Shaner whispered close to his ear, “She ain’t been out of my sight longer than to change her clothes, skipper. Everything’s strictly under control.”
“I hope to God you know what you’re talking about. Who’s in there?” He indicated the makeshift control room, improvised out of wallboard and Plastiglas at one side of the stage; at the angle Pedley was standing, he couldn’t see anything of the booth but a glare.
“There are Three Musketeers cooped up in there with the engineer, coach. Ross and a bird everyone calls Chuck — plus a silver-haired gent with a bandage on his chops.”
“Chuck’s the producer. The other’s their lawyer. Where’s the hospital patrol?”
“I run across a corp’ral who’s been giving the up and down to the sand buckets and the sprinklers and the hoserolls. You want him?”
“Quick. Where is he? Backstage?”
“He was. You got to crawl through the orchestra.”
“Snap it up.”
The hall was a natural draftmaker. Big floor space, high-vaulted composition roof, wartime construction with the beams and girders insufficiently fireproofed. Wood floors. Wood sash. The place would go up like a box of matches. A lot of good those red globes and EXIT diagrams would do if it ever caught.
And there were no steel fire shutters to keep a blaze from spreading horizontally to other buildings, he noticed. He was glad he’d notified the nearby Richmond companies to get “on the box” — be ready to roll at a split second’s notice.
They went Indian file, stooping over, behind the percussion instruments to a tiny door under the stage apron. Above them the voice throbbed on:
“Good grief!” Olive murmured, as they passed into the dimness below stage. “Does she have to sing that?”
They came up out of the half-light into the wings. A group of coveralled men huddled behind the heavy glass-fiber curtain. One wore khaki, with chevrons on the arm.
Shaner sss-ed, “Hey, Corp. Fire Marshal wants you.”
The corporal resented the interruption. “Whatsamatter, Chief?”
“Sprinkler system all right?”
“Yeah. Anything—?”
“Tested the down pipes from your roof tank?”
“They ain’t frozen, if that’s what you’re getting at.” The soldier opened his eyes very wide at Olive.
Pedley said, “You feel her lately?”
“Howzat?”
“Have you felt the walls?” Pedley strode toward the rear drop, turned to look out across the stage and up at the line of bulbs under the proscenium. The illumination which beat down on the singer’s bronze hair wasn’t clear and sharp; it quivered like sunlight over a midsummer pavement. “Hot air up there, buddy. Making the lights shimmy. Better feel her.”
“Sure it’s hot. We keep the steam high on account of our patients.”
Pedley said sharply, “You wouldn’t know if the seat of your pants was burning! Shaner. Take the east wall.” He didn’t wait for his deputy to begin; moved swiftly along the west wall, passing his hands over the calcimined plaster.
The plaster beneath his palms became suddenly cooler. Was there some burrowing flame back there under the floor somewhere?
He sniffed. The strong hospital odor of ether and formalin — but no smoke. Maybe he’d been jittery for nothing.
No! He’d turned the corner, was working across behind the backdrop. The wall here was warm!
Sweat moistened his forehead — not from the heat.
There was something more than radiation from steam pipes, here. The varnish on the woodwork was sticky!
He didn’t hurry as he went out onto the stage, crossed to the control room. Any sign of panic, now, might be worse than a blaze.
Gaydel swung around from his campstool, scowled.
“Now, what?”
“Call Toleman,” Pedley said easily. “Want an announcement over the mike.”
Ross cried, “This isn’t a rehearsal, you dimwit! We’re on the air. You can’t break up a network broadcast—”
“You’ll break it up. There’s a fire backstage, here, somewhere.”
Amery’s stool clattered to the floor. “I don’t see—”
“Neither do I. But it’s here. Get Toleman. Get him quick.”
Gaydel hesitated. Leila was just going into the final chorus of “Chloe.” The heavy beat of the drums was building up to a climax. Maybe another half-minute wouldn’t make any difference; maybe it wasn’t anything serious; maybe—
Pedley gauged the producer’s indecision, made his decision.
He went out of the control room, strolled casually to the microphone, put a hand on Leila’s arm. She half-turned, without missing a phrasing. Consternation was clear in her eyes.
He pulled her back from the microphone, as Toleman glared, started toward him from the wing.
“You’ll want to lynch me for cutting into the performance,” he said into the mike, “but we’ll have to call it off, temporarily. There’s been an accident—” he made it purposely obscure — “there’ll be rain checks. Everybody out, now.” He gestured with his open hand to the substitute orchestra leader to keep on playing.
Toleman pawed at him. Pedley brushed him aside. He cut across to the corporal. “Pull your box. Then tell your em-pees to get these boys out of here, fast.”
The corporal ran.
Pedley used sign language to Shaner, across the stage. He held both hands at his side as if gripping a rifle, then pantomimed as if he were suddenly shooting the rifle into the ground. Shaner nodded, hurried for the nearest wall rack holding an extinguisher.
The movement toward the exits began reluctantly. Not more than a third of the invalids were on their feet. None of the wheel-chair cases had spun themselves around to head for the doors. A few veterans were filtering out. The aisles were slowly beginning to fill up. Maybe it would be all right, if they would only move a little faster. They might all get out in time.
He saw the smoke. No larger than the trailing plume from a cigarette, at first. It drifted aimlessly up from the staircase they had used to climb from below-stage. Before he could reach the top of the steps, it had become a gray funnel a foot wide.
Then the cry of “Fire! FIRE!!!!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Trapped in a Blazing Inferno
It took about ten seconds for the recreation hall to turn into pandemonium.
Pedley, jerking a fire ax from its bracket, saw what was happening. The “walking cases” weren’t in any panic; they weren’t crowding and fighting toward the doors at all. That was the trouble; the men who could get out easily weren’t doing it. They were staying to help the others who couldn’t navigate without aid — the wheelchair occupants, the two-crutch cases. Before Shaner came lumbering across the stage with his extinguisher, the two long aisles were a tangle of chairs, canes, crutches, struggling men.
The nurses, from the back rows, did what they could. The M.P.’s carried men bodily out of the milling mass.
With the first burst of flame, the marshal knew there’d be a stampede.
The four men in the control room had run for sand buckets. The fire was eating away under the stage somewhere; Pedley hacked away at the floor beside the hottest place on that rear wall. If he could get a draft through here, it might stop the flames from cauliflowering out over the aisles.
His ax sank through inch-thick planking as if it had been a rotten stump. When he yanked the blade free, a little sprinkle of sparks followed it. Then a thin trident of orange flame.