Afterward, he thought maybe if he’d kept his head and finished dialing the three-digit number he might have summoned help even if he didn’t have time to speak to the emergency operator, though the intruders would have walked in on him in the middle of the procedure.
As it was, Nick panicked.
He dropped the phone and threw himself into the only hiding place he could reach fast enough. Behind the couch.
It wasn’t really much of a hiding place, because the couch stood several feet out from the wall to allow for access to a bookcase on that wall. If anybody walked to the end of the couch, there wouldn’t be any hiding place at all; Nick would be in plain sight.
It was the only thing he could think of, however. He held his breath as long as he could; he couldn’t do anything about his heart. It was making so much noise he was sure anyone in the room could hear it.
They didn’t seem to, though. And it took only a few seconds for Nick to realize who they were.
The workmen, Al and Greg. They’d had keys; his mind registered that. They’d had keys to the front door, to Clyde and Roy’s apartment, and to this one. No doubt they had keys to the others, as well, which explained how they’d gotten in and put drugged dog food into Rudy and Maynard’s dishes.
As if reading his mind, Greg said, “The stuff worked. The dogs are out cold.”
“Yeah. We won’t have any trouble from them. Hey, did you leave a light on in here? And why are they both in the same apartment?”
“Maybe the kid was here after and put the dogs together for company. He may have left the light on, too.” He sniggered. “Or maybe that cat turned it on, the way he did the stove, huh?” He laughed again. “That was a good idea I had, pulling the fuses on most of the lights so everybody’d get out of the house tonight. Worked better than just unscrewing bulbs all over the place.”
Al walked toward the couch. Nick could see his feet in the narrow space between the bottom of the couch and the floor; his chest was bursting and he had to have air, so he tried to inhale very slowly and quietly. There was dust in the carpet behind the furniture and he hoped desperately that it wouldn’t make him sneeze.
“Hey. The phone’s off the hook.”
Nick swiveled his head slightly and saw it, dangling at the end of its cord, swaying gently. Then it disappeared as Al picked it up.
“Nobody on it, just a dial tone. It was moving, though. Like somebody just dropped it.”
“You probably made a breeze when you walked over there. Come on, let’s pour this stuff around and get out of here. This time we’re going to do it right, no slip-ups, no stupid kids finding the fire too soon, no nasty Mr. Hale wanting to know why we can’t do anything right.”
“If he’s so particular, he should start his own fire. Burn down his own building,” Al said. Nick couldn’t see anybody now, but heard footsteps going toward the kitchen, and then a sloshing sound, like running water.
“Take it easy with that stuff,” Al warned. “If we use too much they’re going to know it was arson. Mr. Nasty Hale wouldn’t like that, if his alibi was all for nothing and they figure out he set this up. The insurance won’t pay off if he torches his own place. It’s supposed to look like an accident.”
In the kitchen, Greg swore. “We’ve been trying to make an ‘accident’ for over two weeks. This time I’m just going to get it burned down, collect my money, and get out of town. If Hale gets caught, that’s his problem. I’m gonna be long gone by that time.”
His voice sounded closer as he returned to the living room. “If it hadn’t been for that stupid kid that walks the dogs, we’d have been finished before this. We couldn’t start a fire under the stairs, or under the old man’s sink, or up here. He must’ve found the cereal box before it burned up enough to catch the curtains behind it. I figured with the lights out in the old man’s apartment, though, he wouldn’t stay down there again.”
Nick’s chest hurt so bad he didn’t know how much longer he could stay frozen in this position, nor how long he could avoid sneezing, either. If his father came home and tried to call and got no answer, would he come looking for Nick, or just assume that Nick was out walking the dogs one last time?
Immediately he knew that wouldn’t matter. Even if his dad called right now, he’d never get here in time. These guys were planning to start their fire any minute.
Would he have time to get out, to get the animals out, once they’d left? They surely were planning to set a fire in such a way as to allow themselves time to escape. Maybe, Nick thought, his mind racing, he could get the dogs and cats out the back door, from Mrs. Monihan’s kitchen, and down that outside stairs. If the fire wasn’t already coming up underneath it. And if Rudy could wake up enough to walk down such a precarious escape ladder.
“All set?” Greg wanted to know. “Okay. Get ready to run, once we torch it off across the hall. Some ways, I’d rather have started it on the ground floor, because fire goes up so fast. But this is probably a better way. Those guys were burned out of a place once before, and when it happens again, everybody will think either they’re careless with turpentine and that other junk they paint with, or they set it on purpose to collect some more insurance money.”
“Yeah,” Al agreed. One of them opened the door into the hallway. “We waited late enough so most of the people in the neighborhood have gone to bed. By the time anybody notices there’s a fire up here, the whole place will be burning. Mr. Hale will have his total destruction so he can collect the insurance money.”
“Who cares, as long as he pays us? Come on, let’s go.”
For a moment, just a moment, Nick thought they were going to walk out of the apartment, and he was already drawing himself up onto his hands and knees, preparing to run for the back door as soon as they’d gone.
And then Al spoke again, in a soft, funny tone that lifted the hair off the back of Nick’s neck.
“Hey. Hey, I think we got a problem, Greg.”
“What now? What’s the matter?”
“That kid that walks the dogs, remember?”
“Sure. I thought we asked if he was going to stay here tonight, and he said no.”
Greg’s voice was very low, and very frightening. “Then what are his shoes doing here at the end of the couch?”
Nick thought he was going to be sick, just like Maynard and Rudy.
The silence was more terrifying than anything they could have said. And then there were quick, heavy footsteps. A big hand grabbed Nick by the shirt collar and he was dragged out into the room. Kicking and hitting out with his fists didn’t do any good; Al was much larger and stronger than he was, and when the man slapped him and threw him into a chair, Nick cowered there with a hand to where Al had struck him.
One of them, he never remembered which, let loose a long string of profanity.
“Now what do we do?” Al asked, sounding almost as hollow as Nick felt.
“What do you think we do? We torch the place, just like we agreed.” Greg’s voice was hard.
“But the kid knows who we are. He heard a lot of what we said.”
“There’s some rope in that tool box. Tie him to the couch, and when they find his remains, they’ll figure he was asleep when it happened.”
Nick’s nose was bleeding. He felt the warm trickle down to his upper lip and put up a hand to smear it to one side. It was worse than the horror movie, it was like he was in some kind of nightmare; he could taste the blood, and he wondered if his nose was broken.
“Now wait a minute,” Al protested, though he didn’t sound strong enough to give Nick much hope. “I agreed to torch this place, but we said we’d get the people out of it, first. We waited till we knew they were all out, remember? I don’t mind a little arson, but I’m not going to kill anybody. I’m not going to be wanted for murder.”
Murder. Nick swiped again at the blood and wiped it on his jeans. They couldn’t mean it, nobody could deliberately set a fire with a kid in the house so he’d get burned up. Could they?
They’d started the first fire in the alley, when the whole place was full of people. Maybe they hoped everybody would get out, because it was early and everybody was awake, but they couldn’t have been sure of that. Nick swallowed painfully and stared at the one called Greg.
Greg was very skinny, but he wasn’t wearing coveralls now and Nick could see that he had muscles. His dark hair hung in an uncombed lock over his forehead, and his mouth had a flat hardness that made Nick swallow again, even if it did hurt to do it.
Al was the one with the sandy mustache, which he was now tugging. “I mean it, Greg. I’m going to get out of here; let old Hale worry about burning down his own building. It’s not me who has bad money problems, he has. At least, mine aren’t bad enough so I’m going to burn down a house with a kid in it.”
Nick waited, hoping against hope that Greg would decide the same way. Only Greg didn’t.
“You’re a fool. If we walk out now, the kid’s going to tell what he knows, which is too much. Look, can’t you see we don’t have any choice? We already tried to torch the place before, and they can throw us in jail for that, even if we don’t do anything else. We’re leaving town anyway, aren’t we? As soon as we light the match, we head out. Nobody will be looking for us, as long as this kid isn’t around to shoot off his mouth. We have to do it that way, Al. Now come on, tie the kid up.”
Al licked his lips. “The rope’s still downstairs.”
“Well, find something here if you don’t want to go after it. The old lady that lives here must have belts or something. Look in the bedroom closet and see.”
Beside his chair the curtains fluttered in the breeze that sent a chill into the room. Nick slid his gaze sideways, trying to tell if there was any light in the house next door, the room where Melody might be asleep. If she wasn’t asleep, could she hear a conversation from over here?
She would hear if he stuck his head out the window and yelled, probably. Only they weren’t going to let him do that. Still, he said loudly, “You won’t get away with burning this house down. No matter where you go, they’ll find you and bring you back, especially if anybody gets hurt when it happens.”
“Shut up,” Greg said. He stepped backward without looking, and ran into the cat box. Eloise aroused and let out a screech that was as much fury as anything else, and Greg looked startled. “What the heck’s that?”
Nick didn’t answer. Beside him, Rudy opened a bleary eye and Maynard raised his head.
Nick knew it was a slim chance that there was anything he could do against two men. He’d always hated being little and skinny, and now he wondered if it was going to kill him. No, he thought, even Barney wouldn’t be able to fight off two men. Maybe there was something else he could do, though.
He couldn’t fight them. But maybe—just maybe—he could outwit them. They couldn’t be really smart or they wouldn’t be doing something like this in the first place.
Al came back from the bedroom, empty-handed. “I couldn’t find any belts. I’ll have to go downstairs.”
“Just make sure you come back,” Greg said. “You’ve been in on everything I have so far, and that makes you just as guilty as I am. Even if you run now.”
“I never said I was going to run,” Al retorted, sounding sullen. Nick wished they’d get really mad at each other and take their attention completely away from him. If he had time to get to the back door, to get it unlocked before they caught him, he might make it. He didn’t think they’d go ahead with their plans to set the house afire if he was running down the alley yelling his head off. They’d be too anxious to get themselves away from the scene before the police or the fire department arrived, or at least he hoped they would. He hated the idea of running off and leaving the animals, yet there was no way to save them unless he first saved himself.
“We should have pulled all the fuses, so the whole house was dark,” Al said. “Then everybody would have gone somewhere else tonight. There wouldn’t have been any people in the house.”
“If we’d pulled all the fuses, those guys that live across the hall would have gone and looked for themselves, and they’d have screwed the fuses back in or got new ones,” Greg pointed out. “Or that maintenance man would have stayed home and worked on things. He’s pretty dumb, but he could figure out the fuses had been tampered with. How did we know this stupid kid would decide to spend the night?”
Nick was getting tired of being referred to as a stupid kid. He glanced at the curtains again, just as they blew inward in a billowing puff, giving him a glimpse of the darkened house next door.
It was dark, but they were over there, Melody’s family. If they knew what was going on, they’d call for help. Only how could he make anyone aware of the situation he was in?
At his feet, Rudy stirred.
Hope leaped in Nick’s chest. He slid to the edge of the chair and dropped a hand onto the wiry-haired head, pushing his foot against Rudy’s shoulder to try to rouse him further.
The big dog lurched from his side onto his stomach, though he didn’t get to his feet. Even that much movement was cause enough for alarm; when Rudy whuffed almost experimentally, both the would-be arsonists paused and looked at him.
“I thought you said that you gave them enough stuff in their food to knock them cold all night,” Greg said uneasily. “They’re waking up.”
“He’s a big dog. Maybe I didn’t calculate the dose right.” Al sounded equally uneasy. “He’s not getting hostile, though. He’s still dopey.”
Nick didn’t take time to consider whether it was safer to have them afraid of the dogs or not afraid of them. He said, “They both threw up a lot of what they ate.” His hand was still on Rudy’s thick, strong neck, and he could feel the muscles growing from relaxed to rigid. His own excitement now balanced the fear that had been making his knees weak.
“Listen, we still have to—”
Nick’s attention wavered. They were discussing something, not looking at him now, or Rudy. Again the curtains beside him billowed out in the breeze, and he knew he had to try something. Anything was better than being roasted like a marshmallow at a picnic the way he would be if Al and Greg went through with their plans.
Nick’s fingers closed around the small antique clock from atop the television set. He was sure it was an heirloom or something valuable, but better a clock than his life and the lives of all the pets.
The next time the breeze lifted the curtains, giving him a clear shot, he threw the clock.
The crash was not very loud, but the men turned to look at him.
“What was that?” Al demanded.
Nick felt the pulses pounding in his ears. He wasn’t nearly as good at pitching as Barney, though he did sometimes beat his brother playing darts. He’d tried to lob the clock through Melody’s open window, and he thought it would have made more noise if he’d hit the side of the house with it. He sure hoped she was in the room, not downstairs somewhere.
“Did you do something?” Greg demanded. He looked very tall, standing above Nick on the edge of the chair.
Nick shook his head, not trusting his voice for a second, and then, when he thought Greg was going to drag him to his feet, he swallowed and tried to speak. “I think . . . I think something fell, or . . . or broke, next door.”
“And we can hear it all the way over here?” Greg strode past him and pushed the curtains aside to slam down the open window. When he came back, he stepped on Rudy’s foot and the Airedale lumbered to his feet with a protesting yelp.
For a moment they all stared at the dog; it was obvious that he was still under the effects of the sedation that Al had put in his food, but he was beginning to come out of it. Nick didn’t feel so bad any more about having to clean up two messes. His hopes rose when Maynard yipped, too, although neither dog was behaving in a hostile manner. They had, after all, seen Greg and Al before.
In the cat box, Eloise let out a snarl that made Al draw away from the container. Nick rose slowly to his feet, feeling almost sick enough to lose his own supper, yet his head was working.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said, and took a few steps in that direction.
“Sit down,” Greg snapped, but Al shook his head.
“What difference does it make if the kid goes to the bathroom? There’s only one little window, and if he goes out that he’ll fall thirty feet. Let him go.”
Greg gave in, shrugging. “Hurry up, then, get something to tie him up with. We better get out of here, and fast.”
Nick was three steps from the chair when the telephone rang.
For a moment it was like that game they’d played when he was about six years old. Where everybody had to freeze into whatever position they were in when someone yelled “Statues.”
Only this wasn’t a game.
It was his father, it had to be his father. Nick made a lunge for the phone, knocking the receiver off the hook, but Greg was faster, jerking it away from him, slamming it back on the cradle before Nick could even gather enough air to cry out.
Al started toward the door. “Now we blew it for sure! Whoever that was, he could tell the phone was knocked over and then picked up. He’s going to investigate, if it was somebody checking on the kid! Let’s get out of here!”
Greg was distracted from Nick by the need to stop his companion from doing anything foolish. He reached out and grabbed Al by the shirt front, holding him while Nick managed a few more steps toward the bathroom.
“Don’t be an idiot! We run now and we won’t get ten miles before they pick us up, after the kid gives them a description. We’ve got five minutes, anyway, before anybody can get here, and everything’s all set. That’s all we need. Tie up the kid, and let’s go.”
Nick had made it to the bathroom door. He slammed it behind him. There wasn’t any lock, which probably didn’t matter much anyway. If the house was burning around him, what difference would it make if he were tied up or locked in the bathroom?
He really did have to go, but he didn’t think he could. Fred rubbed against his leg, which was shaking so much Nick couldn’t tell if the cat purred or not.
“When I let you out,” Nick told him softly, “you’re on your own, Fred.”
In the living room, Maynard barked again.
The door was jerked open. “Come on,” Al said. “Hurry up.”
Nick drew in a deep breath, stepped through the doorway, and did the only thing he could think of.