Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

She would have twisted and tumbled flat on her face, except that the arm holding the flashlight moved in front of her as she collapsed on it.

"Temple, what on earth-- ?"

''Matt! All right. Come on, run! They're armed.''

The flashlight snapped off. "Who?"

"Miners. The Seven Dwarves. The ghosts of the Glory Hole Gang. I don't know! Look!"

The twin flashlight beams blinked into view.

Matt's third beam flashed on again, aimed at the middle of that bullet-ridden white face. It was impossible to read surprise on a mutilated mask, but the flashlight beams drooped with surprise, and then Matt was a shadow interrupting the light.

The pursuer fell with a grunt of surprised pain, his flash-lights rolling from limp hands and crossing beams on the floor. Too bad an "X" wasn't the mark of Zorro, Temple thought with irreverence, maybe Zorro could put in an appearance in the J. J. Jackson underground theme park.

Footsteps and fresh light came from beyond the first man's fallen form.

"Come on," said the dark that rushed back to Temple, taking her arm. "It's a good thing I went back for a flashlight."

They ran together. Matt using the flashlight intermittently to scout the tunnel's curves. No more overhead light bulbs betrayed their position. After the sounds collided with the fallen man, there was a pause, then renewed pursuit.

Suddenly Matt was pushing Temple ahead of himself.

She stumbled forward, stubbing a toe on a steel rod, flailing through a fabric curtain she thought she'd never see again, beating her way into the light and familiar surroundings of the basement hallway.

Matt bounded through after her, throwing down the flashlight to turn and pull the costumes closed. He snatched up the flashlight again, answering her questioning look.

"Found it in a dressing room."

They glanced around. Temple saw that the hall was still deserted, drat it.

Costumes trembled and swayed.

Matt and Temple bolted down the passage, peering into deserted dressing rooms.

''Hey," a voice shouted from down the hall.

They ran faster.

"Hey, Miss Barr, what is the big hurry? You're going the wrong way. Your skit is gonna start any moment."

Temple looked over her shoulder. The voice was calling from the foot of the stairs, where a flotilla of Fontana brothers in penguin colors was gathering in puzzlement. Twenty feet ahead of them, a horror of hockey-masked felons were streaming out of the wall and between the costumes.

"Fontanas," Temple gasped to Matt. "The odds are even."

But the pursuers were aware of nothing except prey. Temple heard the same pounding feet that had set her heart's tempo for the past six minutes: about two hundred beats per minute.

Like a vision from a dubious television documentary, the huge prop UFO loomed ahead of them.

The show was over. Temple knew with a sinking heart. The show was over and there was no place to hide.

Matt had twisted his head back and glanced at her, shaking it. ''Out for blood," he warned.

There was no place else to go. They charged up the plywood ramp and circled the UFO

following the upward spiral. On the other side, the floor was a full fifteen feet down, with no ladder.

Footsteps were vibrating the ramp as six or so pursuers jumped aboard. Matt and Temple exchanged a stunned look, then she dived for the only exit ... an oblong door into the UFO.

After the normal light of the hallway, the UFO interior was blackout-dark. Matt had Temple's wrist in a firm grip, but as they pushed into the interior they encountered resistance. A wall of resistance.

A human cordon, in fact.

''Hey, watch it!" a woman's voice grumbled. 'That's my foot."

"Yeah," a man objected, "you're creasing the knife-pleats in my zoot suit. If you're not in the cast, get out."

Little did he know. The UFO doorway darkened, both actually and metaphorically. One hulking, goblin-faced man after another bounded inside. The population explosion pressed everybody further into the dark, crowded and somewhat pungent space.

Temple and Matt were jammed into a wall of flesh.

"I didn't know anyone was still in here," Temple whispered. 'They could get hurt."

"Not in this mess."

Mess indeed. Barely had the inadequate light streaming through the door brightened, then a new storm on the horizon darkened it. Fontana brothers piled onto the UFO like a team of football players.

People were complaining and elbowing and mixing it up as one aggravated anonymous mob.

"Shut up," a woman's authoritative voice rang out. "Anyone who ruins this entrance is ground round. Now settle down, people. We'll straighten this out later." Her words ended with a bang, rather than a whimper, when the UFO door slammed shut at the prompting of some mysterious outside force.

Temple huddled against the hull. Matt shielding her from the front. He still had her wrist in custody and could no doubt take her pulse, which was now about two hundred and forty. The crowd, the overcrowding, the uncertainty, the heat had everyone crammed in like sardines.

"Where are the dancers?" Temple wondered in a whisper she meant Matt only to hear.

An unsuspected male voice at her ear, evidently belonging to an Elvis, answered.

"The UFO was too heavy for the elevator to lift the whole cast, with the addition of those hotel babes, whoever's bright idea that was."

Temple did not volunteer her own identity, under the circumstances.

"Danny Dove decided at the last moment tonight that the chorus line will enter from the wings, under the cover of the crimson mist," Elvis managed to reveal before being shushed by the woman with an interest in raw hamburger.

Temple winced, in the dark, where no one could see her.

A full load of Fontanas and the tunnel people made the UFO overweight again. Lord knows what would happen when the stage elevator tried to uplift them.

"Hold on," Matt advised softly as a motor whined and they began to rise ever so slowly.

Temple sighed. Whoever these tunnel people were, they were ruining her grand finale.

What a disaster! What a quandary--forty-some innocent people trapped in a UFO with armed thugs..

Gridirons were supposed to spoof the news, not make it.

Somehow, she decided, it was all her fault. Perhaps she had been too mean to Crawford.

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa, Mea Max . Right. It would take a magician to get them all out of this safely. She pictured the spectacular conclusion of the Gridiron: an on-stage shootout between the Fontana brothers and the forces of underground evil. Innocent bystanders dropping like swatted flies onstage and off. She might as well fall on a spike heel right now and get it over with. Even if she survived, she would never live down this ignominy.

At least she would perish with Matt Devine holding her hand.

Sort of.

Chapter 40

Louie's Last Bow

Naturally, I have not been a slug-a-bed during all this hullabaloo.

The Instant I detect that Miss Temple and I are about to encounter unfriendlies in the tunnel, I improvise a brilliant plan.

Since I am in perfect camouflage gear for the situation, I huddle in the shadow of the sandbags.

Once the interlopers spot my dear roommate in the glare of their twin beams, they head right for her. I must say that the males of her species certainly are crazy for Miss Temple, with the lamentable exception of Mr. Max Kinsella, who has been all too successful at keeping well away from her.

So everybody streams past me, while I have plenty of time to size up the predicament with my specialized infra-green night-sight equipment.

Certain inalienable facts are self-evident. One, the lads on Miss Temple's tail are a gang of thieves. The hockey masks are the first tip-off. The second is the cash cart, which I study for a half-second in their flashlight beams, especially the affixed steel plaque that is engraved with the tattletale words, "Goliath Hotel."