Jack and Susan in 1953 (30 page)

It was the smell of kerosene that roused her.

She thought for a moment that she was back in summer camp at Lake Winnipesaukee. But that would make her no more than thirteen years old, and she knew that wasn't right. Which meant that she was in someplace other than New Hampshire. She opened her eyes and saw an expanse of white silk.

The odor of kerosene was stronger. The noisome smell did not help her headache. She could not move, and she realized that her legs and hands were tied.

Then she remembered where she was, and under what circumstances. She jerked her body about so that her head hung over the bed. She could see splotches of liquid on the carpet, and whole puddles of the flammable stuff on the bare floor inside the hallway door.

The light in the room wasn't much different, so she knew that she hadn't been unconscious long.

“Libby!”
she screamed.

Rodolfo leaned in through the doorway, evidently to avoid stepping in the puddles. “It would have been better if you had remained unconscious,” he said. He smiled a smile of slight embarrassment. “I don't really like doing this, you know.”

“You're going to burn me alive!”

“You and Libby,” he amended. “She
is
unconscious, I'm happy to say.”

“Why don't you shoot me!”

“Because it must look like an accident,” he explained. “The mosquito-netting ropes will burn completely, and no one will know that you were tied.”

He reached into his pocket, and took out a small packet of matches he'd picked up from the Varadero Room at the Hotel Nacional. Susan even remembered seeing him place them in his pocket.

“I'm very sorry,” he said with what appeared to Susan, even in her predicament, to be absolute sincerity.

He tore out one of the paper matches, struck it, held it beneath the book until the whole thing seared up in a
whoosh
of flame. Then he tossed the small torch into the center of the room.

His aim was good, and the amount of kerosene he'd used was substantial. The Oriental carpet on the floor of James Bright's bedroom suddenly exploded in a large circle of flame.

I
T WAS JACK'S fervent hope that whoever had shot at the dog had not seen the dog's master. Jack could have run back across the side lawn to the shelter of the trees, but he decided against that. Someone inside the house would have been watching for another running target, canine or otherwise. So keeping himself low and using the ornamental plantings for cover, he crept up until he got to the house itself.

He now flattened himself against the side of the house, no pleasant sensation considering the sharpness of the stucco covering. He inched toward the front, ducked beneath a window, came up again, and ducked beneath another window. At the front corner of the house he paused for a moment using a large, blooming oleander as cover.

He crept around the front of the house, feeling absurdly exposed. It was well that poor Woolf was keeping away.

The first window he reached was open. He stood beside it and listened. He heard nothing inside. He took a chance and peered in. At this end of the house was some sort of long narrow storage room, dim and cool. Through the open window, even with the oleander at his side, he was certain he detected the odor of kerosene.

It was difficult, Jack realized, for a man with his arm in a cast to negotiate climbing through a window four feet off the ground, but he decided to try. For some reason he thought it was better to be shot at close range than to be picked off as he ran across an open lawn. He got as close to the window as he could, and then raised his left leg, and got it through the aperture. He gripped the lower half of the window sash with his good arm, and pulled himself up and into the storeroom, banging his head, getting splinters into his hand, and tearing a hole in the front of his trousers.

The storeroom was no more than eight feet wide, but it ran the width of the house. He could see a door at the farther end, and he moved carefully toward it, trying not to knock over any of the jars and bottles arranged on the sagging shelves, nor to cry out when a large spider dropped down from the ceiling, ran across his neck, and then squeezed into the small space between his broken arm and the cast that covered it.

Jack could feel the spider crawling down toward his elbow. It was cool and dark in there, and that spider—Jack was certain—intended to set up a colony around his elbow.

He debated a moment how he ought to deal with this door: cautiously open it, hoping the door would make no noise and that no one was in the next room. Go through boldly and quickly, and obtain another hiding space. Or press his ear against it, to listen for movement on the other side.

He decided on the first option, but as he placed his hand upon the knob of the door, he felt it already turning.

He immediately stepped back and flattened himself against the wall beside the door. The door swung wide, into the storeroom, concealing him behind it. He heard two voices speaking in Spanish, a man and a boy's, and they were just on the other side of the thin door that was his only protection. Jack held his breath. He could now feel the spider creeping down his arm toward his wrist.

Jack recognized the man's voice as Rodolfo's. Jack heard them pick up what sounded like metal canisters filled with sloshing liquid.

The kerosene.

They went away, leaving the door to the storeroom open. Jack was about to move from his hiding place when he heard footsteps approaching again, and he quickly dropped back tight against the wall. It was either Rodolfo or the boy getting more cans of kerosene.

Whoever it was again did not shut the door. Jack remained motionless for several minutes. He listened intently, but could hear nothing. Once he detected a footfall in the room directly above, but it wasn't repeated.

He eased the door back enough so that he could get out from behind it. He could see no more canisters of kerosene, and figured therefore that Rodolfo and the boy would not be coming back. It was still possible that one of them—or even a third person—was sitting very quietly with a gun in the very next room.

Jack's eyes had already searched out the corners of the storeroom. The only thing that resembled a weapon was a garden trowel, which wasn't much of a weapon.

He picked it up anyway, thinking that he possibly could throw it hard.

He peered warily around the doorway into the next room. This turned out to be the kitchen, pink and empty. Jack stepped silently in and exchanged the garden trowel for a butcher's knife.

There were two doors here to choose from, and he picked the one toward the front of the house.

It opened into a formal dining room, and though the window onto the sea was open, the chamber reeked of kerosene. The yellow damask cloth covering a massive Sheraton table was soaked with it, and the liquid dripped from the corners of the cloth. The draperies had been splashed as well, though not far up, so Jack surmised that this was the child's work.

Jack crept to the next door and peered around. He was at the entrance hall now. He could cross it to what looked like a parlor on the other side, or he could ascend the stairs to the second floor.

He listened for some clue that would tell him what to do next, but he heard nothing.

He decided on the parlor, so he started carefully and quietly across the foyer.

Halfway across he heard the voices in the next room, Rodolfo's and the boy's. They were coming his way.

As fast and as quietly as he could, Jack mounted the stairs, giving thanks to James Bright's unhappy ghost that he had installed such thick carpeting on the stairway.

At the top of the stairs, Jack had another choice. Right or left? To the right, at the end of the hall, he saw an open door, and that made his decision. All the other doors, after all, might be locked.

Below him, he heard Rodolfo giving what sounded like a command to the boy in Spanish. Then Rodolfo's voice grew closer; he must be coming up the stairs.

Jack moved down the hallway as quickly as he could.

One of the doors he passed was ajar, and he swung it open and jumped inside, thinking that even if Rodolfo came inside he could once again hide behind the door as it opened. He closed the door till it was again just barely cracked.

He wasn't alone in the room.

Libby lay on the bed, staring at him stuporously.

“Jack?” she said.

“Shhh!” he said as he flattened himself against the wall beside the door.

“Jack!” Libby was vastly relieved to see him. In another moment, Jack knew she would begin a wholesale retelling of her latest round of woes.

“Shut up!” Jack hissed as loudly as he dared.

He heard Rodolfo moving along the hall outside.

Jack held up his hand for Libby to lie still and quiet, but Libby had begun to writhe on the bed.

Jack saw for the first time that her hands and her wrists were bound beneath her. He also noticed that this room had been given the kerosene treatment as well.

He listened for Rodolfo but heard nothing. The Cuban had evidently passed on down the corridor.

Jack crept over to the bed, turned Libby over, and with the butcher knife sliced through the ropes that held her. This was not easy, for the ropes were strong, Libby was writhing, and Jack had still the use of only one hand. Once her wrists were free, he went to work on the ropes that bound her ankles.

“Where's Susan?” he whispered.

“Did she get out of the trunk?” Libby whispered back.

“Yes.”

“I don't know where she is.”

From out in the corridor, came a kind of
whoooosh!
They both looked up in surprise. Jack, knife in hand, dropped to the floor and pulled himself across the slickly waxed floor till he was hidden beneath the bed.

“Pretend you're still tied up!” he cried in a whisper he hoped would carry up through the mattress but not outside the confines of the room.

Looking toward the door, Jack saw it swing open, saw what he assumed were Rodolfo's shoes and trouser cuffs. And then he saw a lighted match drop to the floor, where it promptly extinguished itself.

But a second match did the trick. A puddle of kerosene near the door went up in another
whoooosh
that told Jack exactly what the first noise had been.

L
IBBY SCREAMED, and Jack heard Rodolfo's well-modulated laughter disappearing down the hallway.

Jack rolled out from under the bed, scrambled to his feet, and clamped his hand over Libby's mouth.

Libby bit him. On his good hand.

The bedclothes were already on fire. Jack dragged Libby off the bed, and she landed with a thump on the floor. He dragged her up past the flames and toward the door of the room.

“Shut up!” Jack cautioned her. “He thinks you're still tied up!”

“I should have married you,” Libby said. “I really should have.”

Holding Libby back, Jack peered out into the hall. He caught a glimpse of Rodolfo as he turned down the stairs.

Jack stepped out and down the hallway toward the room at the end; Libby followed at his heels, as close as Woolf would have done under similar circumstances.

“Jack!” cried Susan from the bed.

They were separated by a low wall of flame, fanned here by the sea breeze blowing in through the open window. The wallpaper had caught as well, and little yellow tongues of flame were licking upward. The torn mosquito netting above Susan caught suddenly and burned as quickly as a spider's web with a match put to it.

Jack ran to the opposite corner of the room, picked up a small rug, and threw it across the burning floor. Almost immediately, small flames began leaping up through the webbing, but it was enough to allow Jack to cross to the bed. Libby began coughing with the smoke.

“I want to get out of here!” she cried. “I don't want to burn!”

Susan flipped herself over so that Jack could get at the netting ropes with the knife. In a few seconds she was free.

The carpet over which Jack crossed was burning fiercely now, and the room was filling with smoke.

“Cuba was your idea for a honeymoon, wasn't it?” Jack remarked.

Without another word, they grabbed hold of the bed, Jack at the head with his good hand on a post, and Susan at the foot, pushing with both hands. They moved the bed over the worst of the flames, jumped up onto the high mattresses, and then crossed over to relative safety.

Now the hallway was beginning to fill with smoke. The bedrooms where Susan and Libby had been tied were burning brightly now, and smoke was pouring up the stairwell from the first floor. They saw that the entire staircase was on fire.

Quickly, the three of them moved down the hallway on both sides of the staircase and tried all the doors; all the rooms were unlocked, but there was apparently no other staircase to the ground floor.

“We'll have to climb out of a window,” said Susan.

“Fine,” said Jack, holding up his broken arm, “you two go ahead. You'll also be able to draw Rodolfo's fire. I'm sure he and his little friend are out there somewhere watching, just to make sure that nobody makes a last-minute escape.”

“Sorry,” said Susan, “I wasn't thinking.”

Fortunately, because of the strong cross ventilation, it was still possible to breathe in the upstairs hallway. But that also meant that once the various fires had really established themselves, they would spread with dangerous rapidity.

Jack stood at the banister beside the burning staircase and peered over onto the marble flooring of the entryway twelve feet below.

“That's how we'll have to go,” he said, and began kicking at the banister.

After a moment, Susan joined him, and then Libby. Together they managed to loosen a section of banister. “Don't let it fall,” Jack warned, “because we'd have to fall on top of it.” They lifted it up and flipped it over onto the burning stairs. A little more fuel at this point wasn't going to make things much worse.