Her bag connected with a solid something.
"Jesus Christ!" hissed a voice that was neither man nor woman, neither brute nor human. Jesssusss Chrissst. The caller! No face to recognize, only a burlap-sack mask over the head, glaring at her as expressionlessly as Freddie Kreuger's sinister hockey mask.
Temple's left hand was digging in her bag for the big brass ring and came up with keys bristling between every knuckle.
A strong hand grabbed the bag from her grasp, but she had ducked to the floor and now she felt with her right hand until it closed over a smooth wooden pin--one of the table legs.
She struck again at the shadow closing on her. Struck for the side of the neck and the carotid artery underneath the thin skin. Hit right, hit hard enough, and cause instant unconsciousness.
The impact jolted her arm and shoulder, even as she lurched to her braced feet. Matt would disapprove of the incapacitating high heels, but she hadn't had time to lose the shoes. She did now. The dark form had crumpled to the floor. She bent and snatched off her shoes, then glanced at the dressing table. It had flared again. The mirror, framed in
tangerine curlicues, reflected a faint image of her own figure, her face haloed by wildly disheveled red curls. She resembled a barbecued cherub. This fire was getting too hot for her to handle, even with a rag rug.
She stepped toward the door.
A hand closed around her ankle.
Temple gave. Fell, still facing the half-open door with the trunk against it.
She turned and kicked out both stocking feet, as hard as she could, then leaned inward and struck out with the table leg, again and again, until it met resistance, until it knocked on bone and her ankle was free.
She scrabbled away, eeled out the door.
In the distance, someone screamed and kept on screaming.
She was sure it wasn't her. She was running downstairs in the dark, feeling soft, furred forms fleeing at her passage, like fish in an unlit tropical sea.
Oh, poor kitties!
The screaming grew louder and sounded like a siren.
She was at the bottom of the stairs when she heard their top echo to soft-thudding feet descending in a staccato beat.
Then she tripped. On level ground, and she tripped over another of those cursed rag rugs. She pushed it away, but it was heavy and . . . warm . . . and heaving and scratching.
The big front door heaved, too, and then groaned as something hit it from without. A few more crashing blows and solid wood splintered like veneer. The door broke open, swinging against the wall on screaming hinges. More horror show effects: huge, clumsy figures filled the opening, backlit by lurid red.
Temple looked up the stairs. The shadow had stopped in the leak of red light, pinioned by the glare of the incoming firemen's powerful flashlights.
"Upstairs," Temple shouted. Two men charged past in heavy rubber boots, smelling of cinders." Careful! That's a killer."
These men weren't the police, but they were armed against a bitter, flesh-eating enemy, fire, in body armor and with axes. Two thumped past her to collect the shadow, two thundered all the way up to confront the fire; another turned and stomped out again, perhaps to radio the police.
Beneath Temple, the burlap bag writhed and hissed as if housing a dozen snakes. Then it growled. Fascinated, the returning firemen, with the shadow in custody, stopped to watch, focusing their flashlights on the bag.
A portion of the burlap was soaking wet. It proved to be torn as well when a black snake shot out of a four-inch slit.
A furry black snake, Temple squealed hoarsely and scrambled away. The black snake retreated, to be replaced by a black muzzle.
Snarling, Midnight Louie boxed the bag until his shoulders and forelegs were through, then twisted and turned until the burlap was dragging from his hindquarters like a comical train. After a few more acrobatic antics, he finished delivering his bedraggled, nineteen-pound self from confinement.
Temple watched in admiring delight. "Louie! What are you doing here?"
"Are you all right?" A fireman plucked Temple up from the floor to her feet as easily as if she were a mislaid cotton ball. "You know this cat? What's going on here?"
Boots pounded down the stairs. "Fire's out. Arson."
"Can we get some lights on in here?" another big and booted man asked.
Footsteps pounded down the basement stairs behind a beam of powerful light.
In moments, lights blinked on around the house. The refrigerator burped into a happy hum again, and the distant air conditioner hiccoughed once, then began droning dully.
At Temple's feet, Louie growled and spit and tried to walk. He swayed like a drunken sailor and sat down suddenly, looking surprised and cranky.
"I think he's been drugged," Temple told the nearest fireman. One of the men keeping the shadow in custody kicked at a white rag half out of the burlap bag. ' 'Chloroform."
The fireman who had lifted Temple looked down at Louie, then addressed his mate. "We better get this fire victim some oxygen pronto." He scooped up Louie and strode outside. Temple followed on shaky legs.
A crowd had gathered around the huge, light-flashing fire trucks. If Louie had intentions of clawing the fireman who carried him, he was foiled by the heavy, waterproofed slicker the man wore. Thump-thump, the word was passed. Thump thump, clump-clump, a medic came to the front door with the needed gear.
Louie was pinned to the ground and treated, though he was not fond of the plastic mask and struggled as if his tom-hood were in jeopardy. He didn't relish the flash photo that was taken of him under care, either, but he calmed down when he could sit up and breathe ordinary air again.
Temple frowned at the photographer, who wore a Review- Journal I.D. card. She wanted to know Louie's name, anyway.
"I hope I'm not in that photograph," Temple grumbled after providing the information. It did not behoove a P.R. person to irritate the press. "I must look a mess."
Fire survivors often do," the woman noted dryly, moving away to take an overall shot of the crowd.
"What about the intruder?" Temple asked the firemen once the photographer was gone. She nodded toward the house.
"We're holding him for the police," said her fireman, who was young and freckled and struck her as fearless. "As is."
"Him? Are you sure?"
The fireman was amused by her incredulity. "Yes, Ma'am."
Temple thought about the suspect that assertion eliminated--Peggy Wilhelm--and breathed free again. She leaned toward the fireman, who didn't look too alarmed by a rescued maiden offering confidences.
"Couldn't we peek behind the mask before the police get here?" Temple whispered as close to his ear as she could get without hitting the hard and inconvenient fire hat. "I'm just dying to know who it is."
Chapter 34
The Bishop's Tea
"Temple!"
Sister Seraphina separated from the crowd and enveloped Temple in a big brown blanket that she definitely didn't need after so much exertion on such a warm night.
Temple was interested to know that formerly sleeping nuns wore voluminous navy-velour bathrobes that she had not seen the like of since a fifties' television sitcom. Sister Seraphina's bathrobe, especially with its long satin rope tied at the waist, more resembled Temple's notion of a habit than anything the nun wore in the light of day.
Sister Seraphina seemed unaware of her attire's fascination.
"When I heard that someone was found in there," she said, "I feared it might be Peggy--never you." She turned briskly to the identically clad woman behind her. "Sister Rose, you had better call Peggy Wilhelm and let her know.
She'll want to tend the cats--they're all right, aren't they?" she asked Temple in sudden anxiety. "What about this one?" She eyed Midnight Louie, who was remarkably content to sit at Temple's feet and groom his own, for the moment.