“The building’s on fire!” someone yelled back. “How can you say everything’s under control?”
“There are two other buildings!” Wainwright answered. “If necessary, you can find shelter there! But the fire’s limited to a stairwell. You’re not in danger.”
“Do you smell that smoke? What do you mean, we’re not in danger?”
Wainwright’s assistant hurried through the crowd. His once-white coat and trousers were smudged with soot. He motioned urgently for Wainwright to lean down from the chair.
“The entire attic’s on fire,” Rick reported, straining to keep his voice low.
The attic? Wainwright thought. That’s where Dr. Mandt is.
“The flames dropped down into the rooms on the third level,” Rick continued. “I heard small explosions, I think from the oil lamps on the walls. Then the flames spread even faster. The fire will soon be on the second level.”
Wainwright realized that the explosions were caused by more than oil lamps. The maids used supply rooms on each level. They kept metal containers of coal oil there so that they could easily replenish the lamps in each room. When the fire reached those containers…
Wainwright nodded, trying not to show emotion. He straightened and faced the crowd.
“What did he tell you?” an imperious-looking gentleman demanded.
“Just that the staff has the fire under control. But as a precaution, to be prudent, please go to one of the other buildings.”
“What about my clothes?” a woman protested.
“And my jewels?” another exclaimed.
“After the danger has passed, we’ll search for your valuables,” Wainwright assured them.
“Now he says we’re in danger!” a man yelled.
Something exploded on a level above them.
The mass of people ran toward the front doors.
Mandt almost went with them. But he was one of the few people who wore day clothes, and with two men outside watching for him, he feared he’d be easy to notice as the crowd streamed past them.
Feeling something wet on his thigh, he looked down and saw that his right trouser leg was red with blood. When he’d fallen on the stairs, the barrel of the revolver had injured him more than he’d realized. His pain worsened. Even with all the commotion, it was a wonder that someone hadn’t noticed the blood and drawn attention to it. If they discovered that he couldn’t speak English, if they found out he wasn’t a guest here…
He stepped backward. While everyone was focused on the frenzy to escape from the building, he reached the stairs that led to the basement. The Russians might be down there, but he thought it more likely that when they’d chased him into the building and encountered the panicked crowd, they’d retreated, positioning themselves for a less public opportunity to grab him.
Limping, he descended to the corridor in the basement. The smoke hadn’t reached this far, but he had no doubt that it soon would. He didn’t have much time to find another way out of the building.
The odor of water again filled his nostrils. He saw a door at each end of the basement corridor and started toward the one opposite where the Russians had been hiding. But then he thought that the Russians wouldn’t expect him to return to the first exit that he’d used, so he changed direction.
He passed the door behind which he again heard the voices of the elderly man and the young woman, their English unintelligible to him.
Abruptly he stopped. The lamps in the corridor showed him that the door at the end of the corridor was opening. In a rush, he veered toward the door behind which the man and the woman spoke.
When he entered, surprise made the man stop in midsentence. He was in his late sixties, so short that from a distance he might have been mistaken for a youth. The woman—beautiful despite two stitches in her cheek—paused in the act of helping him from a table. Astonishingly, his clothes were soaked. Wet sheets lay around him.
Mandt shut the door. He raised his index finger to his lips, indicating that they should be quiet.
The woman asked him something in English.
Mandt gestured more forcefully for them to be quiet.
The woman said something else, pointing toward the blood on his right leg.
When Mandt pulled the revolver from beneath his coat, the woman became silent.
The room had several lamps that reflected brightly off the white tiles of the floor and walls. Mandt saw a partition on the left and stepped behind it, continuing to aim the revolver.
“Bitte, helfen Sie mir,” he said, hoping that they’d understand.
The little man surprised him by replying in German. “Help you? How?”
Mandt gaped. “You speak German?”
The little man nodded, leaning against the table. His red face was beaded with perspiration.
“Two men are searching for me. If they enter and ask if you’ve seen anyone, I beg you to tell them that you haven’t.”
“Men?”
“Russians.”
“Russians?”
“Don’t talk to me. Pretend that you’re alone.”
Mandt stepped farther behind the partition, but the man and woman could still see him aiming the revolver.
Mandt heard the door being opened. He steadied both hands on the weapon.
A voice said something in English with a Russian accent.
The woman replied in English.
The voice said something else in English with a Russian accent.
This time, it was the elderly man who replied.
Mandt heard the door being closed, rapid footsteps, then a door farther along the corridor opening.
He peered from behind the partition and studied the door. Faintly, he heard other doors being hurriedly opened.
The Russians must have been watching the entrance hall through a window, Mandt thought. They saw me go down the stairs toward the basement.
“Thank you,” he said in German as softly as he could.
“There was only one of them,” the elderly man said, bracing himself against the table.
“Then the other must be watching from outside.”
Or did I manage to shoot him? Mandt wondered. No, I can’t believe my aim was that lucky.
“What do they want?” the elderly man asked.
“I cannot tell you.”
“Surely you must have some idea why two Russians are searching for you.”
Mandt didn’t reply.
“What you mean is you can’t risk telling me,” the elderly man concluded. His trembling worsened.
“You’re not well,” Mandt said.
“I need my medicine.”
“I’m a doctor. Perhaps I can help. What disease afflicts you?”
“Laudanum.” The elderly man gripped the table. “My disease is laudanum.”
“Then God is the only one who can help you.”
The footsteps returned rapidly along the corridor.
The woman pointed at the tiles where Mandt stood. Puzzled, he looked down and was shocked to see that the blood had reached his right boot and was trickling onto the floor.
The woman grabbed a wet sheet and threw it in Mandt’s direction. As he stepped back behind the partition, the sheet landed on the blood.
At once, the door opened again.
This time, the elderly man sounded impatient, evidently asking the intruder why he kept interrupting them.
The intruder made a surly remark and closed the door.
The footsteps hurried toward the end of the corridor and faded into silence.
“Look to be certain that he’s gone,” Mandt said. “We need to leave. The building’s on fire.”
“On fire?” the little man asked in alarm. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“You’d have run instead of helping me. Stop,” Mandt ordered as the woman reached for the door. “Wait. Don’t go out there yet.”
He heard someone shouting in the corridor.
With Harold struggling behind them, Ryan and Becker
veered into the lane and ran faster toward the clinic.
Flames burst from the roof. Windows exploded on the fourth and third levels. Amid shouts, people wearing nightclothes hurried from the entrance. On the veranda, they separated, racing toward one or the other of the two buildings that flanked the middle one. As soon as they were in the open, some of them slipped in the mud and fell, but the commotion was such that no one stopped to help them up.
Guided by Dr. Wainwright, two women emerged. They clutched blankets, their attention occupied by something that one of them held. Ryan recognized them as Lady Cavendale and Mrs. Richmond. The former’s face was even paler, and yet her fierce attention to her baby made her radiant.
“How did the fire start?” Ryan asked when he reached Wainwright.
“I don’t know,” Wainwright answered, his voice breaking. “It’s all ruined. Everything’s ruined.”
“With all the water here, didn’t you plan for a fire? Don’t you have pumps?”
“Pumps? No.”
“What about buckets? Your staff members can form a line and—”
“No buckets either,” Wainwright said in despair.
“Did your staff members check to make certain that all the rooms are empty?”
Wainwright gave him a blank look.
Ryan cursed and spun toward Becker. “We need to find out if anybody’s still inside.”
“Harold!” the woman with the baby exclaimed. She and Mrs. Richmond recoiled as Harold staggered toward them and dropped the bags. “Keep him away from us!” Lady Cavendale turned sideways, protecting the baby.
“I promise he won’t hurt you,” Becker said.
The roar of the flames forced Ryan to speak louder. “Why are you standing here?” he told Wainwright. “Take these women and the baby to another building! Go!”
The women were already running, doing their best to make their way through the mud to the building on the left.
“What about me?” Harold demanded.
“You’re going to help us search for anybody who might still be inside.”
“You want me to go in there?”
“Never mind, Harold. I have a better place for you.” Ryan pointed toward the local constable who hurried along the lane, shielding his eyes from the blaze.
“How can I help?” the constable asked, out of breath.
Ryan showed his badge. “Do you have a jail?”
“Yes, but I almost never need to use it.”
“Tonight, you do. This man’s under arrest for murder.”
“You arrested Lord Cavendale’s son? That can’t be true.”
“He killed his father.”
“God save us,” the constable murmured.
“It’s a lie!” Harold protested.
“Shut up, Harold.” Ryan returned his attention to the constable. “Lock him up until I can arrange for his transport into London.”
“Wait!” Becker yelled to Wainwright. “Where are Emily and her father? Which building did they run to?”
Wainwright looked back at him, seeming to wonder what in the world he was talking about. Then he suddenly realized. “The basement!”
“What?”
“They’re in a treatment room in the basement!”
“In the…Oh my God,” Ryan said.
They charged through the open doors, coughing from smoke that swirled along the ceiling. Amid the fire’s roar, something crashed on the floor above them.
They ran to the staircase, where flames blocked the upper level.
“If there’s anybody up there, we can’t help them,” Becker said.
Ryan nodded. “Yes, the only people we can try to help now are Emily and her father.”
They hurried down the stairs to a dimly lit basement corridor.
“Emily!” Becker shouted. “Mr. De Quincey! Are you down here?”
Smoke drifted down the stairs.
“Maybe they smelled the smoke and ran out of the building,” Becker said, hoping.
“But maybe they didn’t. Check the rooms on that side. I’ll check the ones over here. Emily! Mr. De Quincey!”
Ryan opened a door and saw only shadows.
He opened another door. The smell of warm water was almost overpowering.
Movement to his right made him turn.
Becker was staring into a room, raising his arms as though someone threatened him. Seeming to obey an order, Becker stepped inside.
Mandt couldn’t stop the revolver from shaking, even though he grasped it with both hands.
The young man who raised his arms and entered the room had a scar on his chin. Tall enough to look menacing, he said something to the young woman and the elderly man. What saved his life was that he seemed to address them by their names and that he spoke English without a Russian accent.
“This man’s a friend,” the elderly man told Mandt in German. “He can help you against the Russians.”
“How?”
“He’s a police detective.”
“No!”
“He’ll protect you, I promise!”
The man with the scar turned his head and called to someone in the corridor.
To Mandt’s increasing dismay, a second man appeared, in his forties, with red hair. The newcomer held up a police badge as smoke drifted into the room.
“We can’t wait any longer,” the little man told Mandt. He sagged against the woman. “You need to trust them. We need to leave.”
The rumble of the fire made Ryan think of a rapidly approaching train.
They reached the staircase, but the area at the top was completely obscured by smoke.
“Maybe it’s only smoke.” Ryan coughed. “Maybe the flames haven’t reached there yet.” He started to climb.
“Wait,” Becker warned.
He raced back to the room and returned with an armful of the drenched sheets that had littered the floor. He gave one to Ryan and one to the German. He draped one over Emily’s head and another over her father. He put one over himself.
Ryan led the way up the staircase. He raised a hand and waved it back and forth, trying to clear the smoke enough so that he could glimpse what was beyond it.
A section of fiery wood plummeted to the floor in front of him, landing with an impact so powerful that it shoved him back.
He forced himself to take another step, and a searing arc of flame whipped toward him.
“We’ll never get through!” Becker yelled.
They retreated to the bottom. There was a door at each end. Ryan led the way to the exit on the right only to realize that Emily’s father was too dazed to match his pace. He lifted De Quincey into his arms, amazed by how little he weighed, and half ran to the door at the far end of the corridor.
But even as he came near it, he saw smoke seeping under the bottom of the door.
Becker rushed ahead of him.
“The knob might be hot!” Ryan warned.
But Becker anticipated that, bundled the wet sheet over his right hand, and twisted the metal doorknob.
Steam rose from the wet cloth.
Becker tugged at the door, and the sudden explosion of flames propelled them backward. The German fell. Becker hauled him to his feet.
“Emily, are you all right?” Becker asked.
“Yes!”
They ran to the door at the opposite end of the corridor, but smoke seeped beneath it also, and the crackle on the other side made it obvious that there wasn’t any hope in that direction.
Flames appeared through the smoke on the ceiling.
The German moaned.
“This way,” Ryan told them, carrying De Quincey.
“Where? There’s no other exit,” Becker said.
“Hurry!”
Ryan remembered the door that he’d opened and the overpowering smell of water. There hadn’t been a chance to step into the room when he’d glanced to the right and seen Becker raising his arms. But now he shouldered the door farther open. Although the area was in darkness, its echo indic
ated that it was immense, and the light from the lamps in the corridor reached far enough to reflect off a huge pool, perhaps forty feet square.
De Quincey coughed as more smoke descended from the ceiling. Embers dropped, hissing in the water.
Emily and the German made their way down steps at the edge of the pool. The water came to Emily’s waist.
After setting De Quincey in her arms, Ryan noticed a long metal table next to the pool.
“Becker!”
They dragged it to the pool and tilted it down so that two legs sat on the rim while the other two legs were in the water, forming a shelter.
After doing the same with another long metal table, they hurried down the steps and crouched in the water. Ryan’s soaked clothes weighed on him. The water was warm—evidently pumped through a boiler. But soon it would get much warmer, he knew.
More flames burst from the ceiling, allowing him to see how severely De Quincey trembled.
Emily held her father and stroked his forehead.
“Mr. De Quincey,” Ryan said, “I have your medicine.”
Both he and Emily looked stunned.
Ryan pulled the bottle from a coat pocket. “I took the liberty of removing it from your travel bag.”
Ryan broke the bottle’s seal as De Quincey grabbed for it.
“Not too much at once,” Ryan cautioned. “Please give him to me, Emily.”
He pulled the cork from the small bottle, then put an arm around the tiny, trembling man and held his head above the water while using his other hand to lift the bottle to De Quincey’s lips.
A chunk of burning wood fell from the ceiling and splashed into the far end of the pool. With a hiss, steam rose.
“How far we have come from last December.” Ryan withdrew the bottle after De Quincey swallowed from it. “Three months ago, I condemned you. Now I not only provide laudanum to you, I help you drink it.”
With his arm around De Quincey, Ryan shifted him onto his back so that the little man floated in the water. He was reminded of the way Lady Cavendale had clung to her baby.
Ruler of the Night Page 25
