Where There’s Smoke

Chapter Thirty-Three “Fire! Fire!!!!”

The M.P. at the door of the recreation hall tapped a gloved finger against his lips in warning. “We’re on the air,” he murmured. “Sit in back.”

Music blared at them when they went in.

“Goodness!” Ollie whispered in astonishment at the row after row of quiet, intent men in their maroon coveralls, with their arms in splints, or their legs in casts — a good many in wheel chairs. “There must be hundreds.”

“Place holds close to a thousand.” Pedley walked swiftly down a side aisle, toward the apron of the shallow stage at the far end of the hall.

Wes Toleman was at the microphone, his face tilted up like that of a child awaiting a kiss. He waved toward the wings. Leila came out. The roar of cheers, whistles, and wolf-calls drowned out the handclapping, the pounding of canes and crutches on the floor. They followed her every movement as she swayed gracefully to the mike, raising her hand in smiling salute. The great hall became quiet except for the singing surge of the strings.

Pedley saw Shaner squatting on the floor at the end of the first row; jerked an imperative thumb at him.

The brasses softened; the rhythm section brought up the beat. Cliff Etting flicked his white wand at Leila. She threw her head back to flex her throat muscles, pushed the bronze helmet of hair back from her head, began to sing:

She had a marvelous sense of rhythm, Pedley realized. And she was one of those entertainers who somehow manage that magical rapport with an orchestra that makes every musician work with her, for her. The piano was just loud enough so she couldn’t go wrong in pitch, the strings came in with exactly the right staccato, the bull fiddle delayed smoothly on the afterbeat.

Wounded men strained forward in their seats; tension disappeared from haggard faces, lips hung loose, a thousand pairs of eyes devoured her. She had that same magical effect on all audiences — the hall was surcharged with the intensity of her appeal.

She’s something more than a blues singer with a freak larynx that makes her voice husky over the mike, the marshal told himself. She may not be a coloratura but she’s something better, to these vets.

He thought of the way Walt Whitman had put it; it fitted this girl up there on the big stage as nothing else could:

She’s what they haven’t had, he reminded himself — What a lot of them may never have again, except through her. With that figure, those warm lips and friendly eyes, these men wouldn’t care what she’d been or done — not while that voice brought back the memories and held the promise.

Shaner whispered close to his ear, “She ain’t been out of my sight longer than to change her clothes, skipper. Everything’s strictly under control.”

“I hope to God you know what you’re talking about. Who’s in there?” He indicated the makeshift control room, improvised out of wallboard and Plastiglas at one side of the stage; at the angle Pedley was standing, he couldn’t see anything of the booth but a glare.

“There are Three Musketeers cooped up in there with the engineer, coach. Ross and a bird everyone calls Chuck — plus a silver-haired gent with a bandage on his chops.”

“Chuck’s the producer. The other’s their lawyer. Where’s the hospital patrol?”

“I run across a corp’ral who’s been giving the up and down to the sand buckets and the sprinklers and the hoserolls. You want him?”

“Quick. Where is he? Backstage?”

“He was. You got to crawl through the orchestra.”

“Snap it up.”

The hall was a natural draftmaker. Big floor space, high-vaulted composition roof, wartime construction with the beams and girders insufficiently fireproofed. Wood floors. Wood sash. The place would go up like a box of matches. A lot of good those red globes and EXIT diagrams would do if it ever caught.

And there were no steel fire shutters to keep a blaze from spreading horizontally to other buildings, he noticed. He was glad he’d notified the nearby Richmond companies to get “on the box” — be ready to roll at a split second’s notice.

They went Indian file, stooping over, behind the percussion instruments to a tiny door under the stage apron. Above them the voice throbbed on:

“Good grief!” Olive murmured, as they passed into the dimness below stage. “Does she have to sing that?”

They came up out of the half-light into the wings. A group of coveralled men huddled behind the heavy glass-fiber curtain. One wore khaki, with chevrons on the arm.

Shaner sss-ed, “Hey, Corp. Fire Marshal wants you.”

The corporal resented the interruption. “Whatsamatter, Chief?”

“Sprinkler system all right?”

“Yeah. Anything—?”

“Tested the down pipes from your roof tank?”

“They ain’t frozen, if that’s what you’re getting at.” The soldier opened his eyes very wide at Olive.

Pedley said, “You feel her lately?”

“Howzat?”

“Have you felt the walls?” Pedley strode toward the rear drop, turned to look out across the stage and up at the line of bulbs under the proscenium. The illumination which beat down on the singer’s bronze hair wasn’t clear and sharp; it quivered like sunlight over a midsummer pavement. “Hot air up there, buddy. Making the lights shimmy. Better feel her.”

“Sure it’s hot. We keep the steam high on account of our patients.”

Pedley said sharply, “You wouldn’t know if the seat of your pants was burning! Shaner. Take the east wall.” He didn’t wait for his deputy to begin; moved swiftly along the west wall, passing his hands over the calcimined plaster.

The plaster beneath his palms became suddenly cooler. Was there some burrowing flame back there under the floor somewhere?

He sniffed. The strong hospital odor of ether and formalin — but no smoke. Maybe he’d been jittery for nothing.

No! He’d turned the corner, was working across behind the backdrop. The wall here was warm!

Sweat moistened his forehead — not from the heat.

There was something more than radiation from steam pipes, here. The varnish on the woodwork was sticky!

He didn’t hurry as he went out onto the stage, crossed to the control room. Any sign of panic, now, might be worse than a blaze.

Gaydel swung around from his campstool, scowled.

“Now, what?”

“Call Toleman,” Pedley said easily. “Want an announcement over the mike.”

Ross cried, “This isn’t a rehearsal, you dimwit! We’re on the air. You can’t break up a network broadcast—”

“You’ll break it up. There’s a fire backstage, here, somewhere.”

Amery’s stool clattered to the floor. “I don’t see—”

“Neither do I. But it’s here. Get Toleman. Get him quick.”

Gaydel hesitated. Leila was just going into the final chorus of “Chloe.” The heavy beat of the drums was building up to a climax. Maybe another half-minute wouldn’t make any difference; maybe it wasn’t anything serious; maybe—

Pedley gauged the producer’s indecision, made his decision.

He went out of the control room, strolled casually to the microphone, put a hand on Leila’s arm. She half-turned, without missing a phrasing. Consternation was clear in her eyes.

He pulled her back from the microphone, as Toleman glared, started toward him from the wing.

“You’ll want to lynch me for cutting into the performance,” he said into the mike, “but we’ll have to call it off, temporarily. There’s been an accident—” he made it purposely obscure — “there’ll be rain checks. Everybody out, now.” He gestured with his open hand to the substitute orchestra leader to keep on playing.

Toleman pawed at him. Pedley brushed him aside. He cut across to the corporal. “Pull your box. Then tell your em-pees to get these boys out of here, fast.”

The corporal ran.

Pedley used sign language to Shaner, across the stage. He held both hands at his side as if gripping a rifle, then pantomimed as if he were suddenly shooting the rifle into the ground. Shaner nodded, hurried for the nearest wall rack holding an extinguisher.

The movement toward the exits began reluctantly. Not more than a third of the invalids were on their feet. None of the wheel-chair cases had spun themselves around to head for the doors. A few veterans were filtering out. The aisles were slowly beginning to fill up. Maybe it would be all right, if they would only move a little faster. They might all get out in time.

He saw the smoke. No larger than the trailing plume from a cigarette, at first. It drifted aimlessly up from the staircase they had used to climb from below-stage. Before he could reach the top of the steps, it had become a gray funnel a foot wide.

Then the cry of “Fire! FIRE!!!!”