The heat from the hall struck him like a physical blow as he plunged through the front door; the air scorched his lungs like a gust from a red-hot oven. At the far end of the hall long sheets of flame were sweeping greedily up a huge pair of velvet curtains. Smaller flames were dancing over a rug and leaping with fiercer eagerness up the blackening banisters of a wide staircase. The paint on the broad beams crossing the high ceiling was bubbling and boiling under the heat, and occasionally small drops of it fell in a scalding rain to take hold of new sections of the floor.
The Saint hardly checked for an instant before he went on. He dodged across the hall like a flitting shadow and leapt up the stairs four at a time. Fire from the banisters snatched at him as he went up, stung his nostrils with the smell of his own scorching clothes.
On the upper landing the smoke was thicker. It made his eyes smart and filled his throat with coughing; his heart was hammering with a dull force that jarred his ribs; he felt an iron band tightening remorselessly around his temples. He stared blearily down the corridor which led in the direction he had to go. Halfway along it great gouts of flame were starting up from the floor boards, waving like monstrous flowers swaying in a blistering wind. It could only be a matter of seconds before the whole passage would plunge down into the incandescent inferno below.
The Saint went on.
It was not so much a deliberate effort as a yielding to instinctive momentum. He had no time to think about being heroic — or about anything else, for that matter. In that broiling nightmare a second's hesitation might have been fatal. But he had set out to do something, knowing what it might mean; and so long as there was any hope of doing it his only idea was to go on. He kept going with nothing to carry him on but the epic drive of a great heart that had never known what it was to turn back for the threat of danger.
He came out in a clear space on the other side of the flames, beating the sparks from his sleeves and trousers. Open doors and glimpses of disordered beds on either side of the passage showed where various rooms had been hastily vacated; but the door of the room at the very end was closed. He fell on the handle and turned it.
The door was locked.
He thundered on it with fists and feet.
"Kennet!" he shouted. "Kennet, wake up!"
His voice was a mere harsh croak that was lost in the hoarse roar of the fire. It brought no answer from behind the door.
He drew back across the corridor, braced himself momentarily and flung himself forward again. Hurled by the muscles of a trained athlete, his shoulder crashed into the door with all the shattering force of one hundred and seventy-five pounds of fighting weight behind it, in an impact that shook every bone in his body; but he might just as well have charged a steam roller. The floor might be cracking and crumbling under his feet, but that door was of tough old English oak seasoned by two hundred years of history and still untouched by the fire. It would have taken an axe or a sledge-hammer to break it down.
His eyes swept it desperately from top to bottom. And as he looked at it, two pink fingers of flame curled out from underneath it. The floor of the room was already taking fire.
But those little jagged fangs of flame meant that there was a small space between the bottom of the door and the floor boards. If he could only push the key through so that it fell on the floor inside he might be able to fish it out through the gap under the door. He whipped out his penknife and probed at the keyhole.
At the first attempt the blade slipped right through the hole without encountering any resistance. The Saint bent down and brought his eye close to the aperture. There was enough firelight inside the room for him to be able to see the whole outline of the keyhole. And there was no key in it.
For one dizzy second his brain whirled. And then his lips thinned out, and a red glint came into his eyes that owed nothing to the reflections of the fire.
Again he fought his way incredibly through the hellish barrier of flame that shut off the end of the corridor. The charred boards gave ominously under his feet, but he hardly noticed it. He had remembered noticing something through the suffocating murk on the landing. As he beat out his smouldering clothes again he located it — a huge medieval battle-axe suspended from two hooks on the wall at the top of the stairs. He measured the distance and jumped, snatching eagerly. The axe came away, bringing the two hooks with it, and a shower of plaster fell in his face and half blinded him.
That shower of grit probably saved his life. He slumped against the wall, trying to clear his streaming eyes; and that brief setback cheated death for the hundredth time in its long duel with the Saint's guardian angel. For even as he straightened up again with the axe in his hands, about twenty feet of the passage plunged downwards with a heart-stopping crash in a wild swirl of flame, leaving nothing but a gaping chasm through which fire roared up in a fiendish fountain that sent him staggering back before its intolerable heat. The last chance of reaching that locked room was gone.
A great weariness fell on the Saint like a heavy blanket pressing him down. There was nothing more that he could do.
He dropped the battle-axe and stumbled falteringly down the blazing stairs. There was no more battle now to keep him going. It was sheer blind automatism rather than any conscious effort on his part that guided him through another inferno to come reeling out through the front door, an amazing tatterdemalion outcast from the jaws of hell, to fall on his hands and knees on the terrace outside. In a dim faraway manner he was aware of hands raising him; of a remembered voice, low and musical, close to his ear.
"I know you like warm climates, boy, but couldn't you have got along with a trip to Africa?"
He smiled. Between him and Patricia there was no need for the things that other people would have had to say. They spoke their own language. Grimy, dishevelled, with his clothes blackened and singed and his eyes bloodshot and his body smarting from a dozen minor burns, the Saint smiled at her with all his old incomparable impudence.
"I was trying to economize," he said. "And now I shall probably catch my death of cold."
Already the cool night air, flowing like nectar into his parched lungs, was beginning to revive him, and in a few minutes his superb resilience would do the rest. He reviewed his injuries more systematically, and realized that comparatively speaking he was almost miraculously unscathed.
The thing that had come nearest to downing him was the smoke and fumes of the fire; and the effects of that were dispersing themselves like magic now that he could breathe again without feeling as if he were inhaling molten ash.
He cocked an eye at the stolid country policeman who was holding his other arm.
"Do you have to be quite so professional, Reginald?" he murmured. "It makes me feel nervous."
The constable's hold relaxed reassuringly.
"I'd get along and see the doctor, sir, if I was you. He's in the lodge now with Lady Sangore."
"Is that the old trout's name? And I'll bet her husband is at least a general." The Saint was starting to get his bearings, and his legs began to feel as if they belonged to him again. He searched for a cigarette. "Thanks, but Lady Sangore can have him. I'd rather have a drink. I wonder if we could get any co-operation from the owner of this jolly little bonfire?"
"You mean Mr Fairweather, sir? That's him, coming along now."
While Simon had been inside the house, a number of other people had arrived on the scene, and another policeman and a sergeant were loudly ordering them to stand back. Paying no attention to this whatever, they swarmed excitedly round the Saint, all talking at once and completely frustrating the fat little Mr Fairweather, who seemed to be trying to make a speech. The voice of the general rose above the confused jabber like a foghorn.
"A fine effort, young man. A splendid effort, by Gad 1 But you shouldn't have tried it."
"Tell the band to strike up a tune," said the Saint shortly. "Did anybody find a ladder?"
With his strength rapidly coming back, he still fought against admitting defeat. His face was hard and set and the blue in his eyes was icy as he glanced over the group.
"A ladder wouldn't be much use now," said a quiet voice. "The flames are pouring out of his window. There isn't a hope."
It was the square-jawed man who spoke; and again it seemed to Simon that there was a faint sneer in his dark eyes.
The Saint's gaze turned back to the house; and as if to confirm what the other had said there came from the blaze a tremendous rumbling rending sound. Slowly, with massive deliberation, the roof began to bend inwards, sagging in the middle. Faster and faster it sagged; and then, with a shattering grinding roar like an avalanche, it crumpled up and vanished. A great shower of golden sparks shot upwards and fell in a brilliant rain over the lawns and garden.
"You see?" said the square man. "You did everything you could. But it's lucky you turned back when you did. If you had reached his room, the chances are that you'd never have got back."
Simon's eyes slanted slowly back to the heavy-set powerful face.
It was true that there was nothing more that he could do. But now, for the first time since the beginning of those last mad minutes, he could stop to think. And his mind went back to the chaotic questions that had swept through it for one vertiginous instant back there in the searing stench of the fire.
"But I did reach his room," he answered deliberately. "Only I couldn't get in. The door was locked. And the key wasn't in it."
"Really?"
The other's tone expressed perfunctory concern, but his eyes no longer held their glimmer of cold amusement. They stared hard at Simon with a cool, analytical steadiness, as if weighing him up, estimating his qualities and methodically tabulating the information for future reference.
And once more that queer tingle of suspicion groped its way through the Saint's brain. Only this time it was more than a vague, formless hunch. He knew now, beyond any shadow of doubt, with an uncanny certainty, that he was on the threshold of something which his inborn flair for the strange twists of adventure was physically incapable of leaving unexplored. And an electric ripple of sheer delight brought every fibre of his being to ecstatic life. His interlude of peace was over.
"Really," he affirmed flatly.
"Then perhaps you were even luckier than you realize," said the square man smoothly. If he meant to give the words any extra significance, he did it so subtly that there was no single syllable on which an accusation could have been pinned. In point of time it had only lasted for a moment, that silent and apparently unimportant exchange of glances; and after it there was nothing to show that a challenge had been thrown down and taken up. "If we can offer you what hospitality we have left — I'm sure Mr Fairweather—"
The Saint shook his head.
"Thanks," he said, "but I haven't got far to go, and I've got a suitcase in the car."
"Then I hope we shall be seeing more of you." The square man turned. "I suppose we should get along to the lodge, Sir Robert. We can't be any more use here."
"Harrumph," said the general. "Er — yes. A splendid effort, young man. Splendid. Ought to have a medal. Harrumph."
He allowed himself to be led away, rumbling.
Mr Fairweather grasped the Saint's hand and pumped it vigorously up and down. He had recovered what must have been his normal tremendous dignity, and now he was also able to make himself heard.
"I shall take personal steps," he announced majestically, "to see that your heroism is suitably recognized."
He stalked off after the others, without stopping to inquire the Saint's name and address.
Clanging importantly, the first fire engine swept up the gravel drive and came to a standstill in front of the terrace.