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After a while she quit chanting and clambered down off the stoolagain. Shetottered to the table and mixed up several of the fluids in thebottles in a glass and drank the contents. She belched loudly; he jumped at itsloudness and unexpectedness. She got back on the stool and began to turn the pages of the huge book and, apparently, read a few phrases from each page.
Childe guessed that he was looking upon a genuine magical ritual, genuine inthat the witch believed in her magic. What its object was, he did notknow. But he felt chilled when he suddenly thought that perhaps she was tryingto locate or influence him by means of this ritual. Not that he believed shecould. It was just that he did not like the idea. At another time and underdifferent circumstances, he would have laughed. Too much had happened tonight, however, for him to make light of anything in this house.
Nor did he have any reason to crouch here in the doorway as ifwaiting to beborn. He had to get out, and the only way was past the baroness. There was a door beyond the table; that door, as far as be knew, was the soleexit from the cupola, except for the way by which he had come. That door probablyled to a hallway which would lead to a stairway to the lower floors or to awindow to the top of a porch.
He doubted that he could get by her without being seen. He wouldhave to knock her out or, if necessary, kill her. There was no reason why heshould be gentle. She had to know what was going on here and probably hadparticipated inher younger days or, for all he knew, still did.
Sword in hand, he stood up and walked slowly toward her. Then hestopped. Above her, a very thin haze, greenish-gray, shapeless with some shortcurlingtentacles, had appeared. It could be accounted for if she weresmoking. She wasnot. And the haze grew thicker and spread out sideways and down butnot upward.
Childe tried to blink it away. The smoke flowed over her grayPsyche knot ofhair and down her neck and over the shoulders of the robe. She was chanting evenmore loudly and turning the pages of the book more swiftly. She couldnot be looking up to read the book; her head was bent so far forward thatshe had to be staring at the map.
Childe felt a little disoriented again. It was as if somethingwere wrongwith the world, however, not with him. Then he shook his head anddecided to tiptoe by her if he could. She seemed so intent, she might not seehim. If the smoke grew thicker, that is, if there indeed was smoke and he was notsufferinganother hallucination, he would be hidden from her.
The smoke did expand and become denser. She was sitting in aragged columnof it. And she was suddenly coughing. Smoke blew out of the way ofher breath and then coiled back in to fill the gap. He caught a whiff of a tendril and stepped back. It was acrid, burning, filled with the essence of amillion automobile exhausts and smokestack products of chemical factories andrefineries.
By now, he was opposite her and could see that the cloud hadspread downwardand was begi
She looked up, as if she had suddenly detected his presence. Shesqualledand fell backward off the stool but whirled and landed on all fours and then was up and ru
No, there was Dolores. She might stop the old woman. Then, again, she mightnot. Her position in this situation was ambiguous. He suspected thatshe would do what was best for Dolores and that might not coincide with whatwould be goodfor him. It would be good sense to quit chasing after the baronessand try toget out before she could warn the others.
The smog over the table was disappearing swiftly and was gone bythe time he left the room. The door led directly into an elevator cage which musthave been made about 1890. He hated the idea of being trapped in it but he hadno other way out. He pressed the DOWN button. Nothing happened except that asmall lightglowed above the button and a lever near it. He pushed down on thelever, andthe elevator began to sink. He pressed more on the lever, and therate of descent was a little faster. When he pushed the lever upwards pastthe neutral position, the elevator stopped. He pressed the UP button and thenpushed thelever upward, and the elevator began to ascend. Satisfied that hecould operateit, he started it downward and stopped at the second story. If thealarm had been given, they would be waiting for him on the ground floor. Theymight alsobe waiting on every floor, but he had to take some chances.
The door was just like the other doors, which was why he may nothave known about the elevator. He turned the knob and pushed it and foundhimself near the door to Magda's bedroom. At the same time, increasingly loud voicesand rapidfootsteps came up the stairway. He didn't have time to run down thehall and tryother doors. He slipped into the room again. Glam's body was still inthe marble enclosure, the boots sticking over it. The wall-section was open. Heconsidered for a moment hiding under the many pillows and cushions inside theenclosure but decided that he would be found if they moved Glam's body. There wasnothing todo except enter again the passage behind the wall.
He hid behind the i
He swore. He had been so intent on what he was going to do withthe sword that he had not noticed that his penis was working up to anotherorgasm. Stormed, he dropped the sword with a clatter but did not care aboutthe noise for a few seconds. He jetted, the chlorox odor rising strong in thedusty hotpassageway. Then he picked up the sword and waited, but he was evenmore uneasy. Those people out there might have nostrils more sensitive than humanbeings--headmitted by now that they were not human, as he knew human--and theymighteasily detect the jism. Should he move on? If so, where? To the samecircuit?
He had been ru
fire. Fire. He looked through the opening. The door of the room was still
shut. Loud voices came through it. A savage squeal which chased cold over him. It sounded like an enraged hog. More shouts. Another squeal. The voices seemedto drift away, down the hall. He crept out and inspected the room and foundwhat he wanted. There were books in the shelves, the pages of which he toreout. He crumpled up a Los Angeles Times and piled crumpled book-pages overthem and ripped open several pillows and sprinkled their contents on the pile. The cigarette lighter in the purse touched off the papers, which soonblazed up andbegan feeding on the wall-drapes under which the fire had been built.
He opened the door to the hall to open the way for a draft--if itshould exist. Taking the classified ad sections of the Times and a number ofbooks, he went into the passageway. Having found a one-way mirror, he broke itwith the hilt of his sword to make another draft or a reinforcement of the first. He started a fire in the passageway, which was made of old and dry woodand should soon be blazing like the underbrush in the hills at the end of a longdryseason. He then entered the room with the broken mirror and built a fire under a huge canopied bed.