Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“It went down,” the sailor apologized. “Only your orders was, anything that didn’t belong out there, to tip you off—”

“What the hell was it?”

“Something silver, looked like a big oil or gasoline can. Musta been dropped over the side. It was so close to us I couldn’t get the light square down on it, but I caught the reflection. It made me nervous,” he admitted. “If anything like that spreads around us, all somebody’s gotta do is toss a butt overboard, and—”

“How’d it go down, straight?”

“No, sort of sideways and slow.”

“Then it was empty.”

Shorty sighed. “Gee, that’s good.”

“Bad, you mean! Whatever was in it is still with us, probably spread around nice and lovely... How do I get to this power room, where this electrician is?”

“It’s under the stairs that lead up to the stage,” explained the sailor. “You’ve gotta look close or you’ll miss seeing the door.” Down went Whitey again. He had the rather chilling suspicion that the murderer, failing to get rid of the body through the porthole, intended to try a little wholesale arson to cover up the traces of the crime.

And yet the murderer himself was on board, would be trapped with the rest if he did such a thing. What the murderer didn’t know, since the show was still going full blast and no alarm had been raised as yet, was that the crime had already been unearthed, and that there was a detective on board. He intended taking his time, probably, and then swimming for it — with a good head-start. Whitey detoured into the audience for a moment to single out Dulcy and hustle her to the rear.

“What’s the idea, making me give up a perfectly good seat?” she said.

“I want you back here where you won’t get trampled on in case anything happens,” Whitey said. “Now don’t get nervous, but just stand here where I can find you in a hurry—”

“Well, aren’t you the cheerful little ray of sunshine!”

“Tell me about the part of the show that I missed. Did you notice anyone who came on later than the others?”

“No,” she said, then added, “Anyone at all?”

“Anyone at all. I don’t care who!”

“None of the performers did, but the bandmaster keeps wandering off and on all the time, I’ve noticed. I mean he just introduces each new turn and then strolls off again and lets the other five do the playing—”

“I could kiss you!” Whitey said fervently. “None of the others mentioned that. I suppose they thought I meant only the performers. I muffed it myself when I was in the wings before, forgot about him.”

“What do you mean? Who’s ‘he’? What’s the band leader done?” Dulcy wanted to know.

“Played a sour note. Remember what I told you — don’t move!”

The music was playing no longer. The two comedians had just come on, but the five musicians were sitting in full view. Only their leader was missing. When Whitey got down to the passageway below it was choked with chorus girls, all trying to get into their dressing room at once and do a quick change. They not only slowed him down, they resented his presence in their half-clad midst and began to squeal and claw at him.

“Get out of here! Go back where you belong!” Whitey emerged, protecting his bent head with both arms, and a dance-shoe came flying after him and glanced harmlessly off his skull. They banged their door after them resentfully and the corridor was suddenly quiet.

Just under the stairs was the power room doorway. A heavy smell of oil and machinery seeped out as he got the door open. The place was a labyrinth of greasy generators and what not, shot through with weird, futuristic shadows. It was empty — and it looked very much as if it needed someone in charge of it at the moment.

Quantities of newspapers were scattered about wholesale, all transparent with oil, soaked with it. Nobody read that many newspapers and drenched them that way. The door clapped back on its hinges behind him and the smell became almost overpowering. The two overworked bulbs overhead couldn’t get into the corners and angles and light them up.

He advanced warily and an overturned copper oiler on the floor clanged loudly under his foot. A moment later he stumbled over one of the newspapers and a man’s upturned shoe was revealed. Whitey crouched down and found a man in the dungarees of an engineer lying flat on his back in a narrow lane of blackness between two pieces of machinery, only his feet protruding into the light. A hefty wrench lying at his heels told most of the story.

The engineer was out cold, but still breathing. Whitey crouched down above him to haul him out into the open, careless of which way he turned his back. It was then that the wrench started to move slowly along the floor like something possessed. The comer of his eye saw it — but not quickly enough. The wrench swung up into the air just as he turned his head, then came down again. Whitey just had time to see the arm wielding it, the face behind it — then both were wiped out in a flash of white fire that seemed to come from his own head.

The fire was still there when he came to a minute or so later, but it wasn’t white and it wasn’t at his head any more. It was down near his legs. The way it was stinging and biting him would have brought the dead to life. And the blow hadn’t been as accurate as intended, or it would have finished him; too much emotion and not enough aim had been put into it. The biting and stinging made him jackknife his legs up out of the way before he had even opened his eyes.

When he did so, bright yellow flame was fluttering from the scattered newspapers all over the room, in three or four places at once. One of the burning papers had been lying across his own legs. He was partly across the body of the engineer, who was still motionless. His splitting head was still trying to drag him back into unconsciousness again, but pain defeated it. He shoved backward with his buckled legs, and felt his back slip up the oily wall behind him until he was totteringly erect.

He still saw everything double, but the oil-soaked overalls of the man at his feet were already smoking, and the air was full of dancing sparks from the papers. Grease-rags began to smoulder ominously here and there and make it tough to breathe. The room got hot. One of the two bulbs overhead suddenly popped into nothingness. The fire was past the stamping-out stage now.

Whitey grabbed the engineer by one ankle and dragged him out of the little lane that had hidden him. The slippery floor made it easier. Half of the burning papers had taken wings now and were swirling about in the torturing air like huge fire-birds. One of Whitey’s own lisle socks began to peel back in a red thread, and he rubbed it out against his other leg like a mosquito bite. He struggled through the inferno toward the door, the body of the man he was dragging after him snuffing out buttercups of flame along the floor as it passed over them. A belt on the machinery suddenly burned in two and sent up a shower of sparks like a rocket.

He had just enough strength left, in the wilting heat-waves swirling about him, to claw at the door like some idiot thing wanting out and unable to show it in any other way. The door wouldn’t move — was either warped by the heat or else locked. Whitey could feel himself going, knew he’d never get up again, would be cremated in here. But his fall was his salvation. As his body slumped against the door it gave outward under his weight — and quite easily. In his torment he’d forgotten it opened that way.

Air that was air came rushing past him. He fell on his hands and knees, and behind him the room gave a roar and turned itself into a furnace as it found the draught it had been waiting for. He tugged, strained, and the body of the engineer came slipping over the threshold after him, bringing patches of fire with it like a human torch. The door, released, clapped back again.