Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

He called to her.

Her answer came faintly from somewhere toward the opening into the musicians’ pit. He groped toward her in the half-light. She had crawled beside a crate of old costumes, crouched there, whimpering like an animal in pain—

He pulled her to her feet.

“You’re not hurt.”

He had to find out if she was hurt; he couldn’t tell if she slumped there in hysterics.

She could walk.

“Come on.” He made for the midget door under the apron, opening into the orchestra.

When he put his hand on the knob, he knew there was no use. It burned his fingers. The paint on the door was blistering.

He could open it, easily enough. But they wouldn’t get through. The other side of that door would be a sea of flame.

“Have to try the stairs.”

“All right.” She’d stopped whimpering.

The lights went out. They could still see; the orange glare was sufficient for them to find their way back to the bottom of the stairs.

They went up part way. But they couldn’t get out. The fireproof curtain had fallen over the stair up onto the stage; from beneath it angry spears of flame stabbed across the top steps.

Pedley dragged her back. “Doesn’t look so good.”

“We’re trapped?”

He pulled her along with him understage. “Might be another exit—”

There wasn’t. He was pretty certain there wouldn’t be.

She clung to him. “We’ll never get out of this.”

“Sure. They’ll get us.”

They would, of course. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell her how the rescue crew would come through here after the fire was out and everything was soaked down; to explain about the long black rubber bag they use to carry out — whatever was left of them. “I’ve been in tougher spots than this.”

“This is what Ned went through. And Kim.” She didn’t put it as a question; it was more as if she were understanding something for the first time.

“Uh, huh. Only we — we’ll be all right.”

The heat was a tangible thing. It needled the back of his neck, stung his nostrils, made the top of his ears ache.

“They wouldn’t have had to go through it — we wouldn’t be going through it — if it hadn’t been for me,” she said.

“Your first husband wasn’t exactly free from blame.” They were as far away from the flames as they could get. Pedley’s back was to the wall. She clung to him, her face half-buried in his shoulder.

“I forgot. You read my — day book.”

“Yair.” He slapped at a spark that dropped on her neck. It slid down inside her dress. He ripped the silk from her shoulders, flung the burning cloth aside. She didn’t move away from him.

“You know about — Ned—”

“I know he was some guy who came to your home town with a show and you ran away and married him, went into his vaudeville act.” A portion of the stage floor fell in, some twenty feet away; it was like watching a preview of hell, Pedley thought. “I found out you never did divorce him. That you had a lot of — uh — men friends. Guys who could help you along in show business, mostly. But you never committed bigamy until this kid Conover came along.”

“I never really fell in love until I found Bill. I never met anyone like him before. Maybe that was why. He wouldn’t — have anything to do with me, unless he could marry me.”

“The lieutenant didn’t know you’d — played around?”

“Yes.” It was getting hard for her to speak; her lips were beginning to swell from the heat. “I didn’t fool him about that. But I couldn’t tell him Ned and I were married.” She shrank behind Pedley’s shoulder as a knot in the flooring exploded and scattered fragments of glowing wood over them.

“Why’d you put stuff like that down on paper, anyway?”

“I never had many friends — except boy friends. I couldn’t keep them very long, either. Ned wouldn’t let me. He kept breaking up my friendships, even though he didn’t care for me, himself. He didn’t mind my — sleeping with men as long as it helped get us jobs or more money for the act. But he didn’t want me to like them.”

“Dog in the manger.” Pedley could smell the hair singeing on his head. Maybe it was her hair — didn’t make any difference. They were both going the same way.

“So I put my friends in my diary — where I could be sure of having them when I needed them. That was pretty often, with Ned the kind of man he was. I never meant a living soul to see the diary, of course. I hid it from Ned until one night he came in my room and caught me writing in it.”

“After that he held a club over your head?” It would be better if he could keep her talking; it wasn’t going to be for long, now.

“He found out Bill wanted to marry me. Then he swore he’d show the hook to Bill unless I did marry him. Bill.”

“By that time you cared enough for Conover not to want to give him up?”

“I didn’t want him hurt. He’s such a swell kid. And I knew if he saw — the things I’d written — it would break him all up. Besides, I loved him. I wanted to marry him. Only thing, I didn’t want to be a bigamist. But that’s what I was.”

“Then Ned had you right where he wanted you.”

“He’d been mean, before. After that, he was evil. He made me give him most of the money I made. He insulted me in public. And he wouldn’t let Bill tell anyone we were married. Of course, poor Bill doesn’t know why I was so afraid of Ned. He thinks it’s just because Ned was such a heel. If it should come out I’m actually a criminal, I think Bill would shoot himself.”

“Somebody else found out — all this? Figured if he had the book and Ned was out of the way, he’d he able to keep you under his thumb just as Lownes had?”

“I guess so — but—” She was getting faint. “I don’t know — who—” She leaned against him weakly, sank against the wall in a crumpled heap.

Her skirt began to smolder at her knees. It broke into flame.

He tried to put it out by flinging his coat around her. It smothered the blaze for a moment, then it flared up again.

He dropped the coat, clawed at the flaming fabric until he ripped her dress away completely.

Then he covered her body with his own and waited.

He had plenty of light to scratch the name on the back of his watch. He lay across Leila’s body with the shoulder-padding of his coat over his mouth so it filtered out the worst of the sparks and a little of the heat which made every breath a brief agony.

They wouldn’t get to them; that was impossible, now. But they’d find the watch. Barney, at least, would have sense enough to search for some message left in the moment of extremity.

The pain seemed to be numbing him; the back of his neck even felt cool. Mirage of the nerves; it must be. They said you felt no thirst at the very end when you died in the desert, looking for water.

The coolness spread. He put one hand up at the back of his head. His hair was wet. He rolled on one side. The glow from the fire was dimmer. The air seemed full of mist. It was mist. The fog nozzle!

Picking its way carefully over burning planks and red-glowing beams, came a fantastic figure that might have been spawned by Frankenstein. The Suit!

No wool-clad, rubber-shod fireman could have walked into that inferno. But the Suit! — Pedley would back the Suit against hell-fire any time, from here in.

That asbestos-coated grizzly bear with the diving helmet headpiece and the square of gleaming glass for the eves, held in its mittened paws a thin, twelve-foot applicator, an extension nozzle-tip bent at right angles to the length. From the nozzle came a mist of fine, drizzling spray that cut down flame, blacked out embers and sent a cloud of steam boiling up from the floor. Pedley felt an invisible screen drop between him and that withering blast of heat.