The Other Horseman

by Philip Wylie

  But the engines were nearer. The thought that he and Biff had beaten the fire apparatus gave him another moment of disgust. Then he realized that they'd doubtless seen the fire almost as soon as the alarm had been turned in, and also that Biff had been driving fast, after all.

  "Pull away from the fence!" Jimmie commanded. Biff obeyed. "Now--head her toward the fence and ram through!"

  "What's the good of going in? The two of us can't put it out! And the trucks are here." Biff said that--but he pulled away. He glanced at Jimmie's face, grinned tightly, wound up his window, and stepped on the gas. The car shifted its gears.

  "Hold on!" he said sharply. They hit the fence. It shuddered, slowed them, and peeled back. Then they were inside. "Over there," Jimmie directed. "Okay! Stop!"

  Jimmie leaped from the car. They were alone, at one end of the cluster of buildings. The heat was painfully perceptible; the light was blinding. Now, from time to time, minor explosions threw into the air showers of colored flame, and, with each blast, the crowd roared as if the spectacle were deliberate. Jimmie walked toward the heat. Biff followed, keeping the car at his brother's side. He opened the window again and yelled,

  "Better not go closer! You're going to make me spoil the finish on this boiler!"

  Jimmie ignored him. He shaded his eyes with his hand as he proceeded for a few more steps. Then he whipped off his jacket and held it in front of his head.

  "Come back!" Biff yelled again. "You can fry an egg on the damn' windshield!"

  Now, Jimmie came over to the car. He, too, shouted, for the night was alive with noise. "Just wanted to get the lay of things! To see what's burning! They can save most of it--if they know their stuff. But if it ever gets in the turps or the benzine--! I'll tell the firemen what to do."

  " You’ll tell 'em!" Biff's voice was sarcastic.

  "Sure! Jackass! I know what's where--and how it'll burn! Come on!"

  They drove past the blinding light and through the heat, fast. When they approached the nearest of the red trucks a fireman waved them back. Jimmie hopped out and asked for the chief. The man said that it was the chief's night off.

  "Whoever is in charge, then!" The man turned. "Hey! Kelly! Here's a volunteer."

  Kelly walked up in his fire helmet. He had been bellowing orders about the attachment of hose. "Get out of here!"

  "I work here. One of the--the bosses. I'll show you what to do--"

  " You'll show me what to do!"

  "Listen! The place is jammed with chemicals. Inflammables." He saw the man's contempt. "Gunpowder. Dynamite. Damn it, man, with poison gas! Get that crowd back, first. Don't use water on the center of the fire now! If the shed behind catches--stand clear. You won't be able to--!"

  The man reached out and shoved Jimmie, not with much anger, but almost playfully. "Listen, son. I'm running this fire."

  "Listen yourself, you thick Irish moron! You're running this fire! Do you want to be responsible for getting half the people in Muskogewan blown off the map?"

  "Thick Irish--! Why, you--!" Kelly thought of fighting. Then he was a little scared. He turned to the men near by. "Hey, you! Get the people outside the fence!

  Everyone of them! Never mind the cars. Tell 'em it's dynamite that's about to blow! And have your men stand back. Use chemicals on the main blaze!"

  "That's better!" Jimmie nodded.

  "Now. Clear out!"

  "If you'll just let me get in there and tell 'em which chemicals to use--"

  "I said--clear out!"

  "But, man, I'm a chemist!"

  "I don't care if you're a damn' emperor! I'm in charge. I say--get out!" He saw that Jimmie was not getting out. He turned. "Hey! Some of you men! We've a bit of bouncing to do."

  "Come on, Biff," Jimmie said dully.

  They were in the car again. "I'll drive. Just leave the motor running. Okay, Biff?"

  Biff nodded. "Sure makes a wonderful blaze!"

  Jimmie drove slowly, inside the fence, around the buildings. The flames spread to the shed. Jimmie stepped on the accelerator and the car raced to the far end of the property. He stalled the motor and sat with hunched shoulders, looking out of the window. As if the earth were a bass drum and the drumstick some celestial body, the first explosion swept upon them. Afterward came four others almost as tremendous at intervals. The flaming contents of both buildings ascended toward the red sky, turning over and over, halting, falling back. A wave of heat oppressed them.

  The people vented a great, collective scream. He looked. They were out of danger. Only fragments and sparks fell into the crowd. Some, who had been knocked down, rose and ran--dolls against the hot backdrop. A vast, slowly turning column of black smoke rose in the center of the fire. At its summit a sphere of flame-licked darkness formed. This monstrous object also blew up, with a lush detonation, and it rained down everywhere ten thousand drops of burning liquid.

  "That's that!" Jimmie said. "The rest of it will be more normal! Unless the gas escapes--and I don't think it will."

  Biff was cursing slowly, gravidly.

  Jimmie started the car, aided by his speechless brother. He went back around the buildings, looking at them.

  Then he stopped and jumped out.

  There was something so electrical in this movement that Biff, also, leaped to the ground and ran to his brother's side. A big building shielded them from the worst of the inferno. Jimmie was staring at it, staring with all his might. "I thought--?" he said.

  "There's a man in there!"

  The building was on fire all along the ground floor. Flames licked through it horizontally. Flames sent the windows tinkling and reached out into the night, embracing the structure with yellow horror. Upstairs, revealed by the wan glow of a lantern, a human figure ran past window after window.

  "It's Mr. Corinth!" Jimmie said slowly. "He must have been working tonight."

  "He's caught!"

  "I dunno. He's going in his office. Where the records are."

  The light, with the man in front, vanished and reappeared at another window. Biff grabbed Jimmie by the sleeve. "The old man's trapped! I can't help much! But if you take the ladder up that tank you could hop over to the roof and get down a skylight! Toss him out the window. I'll break his fall. Then come back through the roof--or jump, yourself."

  Jimmie pulled his sleeve away. "There's going to be a blast there--in a minute."

  "Then work fast--you ape!"

  Jimmie said, "Chances are it would get both of us."

  "A chance worth taking! Come on!"

  To Biff's dismay his brother stood still, keeping his eyes on the window. The light retreated. It wavered and stood still. "He's opening the safe," Jimmie said. "So the stuff in it will burn! God! I wonder if I'd have--" Suddenly he cupped his hands and yelled with all his force. "Mr. Corinth! It's me! Jimmie! Jump!"

  Biff pawed at his brother. "He can't hear you! Get going!"

  "I'm not going," Jimmie said.

  "Not going! You--!" Biff pushed Jimmie toward the tank.

  "Leggo. In the old man's safe is the story of what he was working on. He knows the story, and I do. No other people. If the wrong guy got those papers--even a reporter--!

  That's what he's thinking!"

  Biff's voice was frantic. "You gotta get him out. He's a nice old guy, Jimmie! You can't stand and argue! He'll burn!!"

  "I gotta let him take--his own chance." Jimmie turned toward Biff.

  Jimmie's face was pale as death. Beads of perspiration stood on it, beads that merged and dropped unnoticed down his cheeks. His mouth had split back from his teeth.

  His eyes were as bleak as if there were nothing but blackness in their places. It was an expression of incalculable agony. Biff had never dreamed of such pain. He was sure--

  during one terrible moment of hatred--that his brother had turned into an abysmal coward. But as he looked at that unbearable expression he knew he was wrong. Jimmie was standing like that because he had to. Because it was more important—somehow--fo
r him to stand still, in a safe place, than to go to the aid of the old man.

  Biff began to sob, without knowing it.

  But Jimmie did not budge.

  He waited, bareheaded. He watched small flames rise up in the room where the dim light was. The light moved to another room. Then the old man showed at the window with his lantern. He was fumbling with the catch when the blast downstairs dropped him, and the floor, into a sea of fire. The entire building caught. Its roof split. Its pent heat towered in the air.

  Biff also stood still, staring at the building that was the pyre of his town's greatest man. Then, numbly, he looked down. His brother had fallen.

  Jimmie lay still. His fists were doubled. They beat the earth. His face was flat-pressed upon it. His shoulders stirred with the torment of strong muscles. For a long time the two men stayed that way--together and alone, behind the blistering extravaganza. Biff slowly stirred into himself an understanding of what he had seen. A man, he thought crazily, does have a greater love than to lay down his life for a friend. Jimmie had a greater love--even than that.

  So Biff waited till Jimmie was through with it, till he went slack and silent. The fire was jumping less prodigiously and the engines were moving around the ends of it.

  Biff bent over and tapped Jimmie. "Cigarette, old man?"

  Jimmie sat up. He gave his kid brother a long look. "Thanks!"

  CHAPTER XIII

  MR. BAILEY PARKED his car and walked down to the bonfire burning at the river side. He pulled off his mittens and held out his hands so they would warm faster. He stamped his feet on the frozen ground and searched the skaters with eyes that were tired but alert. He didn't see Jimmie at first. The people went whizzing around and back and forth and through each other, like confetti on a miscellaneous breeze. Then Jimmie came shooting along from way up the river, skating like a hockey player; he dodged men and women and children with bird-flight motions, turned, showered crystals, and started to walk up the wooden ramp.

  "Hey, Jimmie!"

  "Hello, Dad."

  "They, said over at the paint works I'd find you here."

  Jimmie smiled a little. "Yeah. Nothing more I could help with today. We've got everything we can, going again. It'll be six months before they get the shops rebuilt. And eight, or ten, for a new lab."

  "I know. I--want to talk to you. D'you mind?"

  "Not at all." Jimmie picked up a wood bench, tucked it under his arm, walked clumsily closer to the fire, and put down the bench. The men sat side by side. "Going to snow--about tomorrow. Snow hard. For a long while. What's on your mind?"

  Mr. Bailey seemed hesitant about getting to the point. "A lot of things. A hell of a lot of 'em. You seen Biff?"

  "Not lately. Not in the last few days." HI didn't know you were taking care of the family of the colored man that got killed in the wreck."

  Jimmie shrugged. His face was bright with color. Underneath were the gray tones of fatigue and the sharp lines of strain. "What of it? Who told you?"

  "Heiffler. I'll--take over--that family."

  "Heiffler? Who the hell is Heiffler?"

  "That intern. Came to the bank. He told me a lot of things." Mr. Bailey sighed heavily. "Explained all about the psychology of Biff's accident. I must say, I had to admit that I'd thought of it. Remember that evening at dinner? When Sarah accused us both?"

  He took out a cigar. "I can see you do. Well, that night I didn't want to be branded for having such an idea--before the whole family. Made me mad. But Heiffler explained it.

  Maybe he's right. And he told me that you had kept him from sending in a report to the army that Biff was--er--"

  "Psychotic. Yeah. I did. He isn't--any more."

  Mr. Bailey felt for matches and found he had none. He picked a board from the fire and used the hot end. "You know, if I'd discovered, at the time, that you'd done something to spoil Biff's chances of honorably staying out of the service--I'd have been wild!"

  "Wouldn't have been honorable."

  Mr. Bailey nodded. "I can see the point. You're a terrific stickler for basic facts.

  But you were right. Biff's put in for training, and if he got blackballed now I don't know what he'd do."

  "'Put in'? What do you mean?"

  "Oh, volunteered. Enlisted. In another month he'll be in shape again. Maybe less.

  He was dawdling around the house there, just the fool with that nurse. That--what's-her-name."

  "Genevieve. What happened to her?" Mr. Bailey looked at his son with an air of remote amusement that surprised Jimmie. "What always happens--to those girls. Some other man. A new case, professionally--and romantically. She got sick of Biff when Biff got well."

  Jimmie frowned. "It's a pity, Dad, you never talked like that around home."

  "I act like a prig? All right. I believe in it--when you have growing kids. Trouble is, I learned just recently you three were grown up. Sarah getting married. Biff going around corrupting morals, and enlisting to fight. Jimmie, it seems to me that you've done a whole lot for Biff and your sister." He spoke wistfully.

  "Nothing much. Played older brother. I am one, after all. They are nice kids--in their ways. Needed schooling, like animals."

  "Why don't you ask me what Biff enlisted in? Seems as if you would." Jimmie cleaned slush from the runner of a skate. "Oh, I knew. Air Force."

  "You knew! Did he tell you?"

  "No. I haven't seen him, as I said. But I know Biff. Even in his most extreme mood of heroism Biff would do his best to maintain a glamorous background. Something the ladies would like."

  "Is there anything wrong with that?"

  Jimmie turned toward his father. "Well, it's flashy. Still, he'd make a peach of a flier."

  "You're just a damned puritan," Mr. Bailey said. Jimmie looked at him and suddenly laughed. His laugh was almost merry. "Gee! That I should live to see the day you called me a puritan! Maybe I am, though."

  The older man grunted. "You damn' well are. Say, Jimmie. What really happened-

  -the night of the fire? That was the thing that changed Biff. He won't ever be the same again. But he 'Wouldn't tell me. I asked him, and he said never to ask him again. He said you had more insides than a herd of elephants. But that's all. I--I'm your father, Jimmie --

  sort of, after all."

  Jimmie felt the touch of compassion. Mercy, in Jimmie's present state of mind, was cheap enough. He wanted only to avoid all signs of drama. "I'll tell you--if you'll never repeat it. Somehow I think you won't. And I think you'll understand too. Other people would fail to. You know, I loved old Willie Corinth like a father." His eyes lifted gravely. "Sorry. Willie was the greatest man Muskogewan ever had--maybe ever will have. Biff and I were scouting around behind the fire and we saw the old boy trapped in there. He could have jumped out the window, and we could have run fast and grabbed him--and I was set to try that. But he spent a lot of time burning the stuff in his safe. Took him forever to open it. I suppose--it was hot in there." Jimmie halted. "Never thought about that!"

  He was grimmer when he went on. "There was a chance of hauling him out--a ladder on a vat, a short jump to the roof, a flock of skylights. Biff saw that chance--and tried to get me to go. He was too rocky or he'd have tried. I realized that. I wouldn't.

  "I knew that if I tried Willie and I might both be lost. I knew what was in the papers that Willie was burning. It was the beginning of a very great idea. A new idea.

  Something that would go a long way toward winning the war. I knew that Willie was scared the fire might not cook the stuff in the safe; scared that the idea--the principle--

  might become public. It was one of those things that, once conceived, any good chemist can develop."

  Jimmie spat. "It's a beastly business, Dad, to let a good man die to keep a secret that may kill thousands of other men. Or--not even to try to save him. That's what I did.

  You see, since Willie was in there I had to stay out. He was burning the papers. And I'm the only other one who knew the idea. No
t now, though. It's gone to Washington. We were crazy to take on so much responsibility--even for a few weeks."

  "In other words," his father said softly, "you refused to try to save him--in order to save an idea."

  Jimmie didn't answer. He did not even look at his father.

  Mr. Bailey coughed several times. He blew his nose. "So that's what Biff meant by 'insides'! Good God!"

  Jimmie's voice was as cold as the gray afternoon. "I think there is no need saying I would rather have gone up on the roof. I have been in a lot of fires. I'm not—too--afraid of them. As it turned out--and I've thought this over a thousand times--I'd never have made it. And I know, if I had, Willie would never have forgiven me for risking it."

  "He was a tough old duck," Mr. Bailey agreed. "I presume you know he made me the head of his plant?"

  Jimmie turned incredulously. "You!"

  His father grinned over his chewed cigar. "Does it shock you? I'm a darned good business man, Jimmie! His will puts me in full charge of the business end. A committee of his chemist friends is to pick the technical head--unless you'll be it. The part about you is a codicil."

  "You got another cigar?" Jimmie asked. Mr. Bailey produced one and offered it as if it were an important gift--solemnly, silently.

  "I'm going back to England," Jimmie said, after a while. "This chapter is washed up. There won't be a lab for me to work in--here--for a long while--"

  "You could help in redesigning the plant, Jimmie! I've already started jamming through the priorities. We'll get material--and right now!"

  "Lots of men can do that. The redesigning. Nope. I'm going back."

  "Mmmm. I don't need to say--we'll miss you."

  "Thanks."

  After a pause his father said, "What is it, Jimmie? What have they got--we haven't? The British?"

  "I couldn't tell you, Dad. Not--with you feeling the way you do."

  "You might try."

  Jimmie smiled. "I couldn't even begin to try!" But he did. "They were stuffy--

  class-conscious, contemptuous of other people. All that has been boiled out of them.