“And we’ll probably be ‘in’ here until tonight,” replied Boston. “Then we’ll go on a one-way ride.”
Quade looked around the room. There was a trapdoor overhead and he guessed that recalcitrant customers had on occasion been unceremoniously dropped through the floor. There was another door at one side of the room, which no doubt led to an outer corridor and upstairs. There were no windows in the cellar. The only ventilation in it came from a narrow vent which led into another part of the cellar. The air was dank and laden with a thousand old smells.
“Looks like they used to do the free lunch cooking here in the old days,” Quade observed. “And there’s an awful lot of trash.”
“You mean we could start a fire?”
“We’d probably be roasted by the time the fire department got here. Because I don’t think our friends upstairs would dash to our rescue in the event we fired the joint. No, it’s got to be something better than that.”
He began poking around things in a corner. Thoughtfully he prodded a sack of cement, then a smaller sack containing a white substance. “Lime and cement,” he commented. “The boys mix a bit of concrete now and then.”
“I got a hunch they don’t mix the concrete for no building work,” scowled Boston. “You heard what Demetros said about pouring it on guys’ feet.”
“I remember it well. But lime has many uses. You haven’t forgotten, Charlie, that I’ve read my encyclopedia from cover to cover. There are some mighty interesting things in it…. Ah!”
He brought up a sheet of tough fiber board. He broke off a corner, tested it with his tongue. “Sulphur it is, Charlie. They soak this fiber with it to make it tough and waterproof. Lot of these advertising signs that have to hang out in all sorts of weather are first soaked in it. There’s just one more thing I’d like to find. Look through those bottles around here and see if you can find a bit of ammonia.”
A fifteen-minute search failed to produce any ammonia. Quade sighed. “I’ll have to try it without the ammonia. Build a fire in the stove, Charlie, and hope the damn chimney still works.”
There were plenty of old boxes and other fire material in the room. Charlie Boston soon had a nice fire going in the old coal range.
Quade then broke up the fiber board into small pieces and put them in a big, old cooking pot.
“With better tools I could do a better job, but this will do,” he said to Boston. “If I’d only found some ammonia or naphtha we’d have had some real fun.”
The pot on the stove began giving off a strong, biting odor after a while. Boston sniffed it. “Damn me if it don’t smell like sulphur, Ollie.”
“It is. I tasted it. Sulphur melts at 113 degrees Centigrade and boils at 444. But I don’t think we can get up a hot enough fire here to boil it. But maybe that won’t be necessary.”
Inside of twenty minutes the pot on the stove was half-filled with a brownish-green liquid in which floated pieces of fiber. Quade fished out the fiber as well as he could, then drained the hot mixture through a handkerchief into another pan that Boston had washed in the sink.
He let the stuff cool for a while, then stirred lime into it. The mixture began bubbling but Quade worked cautiously and kept it from bursting into flames. Finally when the mixture was completed and cooling, he poured it out on a sheet of newspaper in thin strips.
“Now, Charlie,” he said, “don’t spit on those strips or there’ll be trouble.”
Quade carried a sliver of the stuff to the sink and tossed it in. There was water in the sink and the instant the sliver touched it, it exploded into a bright yellow flame.
“I’ll be damned,” said Boston.
“If we’d had naphtha,” said Quade, “I could have made Greek fire, the stuff the old-timers used in their wars. Thinking of Demetros gave me the idea. But this will suit our purpose.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after three. Time we got out of here. Tear yourself a leg from that old table there. You may have use for it.”
Taking the thin brittle strips of lime and sulphur, Quade stuffed them in the cracks of the door leading to the outer corridor. Boston helped him and soon the wide crack was stuffed completely around.
“This isn’t going to be a cinch, Charlie,” Quade said. “When that stuff starts burning it’s going to be just about hot enough to melt the hinges off. We’re going to have to smash down the door then and jump through a regular furnace. If there isn’t a staircase or a quick outlet on the other side of the door we’re going to get roasted alive.”
Charlie Boston scowled. “And if we stay here and wait for Demetros to get back it’s a tubful of cement on our feet. I’ll take a chance on the fire, Ollie.”
“All right then, get ready.”
Quade took a deep breath, then, with a pan of water in each hand, suddenly doused the sulphur-stuffed cracks of the door.
The result was astonishing. The sulphur and lime exploded into a roaring thread of bright yellow flame. The fire was so hot that it almost seared Quade’s face even though he sprang back quickly. The flame, he knew, was only a few hundred degrees cooler than an oxy-acetylene torch.
Quade and Boston waited at the far end of the room, shielding their faces with their arms. Now and then Quade peered over his arm. Finally, after about a minute, he said, “The hinges are gone now, Charlie. A good stiff wallop or two and the door’ll go down. Then we’ve got to make it. And keep your fingers crossed.”
Boston caught up the table leg he had torn off and leaped forward. He struck the door a mighty blow and it fell completely off its melted hinges, dropping out into the corridor.
“Let’s go!” cried Quade. He covered his face and leaped straight through the inferno of fire. Scorching heat seared through to his body. For a fraction of a second Quade thought he had lost, but then he stumbled on a stair and began scrambling up it. Behind him he heard Charlie Boston, scuffling and swearing. They fled up the stairs, the fire crackling behind them. Quade beat out sparks on his clothes and he knew that his hair and eyebrows were singed.
A door at the head of the stairs was closed but not locked. They tore it open and burst into the saloon where they had been defeated earlier in the day.
The bartender and one of the two men who had come to Demetros’ aid were the only occupants of the saloon. The fight this time was all in Quade’s favor, Charlie using the table leg to knock both of the utterly surprised men out of the way. He and Quade left the saloon inside of two minutes.
“The building’ll probably burn down,” he exclaimed outside. “But damned if I care.”
Their battered flivver was still around the corner. Demetros hadn’t had it removed. Quade and Boston climbed into it and in a few minutes were bowling north along Seventh Avenue.
It was almost six o’clock when they reached the Westfield Hotel. Dirty, their clothing scorched and torn and their hair singed, they caused the hotel room clerk to exclaim in horror when they entered. But they breezed past him to the elevator.
Quade was putting on a clean shirt when someone in the corridor began a sledge hammer tattoo on their door.
“Christopher Buck, the world’s greatest detective,” Quade remarked. “I recognize his gentle knocking.”
He let Buck into the room. “Where’ve you been?” Buck cried.
“Talking to Bill Demetros.”
“You got him?” Buck cried eagerly. “Where is he, in jail?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Quade. “Matter of fact we lost an argument with him.”
Buck saw the remnants of Quade’s blue suit on the floor. “You were in a fight!”
“No, I got the black eye from a canary. It kicked me.”
Boston came out of the bathroom, several strips of adhesive tape on his face. “You shoulda been along, Mr. Buck,” he grinned largely. “You would have enjoyed it.”