered wooden frame of the Reverend Johnstone's pulpit, its partly charred rail rising into the air like the launch's bridge. Frances and Vanessa Johnstone stood beside it.
Their father emerged from the house, a clean surplice over one arm. He wore knee-length leather boots, and a tweed jacket with elbow and shoulder patches, as if he were about to set off on some arduous missionary safari. Over his shoulder he bellowed: "All right, everybody! All aboard!"
Julia, the eldest of the three daughters, stepped up behind Ransom. "Father's becoming the old sea dog already," she said. She took Ransom's arm, smiling at him with her bland gray eyes. "What about you, Charles? Are you coming with us? Father," she called out, "don't you think we should have a ship's doctor with us?"
Preoccupied, Johnstone went off indoors. "Sybil, time to go, dear!" Standing in the hall, he gazed around the house, at the shrouded furniture and the unwanted books stacked on the floor. For a moment an expression of numbness and uncertainty came over his strong face. Then he murmured something to himself.
Ransom stood by the launch, Julia's hand still on his arm. Vanessa Johnstone was watching him with distant eyes, her pale hands hidden in the pockets of her slacks. Despite the sunlight on her face, her skin remained as white as it had been during the most critical days of her long illness four years earlier. Like many victims of polio, she wore her black hair undressed to her shoulders, the single parting emphasizing the oval symmetry of her face. The thetal support on her right leg was hidden by her slacks, and she seemed only slightly smaller than her sisters.
Ransom helped her into the truck.
"Goodbye, Charles," she said. "I hope everything is all right with you."
"Don't write me off yet. I may be coming with you."
"Of course."
Gunn and his wife made their way down the drive, carrying a wicker hamper between them. Ransom said good-by to Sybil Johnstone, and then went over to the front door, where the clergyman was searching for his keys.
"Wish us luck, Charles." He locked the door and walked with Ransom to the launch. "Do watch that crazy fellow Lomax."
"I will. I'm sorry about the church."
"Not at all." Johnstone shook his head vigorously, his eyes strong again. "It was painful, Charles, but necessary. Don't blame those men. They did exactly as I bade them-'God prepared a worm and it smote the gourd.'"
He looked up at the charred pulpit in the launch, and then at the drained white basin of the river, winding toward the city and the distant smoke clouds. The wind had turned, and carried them off toward the north, the collapsing ciphers leaning against the sky.
"Which way are you going?" Ransom asked.
"To the coast." Johnstone patted the bows of the launch. "You know, I sometimes think we ought to accept the challenge and set off north… There's probably a great river waiting for us somewhere out there, brown water and green lands-"
Ransom watched from the center of the pavement as they set off a few minutes later, the women waving from the tailboard. The small convoy, the launch, and water-trailer in tow, moved slowly between the lines of cars, then turned at the first intersection and labored slowly away past the ruined church.
Left alone, Ransom listened to the fading sounds, occasionally carried across to him as the trucks stopped at a road junction. The refuse fires drifted over the avenue, but otherwise the whole of Larchmont was silent, the sunlight reflected off the falling flakes of ash. Looking down the lines of cars, Ransom realized that he was now probably alone in Larchmont, as he had unconsciously intended from the very beginning.
He walked forward along the center of the road, letting his feet fall into the steps printed into the ash in front of him. Somewhere, sharply, a window broke. Hesitating to move from his exposed position, Ransom estimated that the sound came from two or three hundred yards away.
Behind him, he heard a thin spitting noise. Ransom looked around, then stepped backwards across the road. Ten feet away, watching him with the small precise gaze of a moody jeweler, was a fully grown cheetah, standing on the edge of the curb. It moved forward fractionally, its claws extending as it felt delicately for the roadway.
"Doctor…" Partly hidden behind one of the trees, Quilter sprang lightly on his left foot, holding the steel leash attached to the cheetah's collar. He watched Ransom with a kind of amiable patience, stroking the fleece-lined jacket he wore over his shirt. His pose of- vague disinterest in his surroundings implied that he now had all the time in the world. In a sense, Ransom realized, this was literally true.
"What do you want?" Ransom asked, keeping his voice level. The cheetah advanced onto the roadway and crouched down on its haunches, eying Ransom steadily. Well within its spring, Ransom stared back at it, wondering what game Quilter was playing with this silent feline killer. "I'm busy, Quilter. I can't waste any more time."
He made an effort to turn. The cheetah flicked an eye at him, like a referee noticing an almost imperceptible infringement of the rules.
"Doctor…" With a wry smile, as if decanting a pearl from his palm, Quilter let the leash slide off his hand into the road.