Everybody Had A Gun (21 page)

"Up the stairs," she said, and I went up the wide old stairs to the second floor, stalling as much as I could. She directed me into her bedroom and there we stopped. Her bedroom. Why did it have to be her bedroom?

I turned around and said, "Say! This is wonderful. Wonderful!" I wasn't sure how you humored a crazy person, but I had a stab at it. A woman, even a crazy woman, should react to flattery, I thought.

She did. Not much, but it was a start. "Do you think so?" Still not much inflection in her voice, but some.

"I sure do," I told her. "I'd never have thought of it, myself. And another thing, Mrs. Sader. The rest of it was smart, too."

She beamed. Then she frowned. "I thought so. I thought it was perfect. But you figured it out."

"No." I shook my head solemnly. If I could just keep her talking a little while. Talking about anything, just to use up time. "Not at all," I said. "But you did plan it all, didn't you? You got Marty to go to the Pit and shot him there. Then you shot her at her place and fixed up the letter and picture. Isn't that right, now?"

She nodded slowly. "That's right; that's right. But I didn't think—"

I cut her off. I wanted her to stay happy. "But I didn't figure it out, Mrs. Sader. You were very clever. Very clever. I certainly admire you."

She was still frowning. "But how did you know?"

In a confidential whisper I said, "I saw you." Then I wondered if maybe I was nuts. How stupid was I going to get? But she didn't laugh at me. That's right; she was nuts.

But she didn't get very happy. She said, "Go over by the window."

Here it was. It was getting close. And now I was sure I knew what her warped mind had planned for me.

I moved, all right, but I stopped before I got to the curtained window where she wanted me and I said, "How did you ever think of this?"

She stared glassy-eyed at me, fiddling with her beads and humming, and didn't answer.

I swallowed and said quickly, "See if I got it! I'm coming in the window and you shoot me. Right?"

She nodded.

"Boy!" I said. "That's swell!" The words stuck in my throat.

She smiled a little.

I kept on going, trying to keep her interested. "I'm coming in through the window. I sneaked out here and got the ladder and started to sneak in. I got just inside the window and you shot me. Right?"

"That's right."

"I'm coming in to—to attack you!" I was really getting carried away.

Her lips pressed tight. I'd said the wrong thing again.

"Over to the window."

I was damned if I'd move. If I got there I was sure she'd blaze away at me. Blaze. . .If I wasn't imagining things, it was warmer here in the bedroom.

She wiggled the big gun.

"Tell me one thing," I yelped. "Why did you do it? To them?"

"They were evil. They were sinners." At least she was still talking. And I could hear her.

"Sure," I said. "But why kill them?"

She hummed a few snatches, then she said, "He told me."

I gawked. "Huh? Who?"

"He."

"Who?"

"He."

I was afraid if I gave out with another "Who?" she'd shoot me. I wouldn't have blamed her.

I heard it then. At first I though it might be my imagination, but I listened till I was sure. The cracking and the roar of fire.

"Mrs. Sader," I said. "Listen."

She listened and she frowned and she said, "What—what is it?"

I said, "Perhaps, Mrs. Sader, perhaps it's a sign."

She looked straight at me, but she wasn't humming.

She was still listening. The noise was getting louder now, rising high over the wind swirling about the old house. It was the roar of a good-sized fire, and suddenly the acrid smell of smoke was in my nostrils. I'd been too busy to notice it before. And it was definitely warmer.

I grinned at Mrs. Sader. One thing, if nothing else: I'd set her goddam house on fire.

She had a little frown on her face and she looked more like a horse than ever. A sick horse.

I yelled at the top of my voice, almost screaming, "It's a sign! It's a sign, Mrs. Sader!" and right then the heat swelling outside and running up the dry wooden wall and eating away at that new coat of white paint cracked all hell out of the bedroom window. The glass gave with a sharp splintering sound and fragments tinkled to the floor, and dear old wild-eyed Vivian let out a strangled moan and ran hippety-hop out of the room.

I hesitated a second, then I raced out after her. It was sort of funny. Here I was in a burning house, with a crazy woman, and the two of us were scampering around the top floor like mad, and like mad was right. It suddenly stopped being funny.

I piled out the door and I spotted her about twenty feet down the long hall leading to the north wing, and just then she spun around and leveled that great big gun at me and blasted away.

I dived for the floor and skidded on the carpet as the glass window crashed at the end of the hall on my left. I kept rolling, pain raking through me, as she blasted at me and missed again. I came up against the door, reached for the knob, twisted it, and fell into the room. Pretty soon my nose would look like Joe-Joe's.

Then I heard her footsteps thumping down the hall away from me, getting fainter. I jumped back into the hall in time to see her running with her skirts pulled high up over her knees. It didn't do a thing for me. She went through a door on her left, on the forward side of the house, before she reached the door at the hall's end. For a minute there I'd thought she was headed for the roof.

I got out of there.

I walked to the stairs, ran down them, and got outside. My Cad was parked close to the house, and the way the place was blazing now, the car was going to get burned too. I climbed in, started the engine, and backed out the drive. I parked on the street in front, then walked back to about fifty feet from the house and stood watching it burn.

Flames were shooting high into the air now, twisting in the wind, and I wondered when the fire engines would be getting here. That had been the main reason I'd started the blaze, and I'd hoped the fire boys would have arrived before now. This was more than I'd bargained for. I didn't like the idea of getting shot, but all I'd wanted was a little help, not a holocaust. I strained my ears listening for the sound of sirens, but I couldn't hear anything over the crackling roar of the flames. Already heat licked out at me and swept across my face, even where I stood.

I started getting worried; this damn thing was getting out of hand. When were those blasted engines going to get here? I could hardly leave Mrs. Sader, no matter what she'd done, in there to burn. I got out a cigarette and nervously fumbled for a light. No lighter. That was a small loss; I had a whole house now.

I crumpled the cigarette in my hand and threw the weed away. I still couldn't hear sirens, and the whole back of the house was flaming and shooting sparks into the air. Flames were licking even along the right side of the place, up at the front. It wouldn't be long now, with those dry, drafty walls cooking and half the windows in the place open.

The hell with it. I went back in. Insanity must be contagious.

There was smoke swirling all through the lower floor and it bit into my lungs as I ran through the front door and pounded up the stairway to the top. I was here, but how did I get to the stupid woman?

I walked left down the long hall to the door I'd seen her enter. When I got there I was afraid to open it. I was afraid if I did she'd spot me and take another shot at me. I stood there two or three minutes, maybe longer, undecided what to do, and then I heard her singing. She must have been singing as loud as she could, because the sound was coming from my left, back toward the stairway, and I could hear it even above the rising noise of the wind and the flames.

She came out of a door forty feet down the hall, the huge gun still in her hand. She looked up toward the ceiling, then around her, alternately coughing and singing away like mad till she spotted me. She stopped singing just long enough to level the gun. The song had words, but I couldn't make them out; I probably wouldn't have understood them, anyway.

"Boop-boop-be-doop. . ." Then she leveled the revolver and let fly a slug the size of a billiard ball.

She missed me by four feet, but I didn't give her another chance. I opened the same door she'd gone through a little while back and jumped through, then eased back and peeked at her. She stood where she'd been when she shot at me. She kept on singing.

I watched her a while, fascinated, then decided the hell with this old coot. She'd had all of the unwanted help I was putting out this night. I was going to get out of here some way, and she could stay if she wanted to. And then I saw that, even if I could get by her without picking up a bullet on the way, it wouldn't be much good. Beyond her another twenty feet, flames licked up toward the ceiling at the top of the stairway. I'd been so cute I was stuck up here with my crazy woman.

Chapter Nineteen

THE LADDER!

Sure. That was as brilliant as most of my ideas. The first part of the house that had started to burn was the part the ladder leaned against She was between me and its ashes, anyway. And from here it was a long jump to the ground.

Now, finally, I heard the sad and lonesome wailing of sirens Only this time it was a sweet, pleasant sound, and it was about time. I backed into the room and locked the door. I was damned if I was going to have Mrs. Sader sneaking up behind me. Then I turned to the front of the room so I could throw up the window.

But there wasn't any window. There had been, but the heat had cracked it and flames licked through it now. The curtains caught and flared as I started forward, and I almost singed my white eyebrows black. The front of the house was cooking, too, and I got a twitch of panic in my stomach. This whole blasted place was going to go before much longer. I was coughing frequently now, and my eyes were streaming.

Sirens screamed to a stop in front of the house, more wailing behind them. I imagined men scurrying over the lawn, but I couldn't see them. Those big trucks would have a tough time stopping anywhere but in front and in back of the house because of the sloping sides of the hill the house sat on. And here I was. How the hell—The roof! From the roof I could see them and they could see me. I remembered when I'd first searched the house for Iris I'd found the steps to the roof. Here we go, Scott. Over the top again.

The steps to the roof were down here, right at the end of the hall. I was going through that door, Mrs. Sader or no Mrs. Sader. I unlocked the door of the room and looked out. She wasn't in sight, but the hall was so filled with smoke I could hardly see to the end of it. The fumes itched at my eyes and choked in my throat. I yanked off my coat and held it in front of my mouth, breathing air through it almost hot enough to sear my lungs. I ran down the hall, through the door at the end, and up the steps there as I had once before.

At the top of the short flight of steps I pushed open the little door in the roof and climbed out, the roar getting louder in my ears. I ran to the edge of the roof at a spot where flames weren't licking continually over the edge. Over at the left, beyond the front of the house, I could glimpse the big red trucks with men around them. And down below me on the slanting hillside were two uniformed firemen wearing khaki coats and pants, knee-length rubber boots, and dark helmets.

I threw my coat out over the edge of the roof and down toward them. One of them grabbed the other and pointed up. Hell, they probably thought that was me. Then they spotted me and I yelled and waved. They ran away.

The bastards! What the devil? But then in a minute they were back. About a dozen men lugged a circular thing—a net. A net I was supposed to jump into.

Me? Jump? That was a laugh.

Yeah, it was a laugh, all right. The roof quivered a little. Maybe I imagined it, but it was either the roof quivering or me. I didn't have to make up my mind; I had to jump.

The men were waving and shouting things I couldn't hear and suddenly I realized those guys down there were sticking their necks out for me. If this place should go, if a wall should topple, those guys down there might get it right in the neck.

They might even get hit by me.

I took a big hot breath, held it, gauged the distance, and let my breath out. It wasn't too far, maybe, not more than a mile down, but that little white thing looked like a piece of lint. Scott, you devil, you. How the hell did you get up here?

I took another breath and my legs shook a little as I bent them.

I jumped.

I did like I'd seen them do in movies, and jumped so my feet flew out in front of me, and I guess they were pointing at the horizon. I wondered if I'd land on my head in some gravel, and then I was looking up into the air at a lot of spinning stars and screaming my fool head off.

There was a mixed-up flash of flames and flying sparks and white streaks across the sky, and then my back slammed into the net.

I'd actually made it. I hit and bounced and I came down again, and my chest hurt and my arm hurt and my head exploded, but it wasn't gravel I didn't want to move. I just wanted to lie there on that sweet old net.

Hands grabbed me and pulled me up to my feet.

"You all right, guy?"

"Sure," I started to say, only nothing came out. I nodded my head.

"Anybody else in there?"

"Yeah." I got a word out.

"Sweet Christ—"

"A woman," I said. "She's up there somewhere. Running around singing."

"What?"

"At the top of her voice."

"What?"

"Singing hymns or something. She's—"

"Hey!"

"She's got a gun."

"Hey, mister. Relax. Everything's O. K. It's all under control."

"Damn it!" I yelled. "I mean it. She's up there—"

"That's fine, fellow. That's sure swell" He jerked his head at a man who came running up carrying a little metal case with a white cross on it.

I gritted my teeth and looked up at the roof just as one of the men said, "We better get the hell out. She's gonna go right soon."