The Trail of Fear (10 page)

It was quite true. The girl paused when she came to the seats to which she had conducted Sam and Rezaire and flashed her torch onto the ones they had occupied. Then she flashed it in a wider circle to the front and back and further along the row.

The detectives too were stooping forward scrutinizing the persons who sat nearby. The attendant turned to them after a moment with a puzzled look. Then she questioned the people who sat there.

A young man, proud at thus finding himself suddenly in the public eye, answered volubly but apparently to little purpose. Evidently he had remembered the two getting up again but did not know where they had gone. One of the plain-clothes men stepped forward and asked him something. He pointed to one of the exits, then changed his mind, and pointed to another, and his questioner shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Evidently he was not being helpful. From his position of momentary safety Rezaire almost smiled despite the danger. It pleased him in a small way to think too that the youth, who was so eager to impress the police with his observance of the two men who had sat next him and then gone away, had evidently not yet even noticed that his hat had disappeared at the same time.

Nearly the whole audience by now was watching the drama. Many were standing up and those behind them did not object, for no one was looking at the screen. Only the violins and the piano continued unheeding. The policeman conferred with one of the detectives, who shook his head. They looked round over the sea of indistinguishable pale faces turned toward them in the gloom, but could evidently make out nothing in the half light. Then they turned and went back to the entrance hall again, followed by scores of curious eyes.

Rezaire sat back in his chair revolving the new situation in his mind. As was his invariable custom he put his opponent's case before him. For the moment the police were baffled. They had tracked their quarry into the cinema and had traced them to the very seats into which they had been shown. But they were not there. Unless they had walked straight through the theater before the men were posted at the exits they must be there still; but the young man who had sat next them would have told them that they occupied the seats for a certain while and had not passed straight through. Hence it was certain that they were still in the cinema—somewhere among four or five hundred others. Thus far, Rezaire argued, would the police reason. From there, two courses were open, and he did not know which they would take. They could, on the one hand, see the manager, have the show stopped and the lights turned up, and then either conduct a search of every row of seats, or close all doors except one, and tell the audience to file out. That could only be done in the case of great emergency, because both the management and the audience would have to be compensated. The other course open to them would be to set a guard on every exit in order to see that their prey did not escape them and wait till the end of the performance.

Rezaire glanced over his shoulder again. He could see nothing, but he did not doubt that somewhere in the entrance hall the detectives were talking it over. They knew there was no great hurry for them; for the birds were almost certainly in the net, although they did not know exactly where.

He turned back again. At the exits he occasionally caught a glimpse of the men on guard. The audience had by now somewhat settled down once more. With the departure of the police from the auditorium, interest had re-centered on the screen. Sam, who had asked once or twice what they were going to do and had been told to keep quiet, was now silent and anxious. His sudden dependence on Rezaire's brain was in almost ludicrous contrast to his periodic outbursts of arrogance.

Rezaire, weighing the matter up, and noting that nothing had yet been done, was of opinion that the police were waiting to the end of the performance. It was now nearing the hour when the cinema would close, they were certain their quarry was in the net, and the wait would give them time to collect any help they needed.

Realizing this, he next turned the full power of his brain onto the solution of the problem. It had a two-armed solution, as he saw it; either how to get out without being captured, or, better still, how to get out without being seen. A moment's thought showed him that the future plans of his would-be captors depended very largely on the docility of the general public. The crowd would have to submit to scrutiny and regulation at each exit, or else be made to file out slowly by one exit only. This would only be possible if they behaved well. If they were aroused, amazed, or frightened the police would not be able to control them… His brain catching at the last word “frightened” suddenly leaped across the intervening space of reasoning to a possible solution of his problem. If the crowd was frightened, could be made to panic, then he and Sam, secure in their midst, possibly even unrecognized, could laugh at the police.

Rezaire smiled to himself. At last an idea, a wild one indeed, but perhaps feasible, had come into his head.

He turned to Sam and began to whisper.

CHAPTER X

ESCAPE

Sam, frankly incredulous at first, at last began to nod in dubious approbation as Rezaire's plan unfolded itself. After all he saw that beggars could not be choosers, that any plan was better than no plan at all, and that he could not think of a better.

“Can we do it by ourselves, do you think?” he asked.

“I don't know. We've got to try. Luckily there are several girls just in front of us. Once we start it well amongst them, it'll spread all right.”

“I wonder whether…”

“Well, you've got to
make
it go, Sam. Think what depends on it. Your neck'll certainly be stretched if this last hope doesn't come off, and it'll be over the Alps to the awful place for me.”

Sam grunted at the obviousness of this, and Rezaire resumed his rapid whispering.

Then slowly and stealthily they began the preparations for their desperate coup.

Reaching out underneath the seat, Rezaire secured a discarded newspaper and Sam a couple of programs which, with care and silence, they crumpled up and placed under the seat just in front of them. A scarf belonging to one of the three girls who sat in front was added to the pile, also the lining of Rezaire's new hat and some paper Sam had in his pockets. Finally they added the contents of all the boxes of matches they had on them and over this pile and over the plush of the seat in front, Rezaire poured the small amount of petrol from a cigarette lighter he had in his possession. They had to work very slowly and stealthily to avoid attracting their neighbors' attention, but they were helped by the fact that, at the moment, the interest of the film was nearing its climax. Unobserved by Rezaire, Sam, the more unscrupulous, to whom escape was a matter of life and death, adjusted the heap of material so that it lay against the flimsy dress of the girl just in front. On her and her two companions the brunt of the success depended. The fire itself would be nothing; the panic that they hoped to start was the main thing, for panic was more contagious and spread faster than fire itself.

Despite all their preparations it seemed, when done, even to Robinson, to be a very slender chance of escape. So little depended on what they could actually do themselves, and so much on good fortune, on what would happen when the matter was out of their hands. The more Rezaire considered it, the more it seemed that only colossal luck would help him, luck and the workings of those strange emotions latent in that science—crowd psychology—of which he knew so little. If once only he could start a real panic, no reason could quell it; it would burn of itself without further fuel, feeding, as all crowd panics feed, on suggestion, contagion, and imitation.

He bent over to Sam again and said: “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Mind you keep the scare going and stop anyone putting the fire out at the beginning.”

“Right.”

“Well,” resumed Rezaire coolly, “here's luck to us!”

He nonchalantly took a cigarette out of a case, produced a match-box with one match in it, which he had kept in reserve, and lighted the tobacco. Pausing a moment to see that the wood was burning well he deliberately dropped the match, as though intending to put his foot on it.

For a bare moment the little stick lay burning on the pile of material they had collected; for a bare moment Sam thought that it had failed and would go out. Then it ignited another unused match that lay next it, which went up with a flare and a sputter. The next second the petrol on the pile leaped into sudden life under the heat, the newspaper caught and next the cotton stuff of the girl's scarf. In the midst of it all, like miniature fireworks, the loose matches ignited in little spurts of flame.

At the same moment Rezaire and Sam jumped to their feet and shouted “Fire!” as loudly as they could. The voices rose above the orchestra; everyone's attention was snatched away from the screen by the one word which has such a magic power over the crowd mind. A man near Sam jumped up and shouted “Look out!” and a girl screamed.

The flames leaped up, but they were not very big. In the big hall of the cinema the fire looked very tiny. It seemed that one should warm one's hands at it rather than run away. Rezaire felt a sudden sense of unreality as he continued to shout “Fire!” and backed away from the blaze. He felt that no one was with him; that people were merely curious, startled, apprehensive,—anything but frightened. He did not experience the emotion of fear in himself and therefore it was doubly hard to communicate it to others. A man on his right, quick-witted, made a rush to put it out, but Rezaire got in his way, just as the man, cursing him for a fool, made to pass. Simultaneously the three girls just in front shrieked and jumped to their feet.

All this had taken but a few seconds. Hardly any had yet realized what had really happened. Nearly all were balanced on the knife edge of apprehension between fear and common sense. It was the psychological moment at which many a man with presence of mind has averted a panic. And in that moment the flames licked suddenly up to the petrol in the plush seat of the chair, and thence in a flash to the girl's dress, n ear which Sam had surreptitiously pushed the pile of material.

In that, second, what looked like being a farce, turned to real tragedy. The hungry flames enveloped the girl suddenly, and her screams rang out into the crowded cinema, screams of real terror and pain. Her two companions lost their heads and scrambled over the seats in front in a wild rush to get to the door. Many others took up Sam's and Rezaire's cries of “Fire!” and several women began to shriek. Someone turned the lights on at the back. Smoke drifted about the part of the auditorium where the fire had started. Individual movement to get away from the flames suddenly merged into general movement, helped by Rezaire and Sam. Several people near the exit ran out and an attendant, meaning well, suddenly flung wide the doors with a clatter. This sudden suggestive sound was the last straw. There was a sudden rush for all the exits; the screaming of women was heard above the noise. Sam and Rezaire keeping together pushed hard away from the fire, urging the crowd on. Rezaire, whose eyes were everywhere, saw one of the doorkeepers hurrying up with a fire extinguisher, and in the rush jostled it out of his hand. It fell on the floor where someone kicked the plunger so that it began to discharge a vicious stream of fluid among the ankles of the crowd, thus increasing the confusion.

Sam, callous and powerful, fought his way to one of the lower exits, eager to get out while the panic lasted, Rezaire following in his wake. The screams of the girl whose clothing was burning rang in their ears, and Rezaire felt a twinge of remorse. He had not intended that that should have happened, but—it had saved them. He realized in a flash how futile the results of his plan would have been, had it not been for that touch of real tragedy. Glancing over his shoulder as he pushed along behind Sam's bent shoulders, he saw through the drifting smoke a man trying to smother her burning dress with his coat.

Then for the next few minutes his individuality was swallowed up by the monster he had created. The real panic of the crowd communicated itself to him and he fought wildly with the rest, hoarsely shouting “Fire!” at intervals. The noise of screaming and shouting rose above all else. The pianist in an attempt to quell the tumult, was playing the National Anthem, but the chords could hardly be heard in the uproar. The film had stopped, suspended in mid-air. They were very near the door now. Would they get out before the panic died away as suddenly as it had begun?

They came to the doorway, close wedged in a struggling throng. Rezaire, getting control of himself once more, looked about for the police, but could see no sign of them. They had doubtless long ago been swept aside in the rush.

Somewhere behind he could hear a man shouting out: “It's all right; it's out,” and another “Pass out gently, please.” He raised his own voice in an attempt to prolong the panic: “The films have caught fire,” he heard himself shouting and then: “Celluloid! Celluloid!” The crowd struggled, paused, swayed, and struggled once more.

The night air struck cool upon his sweating forehead. He was outside. He was past the police. Still clutching the remains of his hat he disengaged himself from the crowd and ran directly across the road into the friendly obscurity of a shop doorway.

Here Sam joined him, and hidden in the gloom they watched the mingling of the two crowds, that which had collected in curiosity round the entrance, and that which was pouring out in terror—a fear, which turned quickly into a somewhat sheepish shame, as self-control returned on the heels of departing panic. Several women were sitting down outside the theater being attended to by friends; men were adjusting their clothing torn in the rush; an ambulance had rushed up; two reporters, note-books in hand, were questioning a group of men. Several policemen were in evidence, and an obvious plain-clothes man had already forced his way back to the door. Despite the panic they had been very lucky to have escaped observation.

Sam turned to Rezaire.

“Phew!” was all he said. “Of all the luck!”

“It might never have succeeded,” Rezaire found himself saying in a voice hoarse from shouting.

“It wouldn't have done, if I hadn't set that girl alight.”

“You set that…”

“Now, look here, Rezaire, less of this! It's all very well for you, but I've a noose round my neck. I'm not going to dance at the end of a rope just to save a girl's garters from being scorched.”

Rezaire looked at him in disgust, and then looked away. He had had enough of him. His only thought—and by now it was more of a burning desire—was how soon he could get rid of him, get him securely in the hands of the policemen and will his own safety. He looked at Sam again and said: “You haven't got a hat yet, Sam, you damn fool, and your face is bleeding again.”

“I got that in the empty house fighting to get you away!” retorted Sam.

“I don't care how you got it, but it'll give you away as sure as God made little apples. They've seen that cut, and every policeman in London I should think by now is looking for a man of your description, with a scar across his mug.”

Sam mopped the blood away from his face.

“Well, this is a damn silly place to start scrapping,” he said. “That ‘busy' over the road'll have us. What's our move now?”

“Jermyn Street. To my car—if I can rouse out the chauffeur. I wish to hell you'd got a hat.” Rezaire was tired and his nerves were frayed by all he had been through.

“Well, I haven't, so you can shut your bloody mouth! Now I want something to eat. What's the time?”

“Nearly ten-thirty. Theater crowds will be out now. May make it better for us or may make it worse. For God's sake, man,” he resumed querulously, “do something to that blood on your face.”

A man strolling past suddenly stopped in the doorway near them and in another moment entered into conversation. He was full of information and told them there had been a fire in the cinema opposite, also that there was some funny business on with the police.

“They're after someone, they say. Too late for it to be in the evening papers, but I was speaking to a constable and he tells me there's been a motor accident or somebody shot or something down the Strand. They're after the chaps that did it.”

Sam and Rezaire nodded unenthusiastically.

“Hope they get them,” went on the man sententiously, and Rezaire, a little of his old spirit returning, agreed vigorously.

“This sort of thing ought to be stopped,” he said in determined fashion.

“In London, too, of all places,” went on the other. “That's all right for Paris and them foreign parts, but here no! Hullo! Hurt yourself, Mister?”

“Just a cut,” said Sam sullenly.

“Ah, nasty things, cuts,” he resumed volubly, “if they're not looked after. Get blood-poisoning.”

He stayed talking for two or three minutes longer and then went off.

“What do you make of that?” asked Sam suspiciously.

“Oh, nothing behind it. But it just shows how conspicuous your face is. If a bobby sees you like that he'll stop you at once on suspicion.”

“Well, I'm doing the best I can with it,” growled Sam. “I can't help it.”

“We'd better move on now. Things seem to have blown over.”

The crowd had certainly drifted away. The side doors of the cinema were being bolted. A policeman or two still hovered round the entrance, and Rezaire guessed that the place had been thoroughly searched, despite the fact that it was fairly obvious the birds had got away in the first panic. He wondered whether they attributed the fire to him or to accident. If to him, it would make them realize, he thought proudly, that they were up against someone with brains for once. He felt very pleased with himself. He had outwitted them all so far—even with the handicap of Sam's companionship. Sam! He began to think about Sam again. The matter wanted a lot of thinking over. He was only waiting his opportunity now, and then—if it could be arranged—the police would lay their hands on Sam and not on him. But he must be very, very sure they got Sam.

With some trepidation he hailed a taxi and they got in without mishap.

“Down to Piccadilly Circus Tube and wait there,” he ordered.

At Piccadilly he got out and, followed by Sam, handkerchief to face, was swallowed up in the crowds in an instant. He was making for the lavatory. A wash and a brush up were absolutely essential. His ragged clothes and general dirtiness made him very conspicuous.

A few moments later they emerged, but looking fairly respectable once more, despite the fact that Sam had not a hat.

They got into the taxi and drove off again, Rezaire telling the man to drive into St. James' Park. He wanted time to think out his next move. Despite the fact that he was once more free, he knew that he must go very carefully. The news would have long ago been circulated to the police centers, and also by them to the principal ports and stations, for he gave the police credit for guessing that criminals of his type would have made arrangements for a flight to the continent. But they did not know of his motor launch and, though they might watch the stations, they did not know of his car. He had laid his plans well, and even despite the handicap he had been forced to shoulder, he was slowly working his way to success.