Skeleton Key (9 page)

She felt her way along the corridor wall to the upstairs window. In the stillness she could hear, very high and far away, a faint droning sound, and found herself peering upward desperately as if her eyes could pierce roof and fog and miles of night air. Then that sound was covered by a nearer, homelier one; Roy Hollister's front door opened, and his feet clacked briskly along the cement walk.

Almost at once there was a noise as if of stumbling, and the warden said “Damn!” loudly and heartily. Georgine ceased to shake, and found herself silently laughing. He must have tripped over one of the uneven places in the road's paving, where it had buckled badly in the summer heat. The footsteps were muffled now, and she guessed that he had taken to the edge of pavement for safety. The tiny blob of light from his dimmed electric torch was visible in this blackness, as it would never have been in an ordinary half-luminous night.

There was another minute glow, somewhere across the street; Georgine, straining her eyes, could almost make out numbers in its shape.
Dear me
, she thought, again grinning;
the Carmichael sisters didn't turn off their street-number light after all, and won't Hollister be furious!
He hadn't seen it yet, for the Carmichael house was below his and faced southwest; and he had started methodically uphill toward the Devlins'.

Georgine's conscience smote her suddenly. People didn't do much to coöperate with the poor man. She might as well obey orders and seek the refuge room.

She got down the stairs deliberately, one at a time, and felt her way round the walls of the entry. Wooden panels, a space with woolly materials hanging: the coat closet, left open…more paneling, then rough paper over the windows that flanked the door; wood panels…the staircase.

She went round once more. It was no use; she couldn't find the light switch. “Don't sit in the dark,” the authorities had counseled, “it's bad for morale.”
They didn't know the half of it
, Georgine thought, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. She could feel morale draining out through the soles of her feet.

There was no use in imagining the things that might be coming at her out of the dark house. She sat down on the bottom stair, hoping violently that the blackout wouldn't last long. What time was it? Seemed as if she'd heard the Campanile strike ten, just before the siren went off.

There came the warden's footsteps, down the road, pad, pad, pad, very stalwart and reassuring. There was no other sound. Georgine knew just when he stopped at the sight of the flagrantly illuminated number. The timbre of the steps changed; he was going in the Carmichaels' gate, past their thick hedge, and a faint clanking bore witness to his attack on the metal holder of the number.

After several minutes the steps were retraced. They grew more audible, but slower, as he prepared to cross the street, angling down toward the Paev house. They had a cautious sound now, as if Hollister were feeling his way across the rough pavement.

Then the noise came.

It was only a rush and a rattle at first; then, before the ear could define it, a dull crashing impact followed the first sound; and then, with a terrifying bang in which wood seemed to be splintering, the noise rose to a crescendo of shrieking metal: crash, bump, crash, into the ravine.

Georgine found herself by the front door, her hand closed round the knob, her whole body clammy with terror. It must have been a bomb, the first of those bombs that had been expected for months. There had been no explosion, but maybe this was a different kind…

Her breath whistled through a constricted throat, her eyes stayed fixed as if to pierce the blackness. She ought to be finding the staircase and crawling under it, but she could not seem to detach her hand from this doorknob.
It's all that's holding me up
, thought Georgine wildly, over a host of other chaotic thoughts.
I've always wondered how I'd act if there were a real raid. Now I know; I'm so scared I can't move… How long have I been standing here? What's that funny noise in the street, not like the other one, more like someone groaning, or breathing?

The knob turned silently under her fingers, and as silently the door swung inward. It was in defiance of all orders, but she couldn't stay alone here in the dark, not knowing what had happened. Let the warden scold her if he liked, he was here to reassure people. That padding noise sounded rather like his footsteps again, but softer.

“Mr. Hollister,” Georgine said, her voice coming back with startling loudness from the echoing wall. “Is that you, Mr. Hollister?”

The padding noise stopped.

“Please, what was it? Is anyone hurt?”

There was no answer at all; no voice, no other steps.

Only, from the middle of the street came the sound of harsh breathing.

At a little distance across the road there was a dull glow, dim and tiny as fox-fire. It looked like the warden's torch, but if he was holding it, why didn't he answer her?

Somewhere a chime struck the half-hour. The wind came up again slightly, but the odd breathing went on. It sounded—painful. There were no more loud sounds.

“Someone
has
been hurt,” Georgine whispered. She gritted her teeth and stepped out into the cool blackness, somehow darker even than that inside the house, because unconsciously one expected light from the sky.

She was halfway across the street, making for the dim torch, when her foot touched something soft. She froze instantly, and for a moment not all her will-power could make her bend over to feel what lay beside her.

In that moment all the sensations of the past week crystallized within her: the seemingly unfounded fears, the creeping uneasiness that she had tried so hard to overcome, the dreamlike warnings of her unconscious self. It was something like this that she had expected; it was the worst horror of all that she was not surprised.

Yet to have it come at last was almost a relief. She bent over, and her hand found warm wet flesh. Whoever it was must be badly hurt, but not dead, for his hand beat weakly against the pavement as if he were trying to rise. Was it that sound she had heard, and mistaken for footsteps?

Her groping hands went farther, and felt the round metallic crown of a helmet.

The warden was hurt. That must have been blood she had touched. Georgine tried to recall her lessons in first aid, she felt gently for a spurting artery and found none that could be determined by touch. She thought, though, that there must be broken bones. How could one tell?

The small torch still glowed through its layers of paper, at the side of the road. It must have been flung from his hand at the moment of that impact, whatever it had been; doubtless the flashlight had fallen on the carpet of leaves beside the road. But what had hit him? What had made that frightful crash?

Her groping fingers encountered and held something small, hard, cylindrical, which she thought must be his whistle. It was dry and clean to the touch; nevertheless, Georgine conquered a moment of shuddering repugnance before she put it to her lips and blew a long steady note. There was no shrilling vibration, only a melancholy hoot that seemed to mingle with the night like an owl's call. She blew it again. The man beside her stirred and moaned.

Far up the road a door opened. Georgine could see a sliver of light, instantly extinguished. A voice came quavering down to her, “Wh-what is it?”

With a tremendous effort she made her own voice come steadily. “I'll need some help. The warden's been hurt.”

The other voice came in a little shriek. “A bomb?”

“I don't think so. Who is that—Mrs. Gillespie? Can you feel your way down here?”

“I—we're not supposed to come out,” the voice floated plaintively down to her. “Can't it wait till the lights come on?”

“How do we know when that'll be? We ought to do something now! You come down here—he's breathing so queerly—” Georgine felt herself beginning to crack under the strain. She got up unsteadily, very slowly stumbled over to the flashlight and picked it up. If you held it close to the surface of the road, you could see where you were going. It took her back to the unconscious form in mid-pavement; as she regained Hollister's side she heard cautious steps feeling their way downhill.

Georgine held the light close to Hollister's face.

Three feet away, Mimi Gillespie stopped in her tracks and began to scream. “Oh, turn off that light! Don't! Don't shine it on him, I can't—”

It wasn't the bleeding from the scraped and lacerated face that was the worst; curiously, what made Georgine's head swim and weighted her stomach with cold lead was the mark of a tire-tread, clearly printed in dust across the man's jacket, across the white felt of his armband.

“How could it have been a car?” she said weakly. Mimi's screams had died to gasps, now. “Nobody would have been driving in the blackout. Nobody'd drive down here, anyway. Mrs. Gillespie, get back to your house or find a telephone somewhere, and call a doctor and the ambulance.”

“You can't,” Mimi wailed. “Nobody can get one, the telephones don't answer. I tried when the blackout began, and you can't even raise Central.”

“Isn't there anybody?” Georgine said desperately. “An advanced first-aider, someone who can help?”

“Not up here, not tonight. The old Carmichael ladies—they might do it, but they're away,” Mrs. Gillespie babbled. “
You
do something, can't you? Oh, poor Roy!”

“I don't know enough about it. And there's nothing to work with, I daren't move him; all we can do is cover him up,” said Georgine dully.

“That's a good idea.” Mrs. Gillespie's voice was stronger, as if all the problems had been solved. “I'll get a blanket, if I can—” She bent over suddenly. “Listen! Did he say something? Maybe he's not so badly hurt, maybe he was just stunned.” Georgine, bending close to Hollister, put her ear down to his lips; Mimi leaned shudderingly over them both, gasping, “Oh, he said, ‘I am dying. Come, I'm dying.' Wasn't that it?”

After a moment, Georgine said, “It sounded like that.” And under her hand the body of Roy Hollister relaxed with a dreadful finality.

Now that it was too late, someone else was coming down the road. “What's the matter down there?” said a male voice, hoarse with anxiety. “Was that you screaming, Mrs. Gillespie? Where's the warden?”

“Oh, Mr. Devlin,” Mimi cried, “I'm glad you came, we were all alone—the warden's here, something hit him.”

“Hurt?” John Devlin said on a long groan. “How?”

The light shone once more, dimly, on the tire marks. Devlin said, “My God. Oh, God, so I was right about that noise. Ricky's car, his jalopy, isn't—isn't there any more. It must have got away, and—and plunged downhill, and Hollister was in the way.” Through the darkness Georgine could hear him panting hoarsely. “Why don't the damned lights go on?” he shouted, startling her.

Mrs. Gillespie had begun to shuffle away. “I'll get that blanket,” she said, almost cheerfully.

John Devlin knelt, and his hand went along Hollister's lax arm and found the wrist. “But listen,” he said in a shocked tone, “he's—I can't find a pulse. He's
dead
.”

“I'm afraid so,” Georgine said faintly.

“We can't leave him like this, my God! Where's there a doctor—”

Mrs. Gillespie went once more through her explanation.

“Well, but the warden's own phone ought to work!” Devlin said. “I heard they'd made some arrangement about that, so it gets the switchboard when nobody else's does. Try that, Mrs. Gillespie!'

“In Roy's house?” Mimi said on a kind of shriek. “With him out here dead? Oh, I couldn't go in there!”

“I'll go with you,” Georgine said.

“That's right. I'll stay with him. This is no place for women,” Devlin's voice said gruffly. There was a jingling sound. “Here are his keys, in his side pocket, a whacking big bunch. You take that little torch, might need it to find the door key.”

It was an incredible relief to Georgine to rise and move away from the limp form on the pavement. She thought vaguely,
How queer people are about death; Mrs. Gillespie was glad to be given an errand somewhere else—or was that why she sounded almost sprightly? And here's Mr. Devlin, cheerfully staying right here, feeling in Hollister's pockets. There's no accounting for reactions
.

The darkness still pressed about her like something tangible. There was the night breeze on her face, the sting of the fog, the tautness of eye-muscles straining to pierce the black air; the gray of pavement and cement walks did give off a faint sort of glimmer that helped her to find her way, but that was all she could see. Beside her, Mimi Gillespie pressed close, breathing quickly. Georgine could feel the soft fuzziness of a loose sleeve. “Were you undressed?” she said absently.

“I—no,” Mimi faltered. “It was cold, I sat up reading but I put on a house robe over my clothes. And when the sirens went, I just turned off the lights and waited. We've got blackout curtains, but they take too long to fix.”

The street was hard and uneven underfoot. Georgine felt for step after step, holding the light downward. She wondered for a moment if she could be dreaming all this. There was the front walk of Hollister's house; she went along it, Mrs. Gillespie in her wake; both women holding out groping hands toward the wall of the projecting garage. “Ricky's car must have gone right down into the canyon,” Georgine said. Funny how you found yourself speaking in a whisper, as if a little noise mattered now. “Didn't you think it was a bomb when the fence splintered?”

“Oh, yes. It seemed like—as if I couldn't move. Here, don't bother with those keys, the door's unlocked.”

Then why on earth, Georgine thought, had he carried that great bunch? “You know where the telephone is?”