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.
‘You don’t!’ shrieked Esmeralda, off-key and hysterical. ‘He was my lover!’
*
They locked and bolted every fire exit up to the ninth floor, and when they were there they took the added precaution of levering open the elevator doors and wedging them with a long gilt settee. The elevators had been switched off by now, but they just wanted to make sure that the furious mob downstairs didn’t get them working again.
‘Listen to that,’ said Kenneth Garunisch, leaning over the open elevator shaft.
Dr. Petrie listened. From the first floor, there was a sound like strange trolls at the bottom of an echoing drain – screams and hoots and cries.
‘Did you ever see The Third Man?’ said Garunisch. ‘You remember the scene at the top of the Ferris Wheel? When they looked down at the people below, like dots, and Harry Lime says something like – “would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving for ever?” Well, what would you say if one of those animals down there stopped screaming? Maybe Gaines was right. When it comes down to it, just show me one American who gives
