halt; the doors whooshed quietly open.
Krost looked out on hell.
Beyond the elevator doors was a solid furnace of flames filling the corridor, black streaks of oily smoke boiling through the sheets of fire. He stared in horror for a second, then frantically hit the “close” button; at the same moment the flames roared into the cage. The blast of heat struck him just as he started to inhale; the air was like hot lead pouring into his lungs. Then, abruptly, there was no more sensation.
The elevator doors oscillated back and forth; the smoke billowed past the electric eye beam holding them open.
Krost tried to scream but there was no air in the dried sacs that had been his lungs. He felt the skin of his cheekbones and nose blistering, his eyelids and lips swelling.
Thick mucus started to dribble from his nostrils.
He pressed the buttons on the control panel one more time, then started pawing at his blinded eyes with swelling hands as his hair and eyebrows burst into flame. He turned his back to the holocaust and sank to the bottom of the elevator, curling up into a ball of agony.
The back of his workshirt and pants browned, then blackened, but Krost no longer felt the heat or the pain of the blisters.
His last memory was that the little girl’s name was Bonnie and he had been very fond of her.
CHAPTER 35
Lex Hughes reached into the last cash drawer, deliberately ignoring the smaller bills and concentrating on the twenties. The brief case on the work ledge just below the drawers was already bulging. He had lost count of how much he had stuffed into it in his haste to skim the cream from the drawers, but he estimated he had at least thirty thousand dollars in twenties and fifties.
He debated taking tens and grabbed a banded stack of bills but the brief case could barely be closed as it was.
Finally, he took the bills and the brief case into the outer office, slipped into his suit coat, and stuck the bundle of tens in his inner pocket. Then he paused for a moment in indecision. There were negotiable securities in the vault, but these could be traced.
Besides, there was no way to carry them; the case was full. Well, thirty thousand dollars wasn’t a fortune, but he could disappear and start a new life with it. He could buy a small business, and with careful management he could spend the rest of his years in reasonable comfort.
He left the brief case on a table and walked back into the vault area, slowly swinging the huge door closed. He automatically spun the tumblers and stepped back. Then the thought struck him that he should have left it open.
If the fire penetrated this far, it could well destroy all evidence of his theft. Well, too late to think of that now; it probably didn’t matter anyway. Once out of the building, by morning he would be far away.
He buttoned his coat and clutched the brief case in one hand. It Was heavy, he thought, satisfyingly heavy. He hurried down the aisle of desks. At the corridor door, he paused, sniffing the air. Even with the door closed, he could smell the thick, resinous smoke oozing under the door. Alarmed, he glanced at his watch. He had spent a valuable twenty minutes in the vault; the fire may have spread too fast.
He took a breath, braced himself, and opened the door. The corridor was thick with smoke. He coughed as s eyes began to sting.
Fearfully he wondered if he had delayed too long. No, the smoke wasn’t that thick yet.
He could hold his breath and make it to the elevator bank. Then he saw figures moving through the smoke and realized he had, indeed, delayed too long. The firemen had already reached this floor.
Quietly, he closed the door, leaving it open by only a crack.
Voices came from the stairwell; he could see that the stairwell door was open.
More figures labored through it, three of them lugging a thick hose that dribbled water. They got as far as the elevator bank and knelt down; the one in the lead opened the nozzle and a hard column of water at full force gushed forward. The firemen were directing it at the far end of the hall.
Hughes hesitated, then opened the door. Now he could take a quick look around the door, hopefully without being seen. The very far end of the hall was already wrapped in flames.
He backed inside the door, still leaving it open a hair.
A wave of fear constricted his chest. He had waited too long, much too long. There was no chance of getting to the elevators now without being seen and the stairwells Were out. He could simply walk out-but not with a brief case full of money. It depended on how much confusion there was in the lobby below. But it was risky, much too risky.
Somebody was bound to be suspicious.
He slowly closed the door until it latched, feeling the terrible disappointment. His grand theft had ended before it had even really begun. He turned and walked slowly back down the aisle. There was nothing to do but return the money and go out into the corridor, empty-handed.
The authorities might be curious as to what had taken him so long in fleeing the building, but they would never know of the bulging brief case. He stopped at the vault door, feeling suddenly ill.
He had locked it, he remembered. If it had been an ordinary lock, he could have worked the combination and reopened it, slipping the bundles of bills back into the proper drawers. But the lock was a time lock; he had set it so the vault couldn’t be opened until eight o’clock the following Monday morning.
There wasn’t much he could do, he thought. He sank into a chair in resignation. Suddenly the lights began to flicker; abruptly they went out, leaving him in darkness.
The fire must have cut the electricity, he thought. Well, he would just sit there until they found him-found him and the incriminating brief case. The fire probably wouldn’t get to him now since the firemen were on the scene. He coughed and amended the thought; the smoke might get thick enough that he would have to get out, leaving the case behind. He would get away with his life but he would still have to flee. Everyone knew that he and Carolyn were working late; she would tell the police that he had been the last one there with the vault door still open.
The camera itself would have recorded that and the security men would know.
There was one chance, he thought suddenly. Most fires didn’t last too long. When the firemen had left and the lobbies below would be relatively empty, he might make it.
It was still risky but there was a chance. He might then make it down the stairwells to the lower lobby or the garage floor and then simply walk out.
He sat back in his chair and waited with rising hopes, ignoring the dead Eye overhead that no longer saw anything.
CHAPTER 36
Barton fought his way into the lobby past milling tenants.
Firemen grimly pushed through to the elevator banks while a scattering of policemen ineffectually tried to bring order out of confusion. The lobby itself had changed drastically from when he had seen it a few hours before. Salvage covers, spread over the marble floor, were now slick with dirty water and lumps of melting ice. The chill air of the lobby held the faint, acid odor of something burning Against the far wall by the doors to the bank, an ambulance team was bending over a stretcher’ covering the figure on it with an army blanket. Barton stared for a moment before he realized what it meant.
He could not tell whether it was a tenant or a fireman.
A few feet away two young parents held a sobbing boy while farther on, a woman cried hysterically, ignored by everyone around her. Only the crackling of a radio communication system cut through the general babble. He searched the crowd, finally locating several firemen standing by a comm system they had set up in the lobby cigar stand.
Barton hurriedly threaded his way over.
“Who’s in charge of the operations here?”
One of the firemen looked at him curiously. “Who are you, Mac?”
