CHAPTER X

CHAPTER X

In the sudden change from one acute terror to another, Marigold cried out in fear, and at the same moment he exclaimed:

'My God! The whole place is ablaze!'

She knew then, in a horrid flash of understanding, the reason for that strange, stifling heat which she had noticed more than once. It was nothing to do with imagination or inner excitement. The whole basement, with its old- fashioned furnace, had been smouldering under them. Now the place had burst into these roaring, terrifying flames, and their way down the stairs was cut off.

'Quick! Shut the door, you little fool! That draught's simply feeding the fire.'

Lindley was no longer the terrifying assailant. He was the one ally in a frightful emergency. Unhesitatingly, she slammed the door at his order and turned to face him.

But he was already across the room, tearing down the curtain, trying to pierce the outer darkness and discover their chance of escape that way.

'It's no good that way, Lindley! There's a theer drop of two stories.'

'You're sure?'

'Yes, quite sure.'

'Where's the fire-escape? There must be one in n place of this sort.'

'It's—the other side of the house. We'd have to cross the landing.' Her voice faltered slightly as she remembered the roaring furnace which had once been the stairs.

'All right. That's our only chance. Come on!'

He had led her by the wrist again, but this time there was no familiarity or offensiveness about it. He was merely impressing on her the urgency of the occasion and the necessity of swift obedience.

'Now, when I open the door, get out as quickly as you can. We don't want this through draught for more than a second.'

She obeyed him to the letter, though she was appalled by the hideous giant puff of hot air that rushed towards her the moment the door was opened. There was, she remembered, a high wind blowing outside. No wonder the gusts from the open window fanned the flames to such terrifying activity. But help would be here soon. It must be here soon.

'Come on.' Though he had closed the door behind them, shutting out the light, there was sufficient light from the flames to show what they must do.

A short corridor from Marigold's room led on to the landing, and the stairs—now a mass of flame, like some hellish lift-shaft—ran up to the centre of it.

'You say we've got to get to the other side of that?' Lindley's voice was grim beside her.

'Yes.'

'God help us!' he muttered savagely, without probably intending any real appeal for providential aid.

'It's not—possible,' gasped Marigold, partly because the heat and smoke parched her throat and seemed to suck the very breath out of her lungs, and partly because she was so sheerly terrified at the thought of somehow getting round that crumbling shell of landing which now little more than edged the flaming stairway.

'It's got to be possible. Come on.'

The rather thin, strong fingers round her wrist were irresistible. He half dragged, hall guided her along the passage, and, with a curl, 'Go first. You're lighter,' launched her on her perilous journey round what was left of the binding.

'Keep your face to the wall,' he shouted above the roar of the flames. 'And hold your damned dress so that it doesn't blow outwards.'

She hardly knew that she obeyed him. She only knew that the floor either seemed to, or did in truth, bend under her weight as she edged her way round, trying to balance speed with caution.

When she was halfway round to the short passage which corresponded to the one on her side of the landing, he followed her. He came more quickly than she, for the need for speed was more urgent, and caution had to be disregarded. A fresh danger threatened them now, for the roof over the stairway had caught, and the beams across it were blazing. It was as though the outside shell of the house, with its side-passages, enclosed only a pit of flame that reached to the roof.

As she gained the comparative haven of the second passage she tried to call out that she was safe, but her voice refused to come from her cracking throat. He was close behind her, she knew, and as she brushed the sweat and hair from her eyes, she saw that he was only a couple of yards away. Two seconds more and he too would be safe.

And then, even as she watched him, a section of blazing rafter tore loose from the ceiling with a rending sound, and caught him a fearful blow on the side of the head before plunging down into the inferno below.

With a shriek which was drowned in the confusion of sounds around her, she leant forward and snatched at his reeling figure, dragging him to safety at the very moment when he would have staggered outward towards the fire.

He collapsed at her feet in the narrow passageway in a dead faint and, crouching down beside him, Marigold knew a few moments of relief from the choking heat and smoke.

But she knew that the reprieve was only one of seconds. Already fresh billows of smoke were beginning to make the passage a death trap. Somehow she had to reach the window in the room beyond, where the fire-escape led to safety.

Hardly more than five minutes could have passed since they first discovered the fire. Yet she seemed to have lived through a lifetime, and the fire seemed to have consumed a third of the house. If she were ever to reach safety—if they were ever to reach safety—she must act with all the speed and strength she had.

Marigold wasted a few precious seconds trying to recall him to consciousness, but it was obvious that he had passed beyond reach of any cries or entreaties.

Gasping and sweating, she staggered to her feet and, taking him under the shoulders, she somehow managed to drag his dead weight a few yards. She would never have believed that any man could be so heavy. This was like the most dreadful nightmare that imagination could devise. Everything was there—the terror, the nameless danger, the dead weight holding one back so that one's crawling steps towards safety seemed to measure out eternity.

Once she stumbled and fell beside him again, and in that moment, with the clarity of light thrown on a white sheet, she remembered what she had thought only an hour ago:

'If he died tonight, I shouldn't be sorry. It would be the perfect solution for all of us. . . . He doesn't even know what decency is.'

And here was the solution. Here, in her own hands.

Every second that she lingered over this desperate attempt to rescue him reduced her own chances of escape. If she left him now, he would never know anything else. No one could live long in this choking smoke. He would be blotted out —just like that—and they would be safe, all three of them. Stephanie, herself and Paul. Ami at the thought of Paul, she suddenly found that the tears were running down her face and sin was sobbing aloud.

What standard of right and wrong could possibly demand that she should risk her own life to rescue a man who had done what Lindley had done? By what possible form of justice could it be right to restore to him the power to blackmail, insult and torment her?

He had forfeited his right to live. His single-little chance of life was in her hand—and her hand alone. He was as good as dead if she made no more of this muscle-cracking, lung-tearing effort. She had only to go through that door and that window to safety. . . . She had done her best.

It took no more than a few seconds for the feverish arguments to pass in rapid succession through her throbbing head. She had even scrambled to her feet again in the determination to fight her way out alone.

And then she looked down at the still figure at her feet—vague and shadowy in the alternate glare and smoke.

Oddly enough, it was nothing even remotely sentimental that moved her. No faint recollection of the fact that she had once loved him stirred Marigold's thoughts of him at that moment. She was neither angry with him nor sorry for him. His only significance for her was that he was a living, laboriously breathing creature like herself. He too had fought madly against pursuing death.

She could not leave him while there was an ounce of strength left in her aching, trembling limbs. Two seconds ago she had told herself she had done her best. Now she knew that she would never have done her best unless she got him out too or fell in the struggle to do so.

Almost before she knew she had taken the decision, her hands had closed round his arms once more, and she was backing towards the door, dragging him painfully after her.

When she reached the door and forced it open, she hardly knew which was greater—the relief of the different air inside the room or the menace of the hot draught that reached after her. Dragging her burden in, she dropped him on the floor and closed the door by the simple process of falling against it.

Immediately they were plunged into throbbing darkness, so bewildering that for a moment she could not even remember what the room looked like by daylight and could hardly think when' the window was. She groped for the light switch, but it clicked futilely without anything happening. Evidently the central switch had gone in now.

Talking aloud to herself in ridiculous muttered phrases of encouragement, she groped round the walls until she felt the heavy velvet curtains. Then, in a frenzy of last-minute terror, she tore at these.

They were open at last, and so was the window. She hung out, drawing long, sobbing gasps of fresh, reviving air. And as she did so, she realised that there were running, hurrying figures grouping themselves below. She could see their pale, upturned faces in the fitful light from a sulky moon, which hid itself every few minutes behind hurrying clouds.

She thought she screamed to them, but really she only whispered some sort of appeal. And then, because her muddled senses grasped the fact that they could not hear her, without grasping the fact that the sight of her was sufficient to startle them into action, she staggered back to Lindley and began to drag him across the room, Obsessed with the idea that she had only herself on whom to rely in this matter of saving him.

She had hardly reached the open window, however, before there were men outside on the fire-escape. They were clambering in now, taking the intolerable burden from her and helping her through the window herself.

Then someone picked her up and carried her down the steps, and she must have lost consciousness for a few minutes, because the next thing she knew was that she was being helped into an ambulance, and there was a nurse there, and Lindley was also there, lying on a sort of shelf, which looked so strangely like a ship's bunk that her wearied, muddled mind presented to her the horrid possibility that perhaps, after all, she was with him, on the way to America.

After a minute or two the nurse gave her something to drink, and then she felt less vague. She pushed back her wet, tangled hair and said hoarsely:

'He's not dead, is he?' It would have been such an unspeakable waste of effort if he had been.

'Oh, no,' the nurse said cheerfully. 'No, certainly not. Only stunned.' Then, glancing at Marigold's grimy hand with its wedding ring, she added: 'Is he your husband?'

'No,' Marigold said. She felt she ought to add something to that, but her mind felt too tired for invention. Then, after a pause, for the sake of appearance, she supposed, she added rather heavily and quite inaccurately: 'Just a friend.'

The ironical humour of that almost seemed to reach Lindley himself, for he stirred then, muttered something and then opened his eyes.

For a few seconds he lay perfectly still, watching her, while full comprehension quite obviously came back to him.

He spoke at last. Just a few abrupt words, in rather the same hoarse voice as herself.

'Did you stop me from falling?'

'Falling?' And then, with a shudder she remembered how she had seized hold of him as he was about to topple over into the fire below. She had forgotten that, in the succeeding crisis which had piled on top of each other. 'Well, I grabbed hold of you.'

She felt oddly embarrassed at any suggestion of active rescue.

'How did we get here?'

'I dragged you along the passage to the room where the fire-escape was. Then some men came up the escape and brought us down.'

'You—dragged me? Alone?'

'Yes,' Marigold said, and looked away.

'You could have left me.'

'No,' Marigold said. And that was all.

She thought for a moment that he was going to say something else. Then instead he closed his eyes again, and she was glad, because she didn't think she could do much more talking either.

There was another odd hiatus, during which she was not very sure what was happening. Then the unmistakable smell of a hospital was all round her, and everything seemed very white and very well lighted.

Lindley was no longer there, and the cheerful nurse of the ambulance had given place to another one, who with speed and skill was helping her to undress. Then she had a blessed, refreshing bath, and the hideous smell of smoke was even washed from her thick fair hair.

She felt much more herself by then and began to say something about going home. But the nurse said kindly and firmly:

'Not tonight. You can go home, I expect, after the doctor has seen you tomorrow.'

'But I'm not ill,' Marigold began in a plaintive voice which she hardly recognised as her own, and she found she was ridiculously and overwhelmingly near tears.

'No, of course you're not ill,' the nurse agreed in that kind, firm voice, which sounded as though all decisions would be made for Marigold, without her needing to trouble about them. 'But you've had a very unpleasant shock. We don't want any ill-effects.'

It sounded so reasonable that there didn't seem any possibility of argument. But the one thing which mattered suddenly struggled to the surface.

'I want Paul. I want my husband,' Marigold said, and this time the tears really did come.

'We'll send for him,' the nurse promised. 'As soon as you're comfortably settled in bed, he shall be sent for.'

And after that, Marigold let them do what they liked. They seemed to know her own affairs so much better than she did, in this bright, clean, efficient place, that it would be absurd—and an almost unbearable effort—to argue any further.

When she was in bed—and perhaps, after all, it had been a very good idea to put her there —she was allowed to give Paul's address and telephone number.

'Tell him I'm quite all right,' she said anxiously. 'Tell him not to worry, or he'll think something awful has happened.'

She was assured that Paul's peace of mind should be studied, and that he would be with her as soon as it could be managed.

And then, quite unaccountably, she fell asleep, although she had had every intention of remaining wide awake until he came.

In the brief period of unconsciousness, Marigold inevitably re-lived the terrible struggle through which she had gone. And when she finally woke again, she was gasping and half crying.

But, with a relief it was impossible to measure, she realised that Paul was beside her, and that it was his arm which was supporting her and his voice which was assuring her that she was all right.

'Oh, Paul!' She clung round his neck like a frightened child. 'Oh, Paul, how wonderful! Is it really you?'

'Yes, darling. You're all right. There's nothing to be frightened about now. You're quite all right.' He looked white and unusually stern somehow, and quite unlike his gay, confident self.

'There's nothing—wrong, is there?' She touched his cheek with apprehensive fingers.

'Wrong? No, dearest, of course not. Except that I can't forget that I might have lost you.' And he kissed her rather hard.

'Oh—yes, I suppose you might.' Until that moment, she had never seriously thought of that. She had been dreadfully afraid—particularly in those few moments when she was tempted to leave Lindley and get away—but somehow she had never thought of not seeing Paul again, of passing beyond his reach.

'I never really thought of that,' she said slowly. And he kissed her again and told her not to talk.

She obeyed him, at any rate for a while, lying there in the circle of his arm, and slowly savouring the delicious fact that she was safe and with him again. Presently she would want to talk, to tell him all about how it happened. How she stayed late working, and wondered why the place seemed so warm. And then Lindley came——

With a jerk her thoughts stopped following their rather dreamy path.

And then Lindley came.

And he had not only come—he had stayed. He had been caught there too—rescued too —brought to the hospital too. And his presence would have to be explained.

But how?

Laboriously, Marigold's thoughts began to toil round the familiar circle of explanation and invention. But she felt terribly stupid. She could think of nothing which would adequately explain Lindley's presence in the house at that time in the evening.

Surreptitiously she glanced at Paul. But his expression betrayed nothing but anxiety and tenderness. Certainly he had no idea yet that Lindley had been there with his wife.

Perhaps he need never know. Her heart began to beat hopefully. Perhaps, if she left hospital tomorrow—and there was surely no reason why she should not—there would be no occasion for him either to enquire or to glean news of another casualty from the fire.

She mustn't let him stay here too long. A chance word from one of the nurses might give him some idea of what had happened. The less risk of that, the better. Only she didn't want him to go away and leave her just yet. Not for a few minutes, anyway.

If she could send him away fairly soon, and persuade them to let her leave the hospital in a taxi tomorrow—without waiting for him to come for her—then he need never know about Lindley. She could telephone later herself, or perhaps even call at the hospital—because one would have to find out what had happened—but Paul need never know.

'Don't look so worried, darling,' Paul's voice said softly. 'There's no need to think about what happened any more. It's over, and you're safe.'

'Yes, I know,' Marigold said, and tried to make her expression appear tranquil and un- worried.

As the minutes passed, her fears grew quieter, and because Paul was there she thought—as she always did with him—that probably everything would somehow come out all right.

She had almost decided to tell him she was quite all right and that he could go, when her pleasant reassuring nurse came in again and said:

'There's a Mrs. Marne here. She's very anxious to see you for a few minutes. I've told her it must be only a few minutes. But as she seems to come from the house where the fire was, perhaps you'd like to see her.'

'Oh, yes, please. She's my sister-in-law, anyway,' Marigold explained. 'Do let her come in. She'll be so terribly worried.'

The nurse went away, and presently returned with Stephanie, who did indeed look worried.

'Oh, Marigold, dear!' She kissed Marigold anxiously. 'Paul, is she all right? What a frightful business. How on earth did it happen?'

'Well, never mind about that now, Stephanie.' Paul smiled and slightly shook his head at her. 'She's quite all right, but a bit tired.'

'I'm not even tired,' Marigold protested indignantly and untruthfully. 'And I want to talk to Stephanie for a moment. How did you hear about it, Stephanie, anyway?'

'Why, it was the merest chance. David and I were just coming home from the theatre. We happened to pass the nursery. I could hardly believe it when I saw fire-engines and pumps and things drawn up outside. David and I stopped our taxi, of course, and we managed to find a policeman who said there'd been a fire there earlier in the evening. He'd only just come on the beat and didn't seem to know the exact time when it had been discovered. I was terrified, of course, because I didn't know whether you'd have left or not. Then someone in the crowd said that a girl had been brought out, and I knew it must be you.'

'Poor Stephanie! I'm so sorry. Didn't they tell you I wasn't badly hurt or anything?' Marigold laughed rather faintly.

'No. You know what people are. They always make things out to be as sensational as possible And then someone else said there was a man too, I suppose that was poor old Sanderson. I managed to find out where you'd been brought, and David and I came round at once.'

'Sanderson is perfectly all right,' Marigold heard herself say distinctly.

But she didn't add that he and his wife hail been safely enjoying a film. She lay there, stubbornly hoping that, for this evening at any rate, Stephanie—and Paul too for that matter —would be content to think the man concerned was the caretaker, and to accept her assurance that he was all right.

'Oh, I'm glad,' Stephanie was saying. 'And what about Mrs. Sanderson?'

'She was at the pictures.' That, at least, was true.

'Lucky,' commented Stephanie. And Paul asked then where David was.

'Downstairs, talking to one of the house surgeons. We guessed you'd be here, Paul, of course, and decided it would be better not to have too many people coming worrying her.'

'I'm not worried,' Marigold said with a smile, and pressed her head affectionately against Paul.

'No. But David was quite right about a crowd not being the right thing,' Paul said.

'Yes, of course. And now that I know you're really going on all right, pet, I don't think I ought to stay, either.' Stephanie stooped and kissed Marigold affectionately again.

'Oh, Stephanie, wait a moment!' She wondered if there were anything else she could say which would prevent Stephanie's enquiring about the other patient, on her way out of the hospital.

'Why, dear, what is it? Do you want anything?' Stephanie looked at her anxiously.

'No. Only there—there's so much to talk about. What about the nursery, Stephanie? What are we going to do with all the children tomorrow?'

'Oh, that's my headache,' Stephanie assured her with a laugh. 'And the nursery was the least of my worries. After five or ten minutes of wondering if you were alive or dead, it was almost a relief to know that only the house had gone.'

'Oh, Stephanie, how like you!'

'Well, it's true. We can start the nursery school again in another house. But we couldn't have another you,' Stephanie told her with a smile. Marigold felt Paul's arm tighten round her at that, and while he and Stephanie were saying a few words to each other, she lay there thinking that—yes, of course, the one thing from which one could not recover was death. She was still in a dreadful quandary. In fact, she had not the remotest idea what sort of explanation she was to make to Stephanie later. But at least she was alive. After being frighteningly close to death, she was alive.

'And I'll think of something,' Marigold assured herself wearily. 'So long as Paul doesn't have to know Lindley was there, I'll think of something to satisfy Stephanie. Or perhaps it won't have to come out, even to her. She'll have to find out that Sanderson is really all right, of course. But she'll be busy making arrangements for a new place. She won't have time to make detailed enquiries. At least, I hope not. Perhaps I can even undertake to make "enquiries" for her.'

She wished distressedly that it didn't seem so likely that she would now be involved in lying to Stephanie as well as Paul. It was dreadful how there never seemed any way out of this entanglement. It was like some nightmare maze, where avenues of escape seemed to open out from time to time, only to disclose an impenetrable barrier as soon as one put them to the test.

Surreptitiously she moved her hand so that she could wipe away a tear with a corner of the sheet. It was ridiculous to start crying now, because all the real danger was over. But somehow it was very difficult into.

'Darling, what is it?'

Both Paul and Stephanie were hanging over her, making anxious snares, their dear eager faces full of affection and tenderness for her.

'N-nothing,' Marigold said in a very small voice. 'I—I was thinking, that was all.'

'Try not to think about it dear.' Paul touched her hair lovingly. 'It's over and you're safe now.'

'It's the shock. She kept going over what happened, in her own mind,' Stephanie said, looking down at her asymptotically. 'What is it, pet? She might feel better if she spoke about it a little, instead of keeping it all to herself,' she added to Paul, with the ardone woman understanding another very mid better than a mere man could do.

Paul looked doubtful, at Marigold wondered if she had better be a hypocrite and pretend it was really the recollection of the fire which made her cry. In a way, that did race her feel silly and weepy too.

'It's—all right, really,' she whispered rather shamefacedly. 'I was just thinking of—of trying to get round the landing.'

'Trying to get round the landing?' They both looked a good deal mystified.

'Yes. You see, we—I was in my room, and the stairs were blazing, and the fire escape was the other side of the landing. There was just a—a sort of shelf left. It—it was very frightening, edging round with—with the fire roaring up the middle of the house. And when I got round to the other passage, I looked round and——' She paused and licked her rather dry lips. It was perfectly appalling how she found she wanted to describe just what did happen—found it almost impossible not to mention Lindley's presence. The others were looking at her with anxious, sympathetic eyes. She had to say something. 'I looked round and—well, then, I knew I'd only just managed it in time,' she finished rather lamely.

'Darling, how frightful! No wonder you want to cry about it,' exclaimed Stephanie. 'But, as Paul says, it's all over now. You're quite safe with us again. Poor little thing,' she added, aside, to Paul, 'she'd be all alone too. It's a wonder she dared to do it.'

Marigold lay there listening to the sympathetic murmur of their voices. She was not quite sure that she would have dared to do it if she had been alone. It was only Lindley's urgent, harsh command that had forced her on, she supposed. But that was something she could hardly explain.

'I won't think about it any more,' she said suddenly. 'And it's stupid to cry about it anyway. I feel better now I've told you.' Oddly enough, that was true. 'Don't worry, Stephanie dear. And I expect David's waiting for you and wondering what's happened.'

'Yes, that's true. I really must go. You'll be all right with Paul.'

'Oh, yes.' Marigold smiled at her husband. 'And I'll help you with the new place, Stephanie. We'll manage something. I'll be all right tomorrow, I expect.'

'Or the next day,' suggested Stephanie with a laugh as she kissed her good-bye. 'All right, Nurse. I'm really coming,' as the door opened and the nurse came back into the room. 'I won't disturb your patient any more.'

The nurse smiled.

'Yes, I expect it's time she was left quiet,' she agreed. 'But I really came to say they've just phoned across from the Men's Casualty to say that your husband has recovered consciousness, Mrs. Marne. Would you like to go over and see him now?'

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