'Fun my ass,' growled Glantz. 'I'll be lucky to come out of this alive.'
It took them twenty minutes to reach street level. The lobby was wide, spacious and glossy, with a veined black marble floor and walls clad in smokey mirrors. There were luxuriant potted palms, and a lingering scent of expensive perfumes.
The front doors of Concorde Tower were of thick tinted glass, and almost fifty feet wide. The initials CT were engraved in the glass in elegant Palace script. There was a set of inner doors of the same heavy glass, but they hadn't been fitted with the same security locks as the outer ones, and they probably weren't capable of holding an angry mob back for very long.
Dr. Petrie held Adelaide's arm. Outside the front-doors, pressed against the glass like distorted creatures in a gloomy vivarium, was a crowd of almost a hundred people. They screamed soundlessly at the building super and his five uniformed security men, who stood nervous but unmoving with billy-clubs in their hands. The crowd's fists pounded against the armoured windows. They were trying to break them with bricks and hammers and chunks of loose rubble, but so far they had only succeeded in cracking two of the doors, and badly scratching a third.
Kenneth Garunisch went over to Jack, the superintendent, 'How long do you think those doors can keep 'em out?'
'It's hard to tell,' said the super. He tried to keep his eyes averted from the men and women who were shrieking insults and obscenities at them from only inches away, their faces and hands squashed white and flat against the glass.
'A couple of hours? A day? How long?' prodded Garunisch.
The super shrugged. 'It depends. I've seen a few of 'em go down. I guess they got the plague out there pretty bad. But there's always more. What I'm worried about is if they find a tow-truck, and get a chain through those door-handles.'
'All right, Jack,' said Garunisch. 'If it looks like they are going to get in, don't hang around to fight 'em off. They won't be feeling very friendly towards you, so hightail it to the stairs and lock the fire door. Then keep climbing those stairs until you reach the first occupied floor — that's seven, isn't it? — and lock the fire doors all the way.'
'Okay, sir. I got you.'
Ivor Glantz came across to Dr. Petrie and touched his arm. For some reason, he was looking pale.
'Are you okay?' asked Dr. Petrie. 'You look a little sick. Is your heart all right?'
'I thought I saw someone,' whispered Ivor Glantz. 'Someone I know — out there.'
'Out there?' said Adelaide. 'Maybe it was someone who usually lives here, and they've been trying to get back in.'
Ivor Glantz shook his head. He left Dr. Petrie and Adelaide and walked towards the glass doors of Concorde Tower like a man who has seen a vision. Only a foot away from him, the silently-shrieking crowd were thumping harder and harder at the windows, and knocking chips of glass away with hammers and bricks.
Dr. Petrie was horrified and fascinated at the same time. Ivor Glantz stood there staring at the crowd, his arms hanging limply by his side, while the crowd were furiously howling and shrieking and battering at the glass.
Esmeralda suddenly said, 'Oh, my God.'
Dr. Petrie turned. 'What is it?' he asked her. 'What's wrong?'
'Oh, my God,' breathed Esmeralda. 'Just look.'
Right in the forefront of the shrieking crowd was a tall pale man with a bandage around his arm. He was staring at Ivor Glantz wild-eyed, and shaking his head from side to side in almost epileptic fear. The sight of this man had transfixed Ivor Glantz, and he seemed incapable of moving.
'It's Sergei Forward!' said Esmeralda. 'It's the Finnish man that father's been fighting in court! Oh, my God, they've got to let him in!'
Dr. Petrie took her arm, 'They can't. If they open those doors just an inch, then we won't stand a chance. They'll all get in. They'll kill us.'
'But don't you see,' said Esmeralda. 'If we let Sergei Forward in, he can help Pappa with his work! We could finish it in days instead of weeks! Pappa desperately needs help — and look, Sergei Forward could do it!'
Esmeralda ran over to her step-father, but Ivor Glantz turned away as if he hadn't even seen her. He walked unsteadily back to Dr. Petrie, and held out his hand.
'Professor Glantz?' said Dr. Petrie.
Ivor Glantz said, 'Give me a rifle.'
Dr. Petrie held back. 'I'm sorry, Professor.'
Glantz reached out and twisted the automatic weapon out of Dr. Petrie's grasp. His eyes were bright and feverish, and he almost seemed to be snuffling in rage.
'Professor Glantz — you can't do that! Professor Glantz!'
Dr. Petrie tried to snatch Ivor Glantz's sleeve, but Glantz pulled away, and he waved the rifle towards him.
'Get away!' he said harshly. 'Just get away!'
He turned back towards the window, and raised the rifle in his hands. The people who were pressed against the glass could see what he was going to do, but there was such a crush of people behind them that they couldn't escape. They simply opened their mouths in fear and screamed soundless screams. Sergei Forward appeared to be paralyzed with terror, and he could only stand there and watch, his hands pressed against the glass, as Ivor Glantz aimed at his face from only two or three inches away.
'Christ!' bellowed Garunisch. 'Stop him! Someone stop him!'
Jack the super made a half-hearted attempt at a football tackle, but Glantz stepped back and smacked him away. Before anyone else could move, he had lifted the rifle again and fired into the glass.
The whole door collapsed outwards in huge slices. Nearly quarter of a ton of reinforced glass sheared into hands, faces, upraised arms, and broke on the ground outside with a horrific flat ringing sound.
The shrieking of the crowd filled the lobby with hideous noise — cries of pain and terror, and cries of frustrated fury. They flooded into the reception area trampling over dead and dying bodies, and Ivor Glantz was swept away like a man carried out to sea.
'Back to the stairs!' bellowed Kenneth Garunisch. 'Back to the stairs!'
Dr. Petrie seized Adelaide and Esmeralda by the hand, and pulled them towards the emergency stairs. Kenneth Garunisch pushed them hurriedly through, and Herbert Gaines, whimpering in fright, followed after. Nicholas was hitting at a bloody-faced vagrant with his baseball bat, and just managed to push him away and duck through the door to the stairs before a mob of screaming men reached him, waving clubs and knives. Kenneth Garunisch slammed the door, locked it, and dropped the bolt across it. They heard the crowd bang up against the other side like an avalanche.
'Pappa!' cried Esmeralda. 'Where's Pappa?'
Kenneth Garunisch reached out and held her arm. 'Miss Baxter, it was no good. I couldn't keep the door open any longer.'
'You mean he's still — '
'He wouldn't have felt very much, believe me.'
'He's still out there? You mean he's still out there?'
'Miss Baxter, it was his own fault! If he hadn't fired that shot!'
'They'll kill him!' screamed Esmeralda, in an almost unbearably high-pitched voice. 'They'll kill him!'
Kenneth Garunisch said to Adelaide, 'Please — take her upstairs will you? We have to get out of here and lock all these fire doors.'
'You have to let me through!' said Esmeralda. 'I have to get him out of there!'
Garunisch stood firm. 'Miss Baxter, it's impossible.'
'I demand that you let me through!' insisted Esmeralda, suddenly haughty.
Kenneth Garunisch shook his head. 'Come on, Miss Baxter, let's just get out of here.'
Esmeralda glared furiously for a moment, but then her face softened and collapsed with anguish.
'Oh, God!' she sobbed. 'It's my fault! Oh God, it's all my fault! He was so good, you don't even understand!'
'We understand,' said Herbert Gaines, consolingly.
