by Jane Langton
“You bet,” said Homer. “Nice lamps and everything. A hot plate. Is that new wire going to come in here? No, I guess you have enough outlets already. Plenty of voltage of one kind and another, right?”
“Yes, sir. I’m just as comfortable as a bug in a rug.”
Homer chatted with Mr. Proctor until he had finished his bowl of soup and eaten several large sticky buns, and then he said good-bye and wandered upstairs and out of the door at the northwest corner of the basement and in again by way of the cloister porch into the great hall.
At first Homer was blinded by the broad column of colored light falling across the dusty air from the high west window over his head, spreading out in an immense pattern on the floor. But then the dim hollows of the enormous room revealed themselves, and he saw a little figure staring at him far, far away at the other end. It was Vick Van Horn, sitting at a table under the balcony, studying her chemistry. The crazy kid. She’d wear herself out. She was standing up, calling to him.
“What’s that?” shouted Homer. “Wait a minute.” He galloped the full length of the hall, while Vick put her hands to her mouth like a megaphone and kept right on talking at the top of her lungs and gesturing, but the sound of her voice kept ricocheting all over the room. “I’m sorry,” said Homer, pulling up a chair and sitting down on the other side of the table. “What did you say?”
“I said, don’t you think carbon monoxide is dangerous stuff? I’ve been reading about it in my chemistry textbook. It’s really terrible. What’s Mr. Crawley’s assistant doing with carbon monoxide in Memorial Hall?”
“Carbon monoxide? Mr. Crawley’s assistant?”
“He was in Mr. Crawley’s office a little while ago. He had a tank of carbon monoxide. He drilled a hole in one of the pipes and he was putting it into the pipe. But I think that’s just an incredibly dangerous thing to do, don’t you? The stuff could go all over the building. He said he was exterminating a rat downstairs. But he shouldn’t be running around loose with a tank of carbon monoxide, sticking it into a pipe like that, should he?”
Homer frowned. “I saw him just now. He was downstairs drilling another hole.” Homer looked at Vick thoughtfully. “You know, the man gives me the heebie-jeebies. Who is he anyway? Another one of Ham’s Rats?”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’m not sure. I never laid eyes on him until after Ham was gone. Doesn’t he work here? I thought he was Mr. Crawley’s assistant. You know, you never see Mr. Crawley doing any work himself. I thought this guy was Mr. Crawley’s second in command or something.”
“Well, let’s see if Crawley’s back in his office and ask him.”
Mr. Crawley was back. He was angry. “The place is a refrigerator. I had this funeral to go to, see, so what happens behind my back? Somebody gets in here and opens the window. What’s the big idea?”
“It was me,” said Vick. “The room was full of gas. Your assistant was doing something to the pipe.”
“My assistant? I don’t have no assistant.”
“But, Mr. Crawley,” said Homer, “what about that man who goes around here cleaning the halls and fixing things up? Isn’t he your assistant?”
“Oh, you mean that old guy? Oh, sure. Well, you know. I let him hang around. I mean, a poor old guy like that. I let him think he’s being a big help. He don’t do no harm.”
Homer drew Vick out of the room and closed the door softly. His cheery mood had vanished. “Listen here, Vick, I’m worried about that guy with the broom. He’s up to no good. What in the name of God was he trying to do with the carbon monoxide but poison everybody in the building? Those pipes go all over the place. I saw the chart of all those plumbing and ventilating pipes in Mr. Maderna’s office. The man must be mad. What on earth do you suppose he’s up to? I’ll find him. I’ll get a straight answer this time. He says he’s putting new electrical outlets in the basement. But that’s not what he’s doing. There are plenty of outlets in the basement. Maybe he’s planning to flood the whole place with poison gas.”
But Mr. Crawley’s assistant was not in the basement. Homer looked up and down the hall outside the doorway where he had seen the man working half an hour before. “Hey, you,” he shouted.
There was no answer. The man was gone. They looked for him up and down the basement corridors, then went upstairs and ransacked Sanders Theatre and looked around once again in the memorial corridor and the great hall.
“He must have gone away,” said Vick, after Homer came out of the men’s room and shook his head at her. “And we don’t even know his name.”
“I don’t like this at all,” said Homer gloomily. “There’s something very strange and unpleasant about it. I think we need help. A whole lot of help. Right now. Look here, I want you to call up everybody you can think of, and get them back here. Immediately. But the first person I need is that chemist. What’s his name? Flynn. Charley Flynn. I’ve got to be sure the place isn’t roiling and boiling with poisonous fumes. Do you know how I can get hold of Charley Flynn?”
“That’s easy. He’s my chem lab instructor. He practically lives in Mallinckrodt. Try the office there. I’ll get busy on the others right away.”
“Get hold of my wife first, would you? I’ll use the pay phone. You can use the one in Crawley’s office. And if he objects, just yell, and I’ll come in and knock him down. It would be a pleasure. A service to mankind.”
Charlie Flynn came over with a pump and a plastic bag and took a sample of the gas in the pipe back to the infrared spectro-photometer in his laboratory. A few minutes later he, came running back into Mr. Crawley’s office. “It was there alright,” he said. “Carbon monoxide dissipates quickly, but there must have been more than enough to kill a whole mess of rats.” Charley looked at Homer soberly. “Are you sure the man isn’t still in the building?”
“The tower,” said Homer. “What if he got up in the tower? The place is one huge jungle of ventilating pipes. All those air-conditioning ducts from Sanders Theatre.”
“All those people,” said Charley Flynn, “coming to the concert this evening. Just five or six hours from now. If this nut decided to pipe carbon monoxide into the air-conditioning system in Sanders Theatre, he could kill a thousand people. Look, we’ve got to get up there and take a look.”
“Right,” said Homer. “We’ll start right now. Say, Mr. Crawley, have you got a key? You know, another one of those master keys?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Mr. Crawley shook his head. “I’ve only got a few left. I’m not giving out no more keys.”
“The hell you’re not.” Homer shoved Mr. Crawley against the wall. Mr. Crawley whimpered, and turned over his entire collection of keys. Homer put them in his pocket and strode out of the office.
He found Vick marshaling her forces in the hall. She had collected Mary Kelly and half the chorus and most of the orchestra. Mrs. Esterhazy had brought her two little boys. Jane Plankton was dithering with excitement, eager to help out.
Homer quickly began sorting them into search parties. “Vick, you and Mary take a bunch of people downstairs and search the basement. Every single cubbyhole and room down there. Here, I’ve got a bunch of extra keys. Now, who wants to go upstairs with Charley and me to search the tower?”
“Me, me.” Putzi and Siegfried Esterhazy were jumping up and down.
“No, no,” thundered Mrs. Esterhazy. “You vould fall down and be keeled.”
“Me,” squealed Betsy, beaming at Charley Flynn.
“Me,” growled Tim, glowering at Betsy.
“Well, all right, then,” said Homer. “Come on, you people. Good Lord, Charley, I’ve just thought of something. What if he comes in from outside?”
“Oh, my God,” said Charley, “that’s right. We’ve got to guard the doors.”
“Every bloody door. How many doors are there? Jesus, there are doors all over the place. There must be fifty doors.”
“No, no,” said Vick. “Not that many. And I’ve got more people coming. We’ve got th
e Organ Society. The whole Organ Society is coming, and Betsy has this friend in the band. Her friend is calling up the whole band.”
They went over the list of doors. “There’s these two here,” said Miss Plankton, flapping her mittens at both ends of the memorial corridor.
“Zuh two vuns at zuh end of zuh great hall,” said Mrs. Esterhazy.
“The copy center door,” said Tim.
“The one that goes downstairs past the ticket window,” said Jennifer.
“The fire escape,” said Charley Flynn. “Don’t forget the fire escape up at the top of Sanders.”
“And the door that goes right into WHRB from Quincy Street,” said Vick.
“And the service entrance on the other side,” said Mary.
“How many is that?” said Homer. “Two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. We need one person at every door. Now look, if he comes in, don’t try to stop him. fust keep track of him until you can get help from the rest of us. Now, how are we going to search the building and cover all the entrances at the same time? We haven’t got enough people.” There was a trumpet blast and a thump at the door. “Aha! Here comes the band.”
Homer’s second expedition to the tower was noisier than the first, because Betsy wanted to hear the echoes in the great open spaces of the tower. She sang all the way to the top of the ladder stair, showing off as hard as she could for Charley Flynn. “Rejoice, rejoice,” warbled Betsy. Her voice rattled against the trap door to the bell chamber and battered back at them.
“Oh, can it, Betsy,” said Tim.
“Oh, damn,” said Homer. He poked at the lock of the trap door with his finger. “Look what I’ve done now. I broke the key off in the lock. It’s stuck in there. It won’t come out. I always was a clumsy fool with keys.”
“Here, let me try it.” Charley Flynn squeezed past Homer on the narrow ladder stair. Charley couldn’t fix it either.
“Well, never mind,” said Homer. “I suppose they’ll have to get some locksmith up here on the top of the ladder to fix it. Come on. Let’s go down.”
And then on the way down Betsy discovered the upside-down vaults, and she screamed with delight. “Oh, isn’t that fabulous! Oh, don’t they look really incredible! Oh, isn’t that disgusting, the way people throw things into them! Just look at those disgusting old lunch bags and popcorn boxes. Oh, I wish I had a penny. It’s like a wishing well, where you throw a penny in and make a wish. Oh, Charley, give me a penny!”
Charley Flynn gave Betsy a penny. Tim Swegle gave Betsy a quarter. Betsy threw the penny and the quarter down. They clattered on the sloping sides of one of the wooden vaults and disappeared among the trash in the narrow tapering cavity at the bottom. Betsy leaned out from the ladder and shrieked, summoning the spirit of the upside-down vaults. “I wish to sing like an angel so everybody will love me!”
“Watch it there, girl,” said Charley Flynn.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Betsy,” said Tim Swegle. “Come on down before you break your fool neck.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Jennifer’s post was the south entry. She sat on a folding chair just within the doorway, squinting at her sewing. In the dim light of the chandeliers she felt drowsy. She didn’t know what she would do if the man she had seen poking a feather duster at the benches in Sanders Theatre should come in the door. She didn’t much care. All she could think of was the baby thumping around inside her.
“You look like Madame Defarge,” said Homer.
“Oh, no,” said Jennifer. “Madame Defarge was a knitter. Besides, I don’t know how she knitted all those names into a sweater anyway. I don’t think it’s possible at all. I think Dickens was really just bananas.”
“Well, keep an eye on everybody going and coming. Good for you, Jennifer.”
Homer went down the broad south stairs and crossed the bridge over Cambridge Street. Then he turned around and looked back at Memorial Hall. To the northwest above the snarl of traffic the sun was setting like some barbarous jewel, shining on the west end of the building. The bricks glowed a violent harsh red. A cold sea breeze from the east was blowing sea gulls in a flock away up over the roof. That way too lay the moon, nearly full, looming over East Cambridge, dented like a hammered salver. Salome’s plate, thought Homer, red with blood.
Had he really covered all the entrances? On the cloister porch at this end Homer could see Mrs. Esterhazy marching up and down like a general, shouting at her children, who were running back and forth, little blobs of green and blue. Mary was on the other side, sitting on the steps inside the service entry to the basement, reading over a typed sheaf of index pages. Mr. Proctor was holding the fort at the north door. Jennifer was there at the south. A couple of bassoonists were supposed to be taking care of the entrance to the copy center and the lecture hall. Miss Plankton was camped on a folding stool at the basement entrance to WHRB, keeping her ears warm in her big fur hat. Rosie Bell had parked herself in the balcony of Sanders Theatre beside the door to the fire escape. Betsy and Tim were plainly visible at the ticket office entrance, and above the traffic Homer could hear Betsy’s canary voice. She was showing off again to the whole world.
It was a three-hour shift. At seven o’clock Vick’s warm-up exercises would begin on the stage of Sanders, and a new batch of sentries recruited from the Organ Society and the band would take over the watch. Homer lifted his head. Who was that, moving around the building, carrying something? Oh, of course, it was just Jack Fox. He had passed the hat. He had made a trip to Elsie’s for emergency rations. He was going from door to door, passing out sandwiches. And someone else was scuttling out of the south door, running down the steps, hurrying away up Cambridge Street, a small crouching figure. “Rats desert a sinking ship,” murmured Homer. But it wasn’t one of Ham’s Rats, of course. It was Jerry Crawley. Homer looked at his watch. Four-thirty. Hardly quitting time yet, but it was typical of Crawley.
The wind was really whistling down Cambridge Street. Homer wedged himself into a niche where a fountain was attached to the wall, and looked at Memorial Hall, half closing his eyes against flying pieces of grit. As usual the building impressed him with its bulk. It was immense. Today it looked less like a church than a fortress. A mighty fortress, a bulwark never failing. The trouble was, it was a besieged fortress. But besieged by whom? And from what direction? And for what reason? Something nagged at Homer. How good a bulwark was it really? Had he covered all the entrances? The enemy was invisible so far, but nonetheless Homer suspected his craft and power were great.
Bulky it was, Memorial Hall. Enormous. Henry fames had called it majestic. It sprang majestic into the winter air. Well, it was majestic, all right, but it certainly didn’t spring into the air. It was too heavy for that. It squatted like a beast on its great comfortable haunches. It was a vast cow of a building. No, not a cow. In the ruddy light Memorial Hall seemed once again like some dreaming mythical monster, some elderly sleeping dragon with a secret fire in its belly. Sleeping? Yes, it was sleeping, but any day now it would wake up, open its dreadful eyes, and breathe flame from its cavernous jaw.
Chapter Forty
“Let it all go,” said Vick. She stood at the front of the stage and bent over, letting her hair pour down on the floor and her arms flop loose. The chorus bent over too, and flapped dangling hands. Vick stood and threw back her hair. “Ready now, chorus? Okay, let’s go. Mee-meh-ma-mo-mooooo …
Where was Mary? She wasn’t standing in her usual place at the back of the chorus. Homer wandered out into the hall and found his wife standing beside the ticket table talking to Charley Flynn and another tall woman, wearing a red cloak.
The woman in the red cloak was Julia Chamberlain. “Oh, Homer, hello, there. I’m so glad to meet your wife. I was feeling so restless I came early. I don’t know what got into me. What can I do? What the hell’s going on? Who is this guy you’re looking for?”
“We’re not sure. That’s the trouble. We’ve got all the doors posted. We’ll get our hands on
him and find out.”
“Only we’re running short again, Homer,” said Charley. “Mary’s taking over for some piccolo player who had to leave. I’d do it myself, only I don’t know what the man looks like.”
“It’s not the mad bomber?” Julia Chamberlain was thrilled. “Let me help. I’ll stand watch with Mary, and the two of us will wrestle him to the floor.” She sailed down the hall with Mary and Charley Flynn, her red cloak billowing behind her, while Vick’s choristers finished their exercises and began running through transitional passages, and the instrumentalists drifted out of the great hall carrying cellos, violins, oboes, flutes.
“Oh, good evening, Mr. Kelly.” Jane Plankton was waggling her bow at Homer. Her black velvet evening gown trailed behind her on the floor. Her hair ribbon was spangled with gold. A beaded purse dangled from her belt. She looked vaguely medieval. Homer was delighted. Oh, the dignity, oh, the shabby grandeur of genteel poverty! “Well, hello, there, Miss Plankton. The big evening arrives at last.”
Miss Plankton’s cheeks were bright knobs of joy. She pointed with her bow at a curtain high on the wall. “Oh, the whole thing is so exciting,” she said. “Did you see the memorial tablet? We’re going to have a little ceremony!”
“So we are,” said Homer, noticing the curtain for the first time.
“President Cheever is going to pull the string during the second intermission. After the ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’ You know, Mr. Kelly, it reminds me of my girlhood. When I christened Brother Wayland’s sailboat. He named it after me. The good ship Jane!”
“A gallant name for a gallant craft,” said Homer, smiling at Miss Plankton. “Does the Jane still sail the seven seas?”
“Oh, I do hope so, Mr. Kelly. Brother sold her to the Duke of Windsor.” Miss Plankton bowed and nodded and trailed away, her train dragging behind her on the floor.
She was mad as a hatter, the old dear. But then Homer had to admit to himself that the place was full of lunatics. Someone was tugging at him from the rear.