Margaret Millar - Fire Will Freeze

She stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind her. There was no light coming from beneath the next door, which was Floraine’s. Isobel moved slowly past it.

Miss Rudd’s room came next. Though Miss Rudd had been sent to bed an hour ago her lamp was still lit. Then three things happened almost simultaneously. The doorknob of Miss Rudd’s room began to move, something brushed against Isobel’s ankles, and in a split-second Isobel turned down the wick of her lamp.

She began to creep backwards towards her own door. The darkness had a strange quality of being alive. It was not absence of light but something more real, a kind of black clammy air which seeped in through the walls and the doors, a dark fog rising from the cellar.

No one came out of Miss Rudd’s room. Isobel stood with the unlit lamp in her hand and something moving in the darkness at her feet. She fumbled in the pocket of her dress and found a match and struck it against the wall. The light flared.

Standing at her feet, motionless, was a large amiable white rat. He looked intelligently at Isobel, far more intelligently than she looked at him. Apparently satisfied with her, he gave a good-natured twitch of his whiskers and scampered off down the hall.

Isobel let the match fall and opened the door of her room.

“What is it?” Gracie’s voice came urgently from the bed. “Now what?”

“A rat,” Isobel said, swallowing hard.

“A rat? Well, what did you expect?”

“Not,” Isobel said shakily, “an ordinary rat. He was quite — quite blasé.”

“Well, light that lamp and crawl into bed and stay there, if you’re going to be scared skinny by a poor little rat.”

The lamp was lit again. Gracie sat up in bed with a blanket over her shoulders. “I remembered something for you. There was a name-card above the mirror in the bus. It had M. Hearst printed on it.”

“Hush,” Isobel said. She had her head bent towards the door. In the hall someone was calling in a husky penetrating whisper:

“Suzanne! Suzanne, where are you? Oh, dear, oh, dear!”

“I rather hoped,” Isobel said in a cracked voice, “I rather hoped Miss Rudd would be sleeping.”

The plaintive whispers went on. “Oh, Suzanne! Oh, you naughty girl! Come, you vixen!”

Then Floraine’s voice, steady but a little impatient: “Frances, give me those scissors.”

“I haven’t got any scissors, my dear friend. You told me not to take the scissors and I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t, Floraine!”

“You have them hidden under your shawl.”

There was a brief scuffle and a cry of surprise from Miss Rudd.

“Why, there they are! Under my shawl! Someone must have put them there, Floraine. That thin one with the sharp nose.”

“Oh, be quiet, Frances,” Floraine said wearily. “Come back into your room and I’ll tell you a story.”

And the house became quiet again except for the creaking of the walls as the wind pressed against them.

Subdued and silent, Isobel set the lamp on the bureau and turned the wick low. Then she lay down on the bed, covering her eyes with one arm. She stayed awake for some time listening to the strange medley of sounds, the howling of the wind, Gracie’s quiet even breathing, the sudden banging of the steam radiator, the sharp quick tap of sleet against the windows, for the snow was fine again with the rising of the wind.

It’s so noisy, she thought. We couldn’t even hear danger if it should approach. Someone could come along that balcony outside the windows and step right in...

“Gracie,” she whispered. But Gracie was sleeping and finally Isobel slept, too, for a time.

When she awoke she heard a new sound in the room, a buzzing like a swarm of bees, a steady purring like many giant cats ready to maul their kill.

She kept her eyes closed tightly. It couldn’t be bees, of course. And there was only one cat, Etienne, and he couldn’t be — he couldn’t possibly be...

But he was. Isobel moved her hand a little and there he was stretched out beside her on the bed, his eyes glowing. So close to her, he looked huge and savage as a tiger.

“Scram,” she said. Etienne blinked and began to wave his tail.

Gracie stirred and said, “Leave me alone.”

“Wake up, Gracie. Wake up. We have company.”

Gracie yawned and sat up. When she saw the cat she lay down again quickly and said, “My God. Is this a zoo?”

“Gracie, tell him to go away.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Push him, then,” Isobel said.

“Push him yourself,” Gracie said. “How did he get in? Did you bring him in with you?”

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

Etienne appeared to be following the conversation with some interest.

“Well, how did he get in?” Gracie said. “And why?”

“A refugee from Miss Rudd,” Isobel said. “A very reasonable animal.”

“Not reasonable enough to turn doorknobs,” Gracie pointed out. “Somebody must have let him in.”

“Go away, Etienne,” Isobel said. “ Allez-vous-en! Scram!”

The cat leaped silently to the floor and stalked away. Isobel hurriedly opened the door and let him out into the hall. She came back to the bed, looking worried.

“Miss Rudd,” she said slowly, “had a pair of scissors and she just loves to cut things. First, Mr. Goodwin’s hat.”

“Maybe she’s working up by degrees,” Gracie said. “Hat, rat, cat, and then us.”

There was a silence. Then Isobel said, “I don’t think I’m going to sleep.”

“Well, I am. Go down and talk to Goodie.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“I’m too tired to mind anything,” Gracie said sleepily. “Give my love to Goodie.”

Mr. Goodwin, however, was in no position to accept it. He had fallen asleep in front of the fire. His mouth was open and he was making unlovely sounds.

Isobel stared at him bitterly, but the perfidious Mr. Goodwin did not stir. She sat down in a chair holding the lamp like a wrathful virgin arrived too late.

Perhaps Mr. Goodwin would wake up. Even if he didn’t, it was warmer down here and there was no balcony outside the windows, and you could watch the door.

She watched the door until her eyes grew heavy. Mr. Goodwin did not wake up and nothing came through the door. She set the lamp on the floor and leaned back and closed her eyes, only to open them again quickly at the sound of footsteps.

Joyce Hunter was standing in the doorway. She had a small flashlight in her hand which she clicked off as soon as she saw Isobel.

“Well,” she said in a whisper. “What are you doing down here, Miss Seton?”

“Sitting,” Isobel said, rather unnecessarily. “I couldn’t sleep. So I came down hoping Mr. Goodwin would be awake. But he isn’t.”

“Not so loud,” Joyce said, frowning. She closed the door. She continued to speak in low, sinister whispers. “There’s something funny about this house.”

“You don’t mean to tell me,” Isobel said dryly. “And to think I was just on the verge of buying it for a cozy little country home.”

Joyce ignored this. “They have scads of food, for one thing, and all they gave us was those salmon sandwiches. And Floraine said they hadn’t much fuel, but the coal bin is stocked to the brim...”

“You were down in the cellar?”

“Naturally,” Joyce said. “I couldn’t sit around and watch Mr. Goodwin sleep.”

Isobel stared at her suspiciously. “Do you always carry around flashlights?”

“No, I stole this one from Mr. Crawford’s overcoat pocket,” Joyce said modestly. “I thought it would be a good idea to find the bus driver.”

“And I suppose you did?” Isobel said with heavy irony.

Joyce looked at her thoughtfully. “Not exactly .”