"Remember that noise, Mateo?"
Hall was on his feet. "Do I! Only one thing makes a noise like that," he said. "Direct hit on a gasoline tank."
"Exactly."
While they were washing, the sun had begun to set. Now a new sun had risen in the skies of San Hermano, risen at a point about a mile north of the Embassy. A great sheet of flame had shot from the ground, stabbing at the purpling skies, straining to leap clear of the round heavy blobs of black smoke which rose from the same place and surged over and around the fires.
The streets were more crowded than they had been when Hall and Tabio left the Congress. New signs had been added to the placards and portraits of Tabio which the people carried. Tremendous sketches and blown-up photos of Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek, nailed to frames with handles for two men, bobbed over the heads of the crowds. Duarte, from the balcony, asked the people on the street what had happened. They thought it was a victory bonfire.
"The hell it is, Felipe. Let's see for ourselves."
"I must stay and write my cable. You go and then come back here."
"Can you lend me a car and a chauffeur?"
"You couldn't drive a car through these crowds. You'll have to walk. Leave through the back way. It opens on a narrow street leading to the Avenida de la Liberacion. You'll save time."
Hall found the narrow street deserted. He set out at a fast pace, his eyes on the flames and the increasingly heavy puffs of smoke. The shouts of the crowds on the broad avenues and the plazas followed him up the small street. Over the cries of the Hermanitos came the wail of the sirens, the clamor of the bells on the American fire engines the city had purchased a few years back.