The Quest of Julian Day (27 page)

This time I went to the far end of the corridor and smashed in the lock of a door there.

To my surprise it did not give at the first assault and, on examination, I found that it was of stouter wood and had two locks.

I went at it again with a running kick, planting the flat of my foot with all my weight behind it over the two keyholes. It creaked and the locks loosened in their sockets but it did not give and I had to fling my whole weight at it twice again before the wood splintered and it flew wide open.

The room was in darkness and no sound came from it, so I fished round by the doorway for a light switch. My fingers found it and pressed it down.

The light flooded an absolutely bare apartment. There was not a stick of furniture in it and only a worn carpet on the floor; at the first glance I saw that the window had heavy bars across it.

In the first glance, too, I saw Sylvia. She was lying flat on her back in one corner without a stitch of clothing on. As I think I have said before, Sylvia was a tall, long-limbed girl with a naturally graceful carriage, and in Cairo I had much admired her figure; but there was nothing beautiful about her nakedness. She lay sprawled in an ugly, unnatural attitude, one arm twisted awkwardly under her and the other dangling limply across her body hiding the curve of her breasts. Her head was propped up against the wall so that her chin rested on her chest and her silver-gold hair hung lank over her face. A great purple bruise disfigured one of her thighs and clots of dried blood encrusted her right shoulder.

My consciousness barely took in the fact that she was nude because I was half-stunned by the appalling thought that I had arrived too late and that I was staring only at her corpse which had been thrown down there; but, as I moved towards her, she moaned and turned over.

In a second I was beside her, pillowing her head against my
arm and searching with my free hand for the flask of brandy in my hip pocket.

She moaned again when I forced a little of it between her lips then, as the spirit coursed down her throat, she coughed and a little colour flooded back into her dead-white cheeks.

I gave her another sip of the brandy but she feebly raised a hand and tried to push the flask away, opening her eyes as she did so and staring at me.

I saw a flicker of recognition enter them and she smiled very faintly while I strove to comfort her with those silly, meaningless phrases which burble to one's lips when one is trying to reassure someone who has suffered an accident or is in great pain.

I don't think she realised then that she was naked as she lay quite placidly in my embrace; but I realised it and knew that I must do something about it as quickly as I could to save her feelings when she fully regained consciousness.

‘I won't be a second,' I said, propping her up against the wall, but a sudden look of stark terror came into her blue eyes. With surprising strength she grabbed my hand and moaned:

‘Don't! Don't leave me!'

Knowing what I was up to I paid no heed but shook off her grip with a reassuring smile and ran out across the passage into the black girl's room. She probably had a number of garments in her wardrobe and her trunk but as nothing suitable was visible I just grabbed her bedclothes.

‘Sorry to bother you,' I said with an apologetic grin. ‘But I want these. You can get some of your own clothes on. The police will be up here in a moment.'

She let out a falsetto screech as I ripped the blankets off her bed and sliding out of the other side spat at me furiously, but I took no further notice of her and hurried back to Sylvia.

Evidently she had realised why I had left her by then as she was sitting up cross-legged with her head in her hands and her back turned towards me.

‘Here, cover up with these,' I said, draping the bedclothes round her. ‘I'll get you some proper clothes as soon as I can.'

With a little shiver she huddled into the blankets and extended a hand over her shoulder. ‘Please, may I have some more brandy?'

I was perspiring from my exertions but I realised that it must have been pretty chilly up there, lying about without any clothes on. Thrusting the flask into her hand I left her again and hurried down the corridor to the French girl. She was still sitting on the edge of her bed quietly smoking.

‘Well, where are the police?' she smiled. ‘I believe
Monsieur
was only fooling and that they've given him the run of the place to pick whom he likes up here. But why make such a fuss about it? I'll show you a better time than any of these coloured women. Come over here and talk to me,
cheri
.'

‘The police are here all right,' I assured her grimly. ‘If you listen you can hear them working on that steel door at the top of the stairs. In the meantime I want the loan of some of your clothes.'

‘My clothes!' she echoed. ‘Why? For some special
funnibizznes
?'

‘Don't be silly,' I said. ‘But give me some of the things in that trunk. A suit of undies and a coat and skirt if you've got one.'

‘
Monsieur
is a little mad, I think,' she sniffed.

‘Thanks, I'm quite sane,' I retorted. ‘But I've found the girl I was looking for and the swine who runs this place had locked her up stripped to the skin.'

Her hard little face softened immediately. ‘
Pauvre petite
,' she murmured, standing up. ‘So she is a new girl and unwilling. Such treatment is the first step and most of us go through it. Of course I will find things for her.'

As she spoke she went to the wardrobe and fished out a pair of step-ins, a silk dress and a little coatee. ‘Here, take these. I will bring stockings and other things in a moment.'

‘Thank you ever so much,' I smiled as I received the garments from her. ‘I'll see to it that you get an easy deal from the police for this.'

She shrugged disdainfully. ‘The police! I am not afraid of them. But when one is in trouble, one is in trouble; and it is for that reason only I lend my clothes to your little friend.'

Her attitude left me awkward and abashed but I had no time to bother about that and quickly took the things along to Sylvia. Giving them to her I asked if she felt strong enough to get into them.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Just go outside for a moment, will you?'

‘Right,' I said. ‘Some shoes and stockings will be along in a minute.'

As I stepped out into the corridor I noticed that the banging on the steel door had ceased and I wondered what had become of the rest of the raiding party; but when I thought of it I realised that all my smashing-in of doors and swift questions to these women had happened so quickly that it could be barely five minutes since I had chased O'Kieff upstairs. The police would have had plenty to occupy them during so short a time; the probability was that only a stray member of the party had followed me and, finding the door too much for him alone, he had now gone to get help. I was anxious to get Sylvia out of the place and into Clarissa's care as quickly as possible but it was clear that we were cooped up there with the ‘Angels' until our friends could release us.

It was just then that I first noticed the smell of smoke. I was still sniffing uncertainly when the door of the room next to Sylvia's was flung open and another young woman came dashing out. She was shouting something in a tongue that I did not understand but a billow of smoke that followed her as she ran from the room told its own story. O'Kieff must have fired the place on his way out and we were trapped up there in the top storey.

On each of my dashes along the passage several of the doors in it had been opened a crack but on my appearance they had shut each time with the rapidity of a row of tickled oysters.

The piercing shrieks of the girl meant that, one by one, the other doors opened and, altogether, eight girls emerged.

With a familiarity which some say breeds contempt I thrust them hastily aside and pushed my way into the room of a young red-head, from which the smoke was now swirling in big billows. It was next to the hidden stairs down which O'Kieff had disappeared and the seat of the trouble was at the foot of the wall abutting on to the staircase. Evidently he had had a special store of incendiary material already prepared there and the explosion I had heard was the bomb with which he had ignited it, otherwise the fire could not have got a hold so quickly. Dense clouds of smoke were welling up from the crack between the floor-boards and the skirting and through them I could see the red flames flickering as they ate hungrily into the well-seasoned wood.

Snatching up a pitcher of water from the washstand I sprinkled its contents over the blankets on the bed and piled them on the place where the fire was fiercest but the heat was so intense that they only served as a temporary check. Coughing and sneezing from the smoke I made my way to the window and shut it, then staggered back out of the room pulling the door shut behind me.

‘Silence!' I yelled in stentorian tones to the alarmed beauty chorus; after which I repeated in every language I could muster, ‘Don't be afraid. The police are below and there are plenty of them to rescue them. Get your clothes on as quickly as you can.'

As Sylvia turned back into the room I hurried to a solitary window at the extreme end of the passage and, reaching it, thanked all my gods to find that it was not barred. Throwing it open I thrust out my head. I could see figures moving in the garden but it was clear that the fire had spread with great rapidity as flames, smoke and sparks were issuing from the window immediately below me. I hailed the people in the garden and Longdon's voice came back.

‘That you, Day? We thought you had been scuppered. How many others are up there?'

‘Sylvia Shane and eight of the “Angels”,' I yelled back. ‘We're trapped up here by a steel door at the top of the stairs. Can't you manage to force it?'

‘No!' he cried. ‘We've been trying to for the last ten minutes, but nothing short of dynamite will shift it. There are no ladders here so you'll have to make a rope of sheets.'

‘Right ho!' I bawled and shut the window, but I was none too happy about the task before me. It would take time to do as he suggested and get all nine women safely to the ground, and a steady stream of smoke was already percolating into the corridor.

Sylvia was the first out as she had already been partially dressed when the alarm of fire was given. She looked sick and ill but not frightened although she again glanced quickly away from me which, seeing the state I had found her in, made me dread more than ever hearing even a vague reference to what she had been through.

Immediately I had told her what we had to do she set to work knotting together the bedclothes I had got for her, while I ran from room to room collecting others.

The girls responded gamely, once they understood what was wanted of them, and with so many willing hands we soon had a thirty-foot rope of sheets stretched out along the corridor. I tested each knot myself while they pulled a bed out of the nearest room to which I firmly secured one end of the rope.

As the young black girl was becoming hysterical I decided to get rid of her first, and tied the other end of the life-line twice round her body.

She was in such a state of terror that in spite of our efforts to persuade her she flatly refused to go out of the window; but the situation was becoming too serious to waste much time in arguing with her so, getting the other girls to take the strain on the rope, I picked her up bodily and pushed her out feet first.

I wanted Sylvia to go next as she was so weak from the ordeal she had been through but she wouldn't hear of it and, once again, I dared not waste time arguing. The flames were now licking under the door of the bedroom where the fire had first appeared and the whole corridor was so thick with smoke that we could no longer see the full length of it.

As Sylvia wouldn't go I sent down the red-head since her wide staring eyes showed an abject fear although she had remained dumb the whole time like some frightened animal. After her, we lowered three more but each operation took several minutes and I was still left with three more, besides Sylvia.

By that time our eyes were smarting so badly that we could hardly see; while fifteen feet behind us we could hear the roar and crackle of the flames as they ate up the door and licked at the wall opposite. I'm not exactly a panicky person but I was getting distinctly worried at the rapid way the fire was gaining.

As Sylvia still refused to go down, I sent the another and, on turning to select the next, found that the beautiful Chinese girl had fainted. Gasping and stumbling we hurriedly tied the lifeline round her and pushed her inanimate body out of the window.

The heat was simply appalling; sweat was running down our faces in streams and as we staggered about half-blinded I began to fear that the rest of us would never get out in time. To us, waiting there, panting for breath in the stifling atmosphere, it seemed that each time we lowered the life-line it was longer before it came up again. While I attended to the rope and took the strain when each of the girls was lowered, I made the others keep their heads thrust out of the window so that they could get as much fresh air as possible, but I was feeling near the end of my tether.

I cursed myself for not having had the foresight to tie a damp towel over my mouth and nose, but I had had no time to think of that and now I was paying the penalty. With every breath I drew the acrid smoke tore at my lungs until it seemed that my chest would burst with the frightful pain that racked it. Behind us now there was one solid sheet of flame and I knew that it would take another six minutes at least for the remaining three of us to reach safety. My movements had become slow and clumsy and although I fought with all my will it seemed as though my brain was going. I doubted if I could stave off unconsciousness even for another two minutes.

It was Sylvia who saved us. She saw how things were with me as I staggered and nearly fell in my effort to tie the life-line round Miss France. Leaning out of the window she called down that we were done unless someone could come up to help us. At that moment Miss France fainted and fell on to me but somehow or other we managed to bundle her out and keep some sort of check on the life-line as it jerked through our hands; after which I remember nothing until I came to in the garden.