“Raise your hands,” Billie said. “Back into the room,” she ordered him, and slowly walked him backward into the room from which he had emerged. It was a bedroom, the bed made up with fine sheets and pillows. A claw-foot bathtub sat in one corner of the room, ametal bar and chain hanging from it. Billie frowned at the strangeness of it. There was a Persian rug at her feet covering some of the uneven wooden flooring. A finely carved wooden chair. On a round, polished antique table a lamp was glowing, providing a circle of soft light that illuminated pretty china figurines and an ashtray. The windows were covered with panels of wood, nailed shut. It was a luxurious prison cell.
The prisoner was still there. She looked up. She did not scream or cry out.
“I’m going to help you. You’re okay now,” Billie said.
The girl was perhaps twelve, no older. Billie felt such rage, such white-hot anger, that she hit the man with the butt of her small pistol.
“Can you help me tie him up?” Billie asked. “Find some rope?” The girl just watched her, unable to move or speak, it seemed. “The other man is gone; he can’t hurt you now,” Billie added. “Can you find Ruthie and Shyla and bring them here?” Again, this revelation had no effect. The girl stayed on the far corner of the bed, watching Billie with wide, empty eyes.
“Shyla!” Billie called. “Ruthie!”
The two girls appeared in the doorway, saw the pale man with his hands raised.
“Help this girl,” Billie said. “And I need something to hold the man with.”
At this the man turned and glared at her with eerily blue eyes.
“Who do you think you are? You think you will get away with this?” His voice was heavily accented, but his English was good.
“Get any ideas and get shot,” Billie countered. “I’m not likely tomiss at this range and I have no qualms. You won’t be the first Nazi I’ve shot.”
His mouth quivered. He kept his hands up. Ruthie ran to the young girl and coaxed her off the bed, the small, delicate figure moving as if in a trance. She was led across the creaking floor and out of the room. In a waft of fresh air, Shyla appeared with a length of coarse rope, stained in places as if it had been put to agricultural use in a former life. It felt cool to the touch. She’d got it from outside.
“In the chair, Franz,” Billie ordered, and the man moved slowly to the carved wooden chair in the corner of the stifling room. “Sit.” He hesitated. “Sit!” He did as he was instructed and while Billie kept her Colt trained on the man, Shyla secured his ankles and wrists, running the rope around him and through the rungs of the chair until he could not stand, could not run. The lamp illuminated one side of his face, the pulled side, where burns or wounds had healed into white scars. In the low light it looked like a mask with glinting, evil eyes peering out, so different from John Wilson, with his warmth and his honorable war wounds.
“Here,” Billie said, handing her Colt to Shyla. “Keep it on him. I’ll see if I can find the other girl.”
Shyla held the gun admirably, her hands steady.
It will be interesting when the cops arrive, Billie thought. But there was no time to worry about that now. She stepped back into the hall and positioned herself in front of the locked door, down on one knee. She pulled out her bent hatpin and inserted it into the padlock. As she felt for the lever she could detect a presence behind the door, just on the other side.
“Who is it?” a soft voice asked.
“My name is Billie Walker. I’m going to get you out. Just stay calm,” she said to the voice on the other side and continued to work away at the lock.Come on... come on.The padlock wouldn’t give.Blast.It was a different make from the one at the shed. Billie removed the bent hatpin and tried to bend it at a different angle to suit the lock.
“Billie!Billie!” Shyla’s voice, urgent and forceful, came from the other room. Billie stood bolt upright.
“I’ll be back,” she promised the presence behind the door, then sprinted for the other room. It was bright inside, far too bright, and Billie realized with a jolt of horror that this was because the kerosene lamp had crashed to the floor. The table next to the pale man was upended. Flames were spreading rapidly across the floor, catching the fabrics on the bed, on the cushions. As Billie watched, one side of the bedroom was already alight, the curtains against the boards on the window running with fire. Franz was struggling on the floor, facedown, the wooden chair still woven with rope and tangled around him. He’d freed his legs but knocked over the kerosene lamp.
“He kicked over the table,” Shyla yelled, still pointing the gun at him. “I couldn’t stop him, he did it so quick. Ruthie! Quick! Water!” she called.
Now the other side of the curtains caught. The room would go up fast. The timber here was old, dry. A thick black smoke began filling the room. Billie crouched low and dragged Shyla down with her. “Stay down, out of the smoke,” she said, and looked toward the hallway. It was already beginning to fill with the smoke that billowed out of the room in dark plumes. The fire was shocking in its speed, its power.
“We have to get out,” Shyla cried. “It’s too late for water. It will go up fast.”
Billie nodded. She was right. “That poor girl, she’s still in the room. I couldn’t get the lock.” Blasted thing! “Help me with Franz here; I don’t want him slipping away. We have to check that Ruthie and the other young girl get out... I don’t even know her name, then we’ll get the one who’s still locked in there, maybe out through the window. There’s still time.”
Billie raced back to the door of the locked room. “Shove something against the gap at the bottom of the door,” she shouted. “There is a fire. You need to block the smoke. Don’t be afraid. We’ll get you out. Block the door and stay down low. Stay away from the door and away from the window.”
Not a word came from the room, but Billie heard movement and the glow from under the door was blacked out as the girl plugged the gap as instructed.
Shyla had secured Franz more tightly and she and Billie hauled him up and pulled him from the smoke-filled bedroom and down the hall, his arms secured behind him. His haughty demeanor had dissolved in the face of the emergency he had created, his chalky face now red and pulled into a mask of fear, his mouth stretched. Coughing and spluttering, they made it onto the grass outside, near the shed, Franz falling to his knees. Shyla ran behind the shed and appeared a moment later with a large ax in her hands. She gripped the wooden handle strongly, the ax looking near as big as her, and in no time she was throwing the blade into the boards across the second girl’s window like a man twice her size, shards of glass and slivers of wood flying.
Billie ran to the front of the house, where she was relieved to seeRuthie and the young girl. They sprinted into the paddock, Ruthie holding the young barefoot girl by the hand, the pair lit golden by the glowing building as it went up. The fire had already spread with shocking speed down the corridor. The second bedroom, even with the door shut, would not hold much longer, Billie realized. She tore back to the window, where Shyla was pulling at the broken boards with desperate hands. There was smoke inside already, black and heavy, and the fresh air caused flames on the far side of the room to jump and dance. Billie flung herself through the jagged gap, feeling her clothes catch on the glass, to find the girl hiding under the bed, curled into the fetal position, hands over her ears. Billie pulled at her, dragging her out and begging her to stand, not sure if she was strong enough to lift the small, shaking body alone.
“Come on, we’ve got you. You’re going to be okay,” Billie said to the girl, pulling off her driving coat and wrapping it around her. She put her hands under the girl’s arms and managed to lift her onto the bed. Now she had to get her out through the broken glass of the window.
“Come with us, it’s okay,” Shyla coaxed her, and Billie half pushed, half handed the girl to her, first covering her face with the coat, forcing her past the sharp glass and the broken boards, and she was out. Behind Billie the angry flames spat viciously, as if in protest, and she realized her lungs had filled with the lethal fumes. Her head felt light. Her eyes stung, burning.
