Part 9 (2/2)

”Let go, Dimmick-don't be a fool, let go-let go!”

Arthur shoved. Dimmick's eyes flared with rage as he struck Arthur's legs out from under him with his stick.

”Eh? Shaw?” Dimmick crouched over him, his stick at Arthur's throat. ”Was it you, then? Sneaking about-was it you? You working for them, are you, Shaw?”

”Dimmick, I-”

”I'll kill you first, you little-”

Vaz's face appeared behind Dimmick's shoulder, as Vaz lifted up his leg and brought his foot down with great force on the back of Dimmick's neck.

Dimmick grunted, fell on top of Arthur, rolled off, swore, bounced back up, and had his stick at Vaz's throat almost at once-almost before Vaz's foot had touched the ground again.

”Eh? You in it with him? Hey? Hup.”

Dimmick's head snapped forward into Vaz's nose. A gush of fresh blood covered them both.

”Up, up! I'll gi' you a-”

Arthur stood, swaying.

He'd been good at boxing at school. His old lessons came back to him; he squared up to Dimmick and threw a punch, which Dimmick effortlessly evaded. Dimmick grunted and turned to shove Arthur so hard that his feet left the floor. Arthur fell through the open door and landed on his back, sliding across the dusty floorboards of the dark room until he hit his head on the leg of someone's abandoned desk.

When Arthur woke he was lying on his back in an empty Room. He didn't know how much time had pa.s.sed. Not more than a minute or two, he supposed; but that might as well be an eternity. He was alone. Smoke hung thickly from the ceiling and it was agony to breathe. The corridor he'd come from was fire-lit. He got to his feet and staggered across the Room to the other door and out into yet another corridor, which was dark. He navigated with a hand on the wall, his eyes closed. He saw Josephine's face in the dark before him. She was still, she said nothing, and he could think of nothing to say to her, except for the obvious things.

When he opened his eyes again there was light. The corridor ahead of him was on fire. Beams had fallen to block it. On the other side of the fallen beams he saw a man approaching.

It was Mr Irving, the Master of Rooms 12, 13, et cetera. His suit in tatters, his face streaked with soot, his eyes red. Under his arm he carried a number of ledgers. Despite his sorry condition he stood straight and seemed remarkably calm.

”Hey there!” Arthur called. He waved, then started coughing. ”Hey! Irving!”

Mr Irving approached the obstruction. He peered through the flames and smoke and nodded to Arthur as if making a note of his tardiness.

”Irving!” A croak, unintelligible. Feeble.

Mr Irving put the ledgers down on the floor, and held up a hand for Arthur to be silent. He seemed to be thinking.

It looked as if the corridor behind Irving was also blocked by fire. The man was trapped, but he showed no fear. Mr Irving's calm was in its own way as unnerving as Dimmick's fury.

”Irving!” Arthur wasn't sure what he meant to say. Go back was futile, help me was futile.

Mr Irving reached out to move the fallen beams from his path. Instantly his sleeves caught fire and the skin of his hands reddened and swelled and blackened and cracked. He didn't flinch or retreat. Arthur had never seen such extraordinary self-control. Irving leaned in, shoving at the timbers. His s.h.i.+rt went up. He didn't make a sound. Arthur reached out to help him but the heat drove him back. Irving pressed forward. His hair went up with a sudden flash. He stumbled. The beams were too heavy, jammed so that he couldn't move them. Arthur looked away as he fell to the ground.

Arthur turned and staggered back the way he'd come.

Josephine, my dear, he thought to himself, I think I am going mad. I think I have already gone mad. As a matter of fact, I don't see how I can go much madder.

Set aside the mystery of Irving's superhuman calm. Where had he come from? From his office, perhaps, where some of the men imagined that he slept. Perhaps the fire had woken him. But his office was just outside Room 13. If that was Irving, and if Irving had perished in the vicinity of his office, then Arthur had run in a circle.

There was a dumbwaiter hatch on the wall. Arthur wiped his eyes again, and saw that it was labelled D. He tried to remember what the hatch outside Room 13 had been labelled.

Then he let out a great roar of joy, and he threw himself forward and flung up the hatch.

Behind it was a rope, and a chute into which he was just about able to squeeze once he'd abandoned his coat. His s.h.i.+rt tore at the shoulders, and his elbows sc.r.a.ped and bled as he squeezed his way with frantic violence up the chute. He supposed he must have resembled an overgrown chimney-sweep-a chimney-sweep who'd indulged in one of Alice's potions and now found himself swelling, stretching, his head fit to burst! He felt dizzy. He thought he might be stuck. Smoke tickled his feet. He kicked and bellowed.

The hatch at the top of the chute opened onto a dark corridor on the building's second floor.

The second floor of Gracewell's building had no rooms, no workers. So far as Arthur knew it held nothing except storage rooms. Perhaps the bell-ropes led there, too.

The corridor ran all the way to a window, which he broke. It opened onto fresh cold air and an expanse of flat rooftop.

At the end of the rooftop he lowered himself down then dropped to the ground. He stumbled away as far as he could before he came to a fence. He leaned on it, heaving and retching.

Behind him Gracewell's building was ablaze. h.e.l.lish flames reflected out over the river. A crowd had gathered in the firelight. He couldn't make out who they were. Workers who'd escaped the fire, he supposed, or neighbours who'd come out to watch the blaze.

He didn't join them. Dimmick might be among them, and he had no desire to see Dimmick again.

He breathed in freezing air and winced. His throat was in agony and he thought he might have a broken rib. His head was still ringing. His legs wobbled.

Vaz and Harriot and Malone had either escaped Dimmick and got out, or not. Nothing he could do about it now.

He wanted to go home. He wanted to see Josephine again.

He walked all the way back to Rugby Street, barefoot and bleeding through the cold night-dead beat and staggering and half-frozen. All the way home he thought of Josephine. He thought of the warm and boozy offices of The Monthly Mammoth. He thought of his uncle George, and his friends Waugh and Heath, and he even spared a few fond thoughts for his foster-parents, who were not such bad sorts after all; he would write to them, he thought. He thought of hot coffee, and curried rabbit, and bacon, and sausages, and oxtail, and kidneys, and fried fish, and hot pea soup, and ragout of lamb-and sometimes he thought of Dimmick, or Irving, or whatever had happened to Mr Vaz, and shuddered.

He got to Rugby Street shortly before dawn. In his exhaustion, it didn't strike him as at all odd that instead of his own home, he'd come to Mr Borel's shop, and Josephine's flat above it. Where else would he go? He banged on the door until Borel came out clutching his broom, and Josephine came downstairs to meet him.

She clapped a hand to her mouth in shock.

”Arthur! Where were you? What happened? What happened to your moustache-Arthur, what on earth happened to your shoes?”

He swept her up in his arms, lifting her bodily from the floor, and kissed her. She smelled extraordinarily sweet.

His knees started to wobble, and he put her down again. He saw that his hands had left streaks of blood and ash on her face and on her dress. He noticed that she was fully dressed, though it was the small hours of the morning, and briefly wondered why.

”Arthur-”

His legs seemed about to give out entirely.

”There was a fire,” he said. ”I handled myself tolerably well, I think. I shall tell you about it one day, but now I think I should go to bed.”

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