A whoof of flame puffed out of the smashed window at her back; for a second it seemed as if the girl herself were aflame. But the orange flare was replaced by a gush of smoke.
The crowd quieted. A ladderman was already halfway up the towering extension, climbing fast.
The tip of the ladder moved toward the sill. A burst of blazing embers cascaded from the room behind her, scattered around her, on her. She screamed, recoiled. The involuntary movement put her off balance. She toppled, her arms flailing wildly.
The ladder touched the sill. The ladderman locked his knee over a rung, leaned out, pinned her against the wall.
For a long agonizing moment she seemed to be sliding out of the fireman’s grasp. But he braced himself, shifted his grip slowly. Then for a split second she dangled over the sidewalk 50 feet below — was swung over to the ladder.
The crashing roar of the crowd was like the breaking of a dam.
Smoke enveloped the ladder, obscured the rescuer from the marshal’s view.
The fireman reappeared a dozen rungs lower. The girl was limp over his shoulder; her arms dangled loosely, like a rag doll’s.
The interns were waiting when helping hands lifted her from the ladderman’s shoulders. Pedley was there, too. He needed no more than a single glance at the singed hair, the ugly sheen on the back of her neck and the side of her face. Third-degree burns. Shock. Possibly lung burn. Not much chance—
“What do you think, Doc? Will a hypo bring her around? Long enough for me to ask her a question?”
The student physician shook his head. “She wouldn’t be able to talk, even if she came out of it.”
“She won’t pull through?”
“No telling.” The intern lifted her into the ambulance. “Plasma. Sulfa. Put her in the freezer. I’ve seen these new methods bring ’em right up out of the coffin.”
“Put a listener with her, will you? I’ll be over, soon’s I’m through here.”
“Right.”
Pedley consulted with the deputy chief who was listening to a walkie-talkie cuddled against his shoulder. “How’s it look, Fred?”
“Quick burner, Ben. Top floors are gone. We can save the lower ones.”
“I’m going up.”
“You can’t, man. That side wall’s weakening!”
“All the more reason. I have to get my peek before she goes.”
“No reason to expect any funny business, is there?”
“Yair. Ties in with the Brockhurst thing, this afternoon.” Pedley swapped his overcoat for a stiff rubber one. “Girl your boys brought down will be one of the witnesses, if she lives.”
“All these beams are gone up there on the top floor, Ben. Wall’s buckling some already.”
“If she lets go, there goes my evidence, too.” Pedley hooked one leg onto the spring ladder. “Any more up there?”
“Only other fifth-floor tenant’s a printer. Works nights.” The deputy chief had to shout; Pedley was ten rungs above the truck platform.
Spray froze on him as it fell from the streams arching overhead. The rungs were sheathed in ice. Smoke blew into his eyes; he might as well have been climbing with his eyes bandaged.
The wind buffeted him, swayed the ladder ominously. He had to pause every few rungs.
There couldn’t be much doubt this place had been fire-bugged by the same person who’d touched off the theater. That would seem to eliminate several prospects. Terry Ross, for one.
The publicity man had been under Shaner’s more or less watchful eye all evening. Unless the device for starting this fire had been arranged prior to the Brockhurst blaze, Ross was out.
Amery, too. The lawyer was in no condition to get out of bed. In any event he couldn’t have got out of that private hospital without being seen.
The setup put Hal Kelsey pretty well in the clear, too — or didn’t it? Still, there were a few others who hadn’t been under surveillance—
He made the shift from ladder to sill in the teeth of a shower of spray, clambered over the sill onto a mound of reeking laths, glowing pressed-board, mortar, smoldering furniture. Water gurgled and sloshed along the floor. Glass and plaster crunched beneath his boots.
He moved cautiously. In here the beat of the pumps and the hum of the motors were scarcely audible; in their place was the roar of rushing water as bar-rigid streams forced their way through the windows beside him; the hiss of cold water hitting blazing wood and hot metal.
This had been the bedroom. The explosion hadn’t occurred in here or the inflammable wouldn’t have trickled down the stair well.
He picked his way past a heap of rubbish that had been a boudoir chair, keeping close to the wall where the joists would be less likely to have burned through. The partition into the next room had completely burned away, leaving only a few charred joists.
Pedley could look through into a gutted room filled with enamel that had once been white. The kitchen. By the twisted wreckage of the gas stove, the blast had been there. Maybe there’d been a leak in the feeder pipe; the pilot light would have done the rest.
He crawled over the litter, sniffing. Gas, all right. But not cooking gas. What had gasoline been doing in Kim Wasson’s kitchenette?
A cardboard box, the blackened remnant still there, had been wedged down onto the top of the gas stove. It had been a round box, the size that would hold about five pounds of chocolates.
He pried it loose from the hot metal. The imprint of the metal guard which had covered one of the burners was deep in the crisped bottom of the box. Meant the cardboard had been wet. And filled with something heavy enough to press the soaked fibers down onto the burner-guard sufficiently to leave an imprint.
He looked around for the lid, saw something that sent him leaping back toward the partition.
The brickwork of the rear wall bulged out, slowly, away from him — the way a sleeping animal breathes. After a moment of deliberation, the swelling increased.
The bricks opened up as if a child had poked his foot through a pile of blocks.
The floor beneath his feet slanted and fell away.
Chapter Fifteen
“She Hasn’t a Prayer.”
He flung himself as flat on the floor as he could, with the linoleum beneath him sliding away at a 50-degree angle. He felt as if he were dropping through to the basement; but he didn’t hit hard, merely slid up against a pile of something soggy that had been an ottoman.
Then a ten-ton truck smacked him in the small of the back, knocked the wind out of him, pinned him face down against the smoking upholstery.
He fought for breath in air clogged with brick dust, fiercely hot from steam. The pipes had been torn loose somewhere close to him. He’d better get elsewhere in a rush unless he wanted to be parboiled.
He stuffed the crown of his hat between his teeth so the wet felt would filter out some of the heat.
He couldn’t move forward. It seemed to him that it took hours to twist and wriggle backward so his shoulders were beneath the beam that held him fast. After that it was a matter of straining every last ounce he could summon into heaving the heavy timber up a fraction of an inch at a time, until he could squirm out from under.
Snow beat in at him as he rolled free. A yard away was the edge of nothing. Beyond and beneath were lights from the next block.
He backed away, crawled through a jumble of smashed furniture, splintered wood, piping, wires. Luminous lines of blue raced in waves across the floor ahead of him, crisscrossing in his path.
There was no way to tell where the doorways or the walls had been; he reached a stair landing before he knew what it was. He went down slowly, a step at a time, listening for the splatter of water in order to duck the force of a stream, if the boys were shooting in here.