Chapter Five
Fire Down Below!
In spite of Sedalia’s grim prophecy, I went to bed without worrying about any attempts the murderer might make that night. My ease of mind was entirely due to our specially constructed doors, of course, and not because I disagreed with Sedalia that he might make another attempt to kill her. With their inside bolts thrown even I could not have gotten through those doors from outside, and I doubted that our killer was a more accomplished picklock than I.
It never even occurred to me the killer would be insane enough to try to burn down the hotel.
The most infernal clangor I ever heard brought me out of a sound sleep. It sounded like ten thousand alarm clocks going off at once, and it took me from bed and out into the hall in my pajamas.
By the time I had switched on a light in the hall I realized the sound was coming from the elevator lobby and I also realized it was the fire alarm for our floor. Ducking back into my room, I got on my robe and slippers and returned to the hall just as Sedalia burst from her apartment pulling a robe over her nightgown.
“It’s the fire alarm,” I said before she could speak, and started toward the front door.
“Wait, Hank!” she called sharply.
It is frightening to be on the tenth floor of a hotel when a fire alarm goes off, and my face must have been pale when I stopped and turned, for Sedalia gave me the same sort of reassuring smile mothers give children frightened by thunder. The smile embarrassed me and I attempted nonchalance by feeling in my robe pocket for a cigarette, I offered her one, but she shook her head.
“Let’s not go off half-cocked, Hank,” Sedalia said. “There may be a killer sitting out there with a loaded gun. What time is it?”
I glanced at my wrist watch. “Three o’clock.”
“Phone the switchboard and find out if there’s really a fire before you start unlocking any doors.”
I nodded, and to show how unperturbed I was, returned to my bedroom for my lighter and lit my cigarette before going to the phone. Then I laid the lighted cigarette on my bedside ash tray and returned to the hall carrying the lighter in my hand. I was reaching for the phone when it rang. I dropped the lighter, picked it up again and answered the phone.
“This is the switchboard,” said a feminine voice. “There is a small fire in the hotel, but nothing to get excited about. Please listen carefully and don’t get excited.”
I said, “I’m not excited.”
“The management wishes all personnel to leave the hotel in as orderly a manner as possible. There is little danger that the fire will reach your apartment, but we don’t wish to take any chances. Please leave by the fire escape instead of using your elevator.”
“If there is no danger, I think we’ll stay right here,” I said.
The woman’s voice sharpened. “I’ll have to ask you to get out of the building at once. The management cannot be responsible—”
“Where is the fire?” I interrupted.
“Right below you. But there is nothing to get excited about—”
I said, “We’ll stay here and hope you can put it out.”
Suddenly her voice lost control. “You old fool! The whole ninth floor is in flames! Either get out of there or burn!”
The line went dead and I slowly replaced the receiver.
“We have to get out,” I told Sedalia, and added hopefully, “Our killer wouldn’t burn up a hundred people just to get at you, would he?”
She was stooping over and feeling the floor. “Feel this, Hank.”
I bent and followed her example. The floor felt slightly warm.
I said, “I haven’t smelled any smoke yet. Maybe they’ll get it under control.”
At that moment a wisp of smoke drifted from my bedroom. Both of us rushed to the door at once. I got there first, saw the cigarette I had laid down had fallen from the tray and the doiley of my bedside stand was smoldering. Carrying it into my bathroom, I threw it in the drain.
“We’ve got enough trouble without you starting additional fires,” Sedalia snarled at me.
Going to my open bedroom window, I pushed it farther open and leaned out to look down at the floor below. I could see no sign of fire, but at that moment sirens began to sound in the distance.
Drawing my head back in, I said, “I’m going to phone the switchboard once more before we rush out to get shot by a murderer.”
When I returned to the phone the same woman I had talked to before answered immediately.
“Yes?” she said, and then the phone went dead. At the same instant the alarm in the outer lobby stopped clanging.
Attempting to keep my voice steady, I said, “Apparently the wiring is going out. Maybe we had better do something before the lights go.”
“If we only knew which door the killer was watching,” Sedalia said.
“Maybe he isn’t watching either,” I said without any conviction.
Sedalia’s eyes were narrowed in thought. “If he were waiting at the front door and we never opened it, he would be trapped if the elevator went out. My guess is that our murderer is now sitting on the fire escape, so let’s try the front way.”
Since almost any action seemed better than staying where we were and roasting, I accepted her reasoning without question. Before I could weaken, I ran to the front door, drew the bolt and threw it open. I was met by a haze of smoke which set me to coughing.
Behind me Sedalia muttered through a handkerchief thrust to her face, “I don’t see any flame or any killers. Get moving.”
Lacking a handkerchief, I held an edge of my robe across my face and ran toward the elevator. As usual it was on the ground floor, and as I pressed the button and watched the floor indicator slowly rise, my eyes began to smart from the smoke.
The indicator stopped halfway between seven and eight. Frenziedly I pushed the button again, but the needle did not move.
And then all the lights went off.
There was no point in waiting longer. By mutual accord we stumbled back into the apartment and I locked and bolted the door. The last was simply reflex action, for if we were unable to get out the front way, there was certainly no way for a murderer to get in.
In pitch dark we felt our way along the wall to the door of Sedalia’s apartment, groped through the front room and dining room into the kitchen and eventually arrived at the back door. Here we both paused and I could hear Sedalia’s heavy breathing, as though she had been running uphill.
“Think we can afford to wait until it gets really hot?” I asked into the darkness.
Sedalia said, “Feel the floor again.”
Stooping, I pressed my palm against the floor and found it noticeably hot. Having had no previous experience with fires, I had no idea whether this could have been caused by radiated heat from a blaze not necessarily right underneath us, or if the ceiling below was actually on fire. But I had a mental vision of the floor suddenly bursting into flame, crumbling beneath our feet and plunging us into an inferno.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I’ll go first.”
I threw the bolt, started to pull open the door, and Sedalia said tensely, “Wait!”
I stood holding the door a quarter inch open.
“All right,” she said.
Not understanding what was on her mind, I pulled the door wide, letting moonlight mixed with smoke pour into the room. Then turning to look at Sedalia, I saw her poised with a kitchen chair over her shoulder, ready to hurl it through the door at the first indication of anyone awaiting us on the fire escape. But the platform outside was bare.
I started to step through the door, but Sedalia said softly, “Hold it, Hank.”
Then she peeled off her robe, draped it over the chair and tossed the chair out onto the fire escape. From the roof overhead an automatic spat bullets in a chattering roar.