has grazed a shred of lace soaked in gasoline, spreads through the whole mass all at once, immediately doing away with the lacerated victim who is still stirring faintly, the heap of linen used in the sacrifice, the hunting knife, the whole room from which I have just had time to make my escape.
When I get to the middle of the corridor, I realize that the fire is already roaring in the elevator shaft, from top to bottom of the building, where I have lingered too long. Luckily there remained the fire escapes, zigzagging down the façade. Reversing my steps, then, I hurry toward the French window at the other end. It is locked. No matter how hard I press the catch in every direction, I cannot manage to release it. The bitter smoke fills my lungs and blinds me. With a sharp kick, aimed at the bottom of the window, I send the flat of my sole through four panes and their wooden frames. The broken glass tinkles shrilly as it falls out onto the iron platform. At the same time, reaching me along with the fresh air from outside and drowning out the roar of the flames, I hear the clamor of the crowd which has gathered in the street below.
I slip through the opening and I begin climbing down the iron steps. On all sides, at each floor, other panes are exploding because of the heat of the conflagration. Their tinkling sound, continuously amplified, accompanies me in my descent. I take the steps two at a time, three at a time.
Occasionally I stop a second to lean over the railing: it seems to me that the crowd at my feet is increasingly far away; I no longer even distinguish from each other the tiny heads raised toward me; soon there remains no more than a slightly blacker area in the gathering twilight, an area which is perhaps merely a reflection on the sidewalk gleaming after the recent shower. The shouts from a moment ago already constitute no more than a vague rustle which melts into the murmur of the city. And the warning siren of a distant fire engine, repeating its two plaintive notes, has something reassuring about it, something peaceful, something ordinary.
I close the French window, whose catch needs to be oiled. Now there is complete silence. Slowly I turn around to face Laura, who has remained a few feet behind me, in the passageway. “No,” I say, “no one’s there.”
“All the same, he stayed out there, as if he was on sentry duty, all day long.”
“Well, he’s gone now.”
In the corner of the recess formed by the building opposite, I have just caught sight of the black raincoat made even shinier by the rain glistening in the yellow light of a nearby streetlamp.
I ask Laura to describe to me the man she is talking about; she immediately gives me the information already known, in a slow voice, uncertain in its elocution but specific in its remembered details. I say, to make conversation: “Why do you think he is watching this particular house?”
“At regular intervals,” she says, “he looks up toward the windows.”
“Which windows?”
“This one and the ones of the two empty rooms on each side.”
“Then he saw you at this one?”
“No, he couldn’t have: I’m too far back and the room is too dark inside. The panes only reflect the sky.”
“How do you know? Did you go out?”
“No! Oh no!” She seems panic-stricken at the idea. Then, a few seconds later, she adds, more calmly: “I figured it out—I made a sketch.”
I say: “In any case, since he’s gone, he must have been watching something else, or just waiting there, hoping that the rain would stop so he could be on his way.”
“It didn’t rain all day,” she answers. And I can tell, from the sound of her voice, that in any case she doesn’t believe me.
Once again I think that Frank must be right: this girl represents a danger, because she tries to find out more than she can stand knowing. A decision will have to be made.
“Besides, he was already there yesterday,” Laura says.
I take a step in her direction. She immediately steps back, keeping her timid eyes fixed on mine. I take another step, then a third. Each time, Laura retreats the same distance. “I’m going to have to …” I began, looking for the right words …
At that very moment, over our heads, we could hear something: low but distinctly audible, like three taps someone makes on a door if he wants to go into one of the rooms. All these rooms are empty, and there is no one but ourselves in the building. It might have been a beam creaking, which had seemed abnormally distinct to us because we ourselves were making so little noise, measuring our steps across the tiles. But Laura, half-whispering, said: “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Someone knocking.”
“No,” I say, “that was me you heard.”
I had then reached the stairs, and rested one hand on the banister. To reassure her, I tapped three times with the tip of one fingernail on the wooden rail without moving my palm or the other fingers. Laura gave a start and looked at my hand. I repeated my gesture, under her eyes. Despite the verisimilitude of my imitation, she must not have been altogether convinced. She has glanced up at the ceiling, then back at my hand. I have begun walking slowly toward her, and at the same time she has continued moving back.
She had almost reached the door of her room in this manner, when once again we heard that same noise on the floor above, We both stopped and listened, trying to determine the place where it seemed to be coming from. Laura murmured in a very low voice that she was frightened.
I no longer had my hand on the railing, now, nor on anything at all. And it was difficult for me to invent something else of the same kind. “Well,” I say, “I’ll go up and see. But it’s probably only a mouse.”
I have turned around at once to return to the stairwell. Laura has hurried back into her room, trying to lock the door from inside with the key. In vain, of course, for the keyhole has been jammed ever since I put a nail into it, for just that purpose. As usual, Laura struggled a few moments, without managing to make the bolt work; then she gave up and walked over to the still open bed, where she has doubtless hidden herself, fully dressed. She has not even had to take off her shoes, since she is always barefoot, as I believe I have already indicated.
Instead of going up to the rooms above, I have immediately begun walking downstairs. The house, as I have said, consists of four identical stories, including the ground floor. There are five rooms on each floor, two of which look out on the street and two, in the rear, on the courtyard of a city school for girls; the last room, which faces the stairs, has no windows. At the level where we sleep, in other words the third floor, this blind room is a very large bathroom. We also use a few rooms of the ground floor: the one, for example, which I have called the library. All the rest of the house is uninhabited.
“Why?”
“The whole building includes, according to what I have just said, twenty rooms. Which is far too many for two people.”
“Why did you rent such a big house?”
“No, I’m not the tenant, only the watchman. The owners want to pull it down, so as to build something higher and more modern. If they were to rent apartments or rooms, that might create difficulties during the demolition.”
“You haven’t finished the story of the fire. What happened when the man coming down
