Prelude for War Read Free Page B

in the end room
on the left—that window there.”
    Simon looked.
    The room was at the end of
the house which was burning most fiercely—the end close to which the fire had
probably started. Under it, the ground floor
looked like an open furnace through which the draught from
the open windows and the open front door was driving
flame in long roaring streamers. The end upper
window was about fifteen feet from the ground, and there
was no way of reaching it from outside without a ladder.
    The fat little man was
wringing his hands.
    “He can’t still be
there,” he wailed. “He must have heard the
alarm—— ”
    “Suppose he got the
wind up and fainted or something?” suggested the large young man in the
striped pajamas help fully.
    Simon almost hit him.
    “Do you know where
there’s a ladder, you amazing oaf?” he demanded.
    The young man blinked at
him dumbly. Nobody else answered. They all seemed
to be in a fog.
    Simon swung round to
Patricia.
    “Do what you can,
darling,” he said.
    He turned away, and for a
moment the others seemed to be held petrified.
    “Stop him,”
bleated the little fat man suddenly. “For God’s
sake, stop him! It’s suicide!”
    “Hey!” bellowed the puce-faced
militarist commandingly. “Comeback!”
    The queenly woman screeched indistinguishably
and col lapsed again,
    Simon Templar heard none
of these things. He was half way across the lawn by that
time, racing grimly towards the house.
    3
    The heat from the hall
struck him like a physical blow as he plunged through the front door; the air
scorched his lungs like a gust from a red-hot oven. At the far end of the hall long sheets of flame were sweeping greedily
up a huge pair of velvet curtains.
Smaller flames were dancing over a rug
and leaping with fiercer eagerness up the blackening banisters of a wide staircase. The paint on the
broad beams crossing the high
ceiling was bubbling and boiling under the heat, and occasionally small drops of it fell in a scalding rain to take
hold of new sections of the floor.
    The Saint hardly checked
for an instant before he went on. He dodged across the
hall like a flitting shadow and leapt up the stairs four
at a time. Fire from the banisters snatched at him as he went up, stung his
nostrils with the smell of his own
scorching clothes.
    On the upper landing the
smoke was thicker. It made his eyes smart and filled
his throat with coughing; his heart was hammering with
a dull force that jarred his ribs; he felt an iron band
tightening remorselessly around his temples. He stared blearily down the
corridor which led in the direction he had to go.
Halfway along it great gouts of flame were starting up
from the floor boards, waving like monstrous flowers
swaying in a blistering wind. It could only
be a matter of seconds before the whole passage would plunge
down into the incandescent inferno below.
    The Saint went on.
    It was not so much a
deliberate effort as a yielding to instinctive
momentum. He had no time to think about being heroic—or
about anything else, for that matter. In that broiling
nightmare a second’s hesitation might have been fatal.
But he had set out to do something, knowing what it
might mean; and so long as there was any hope of doing it
his only idea was to go on. He kept going with nothing to
carry him on but the epic drive of a great heart that had never known what it was to turn back for the threat of danger.
    He came out in a clear
space on the other side of the flames, beating the sparks
from his sleeves and trousers. Open doors and glimpses of
disordered beds on either side of the passage showed where various rooms had
been has tily vacated; but the door of the room
at the very end was closed. He fell on the handle and
turned it.
    The door was locked.
    He thundered on it with
fists and feet.
    “Kennet!” he
shouted. “Kennet, wake up!”
    His voice was a mere harsh
croak that was lost in the hoarse roar of the fire. It
brought no answer from behind the door.
    He