The girl said, “Don’t go, Biff!” so passionately that Jimmie’s brother scowled. She had been too possessive, too demanding, for his taste. “Okay, Jimmie,” he said. “Lead the way.” He wiped the girl’s face with his hand-downward. “Be back soon, Gracie. Wait for papa.”
Like a man who hears that a friend is hurt, without being told the details of the injury, Jimmie concentrated on the flickering glow that shone against the horizon. Was it the warehouse? The laboratories? The chemical storage tanks? The factory proper? The office building? He thought of Mr. Corinth and wondered if he were on the scene, or if he even knew about the fire; he considered telling Biff to stop so he could phone the old man at home. But the car went on. Jimmie felt, in some taut, impatient periphery of his brain, that Biff was driving at—only a moderate speed. That same dimension of his mind decided that Biff’s accident had made him yellow about driving.
“Hurry up!” he said, without knowing that he had spoken.
Biff turned a corner, slowed for an intersection, and turned again, onto the boulevard that led out to the plant. It was not far. From the wide road Jimmie could descry the outline of the buildings in a black cutout against the blood-orange flame. Other cars were passing them, blowing horns. As they approached the property the night brightened—the lurid backdrop expanded—their ears were assaulted. Something had blown up.
There was no guard at the gate, which stood open. Already a file of cars waited their turn to enter. This circumstance filled Jimmie with a cruel rage—but there was nothing he could do about it. All Muskogewan was piling into family sedans and coupes and roaring out to the paint works to see the fun. Biff slowed to a crawl.
“Pull out of line!” Jimmie said. “Go around the fence, to the back!”
The scene was plain now. The fire, a great, incandescent glow, rose from the laboratories behind the mixing plant. In front of the long low building, on the weedy lawn, people parked their cars helter-skelter, jumped out, shouting to each other, and ran forward. From somewhere down the crammed road a fire engine wailed. Biff drove bumpily along the fence. The engine wailed again and a bell banged. Jimmie’s flesh crept.
For one maniacal second he thought that he was not in Muskogewan, but in London, and this was where a bomb had fallen—that siren, the alert, and the bell, the fire engines that everlastingly ran through the raids.
Then it was plain again. He looked back. An in—pouring of cars was ripping down the wire fence, section by section. The people were coming to the holocaust as if to a game.
But the engines were nearer. The thought that he and Biff had beaten the fire apparatus gave him another moment of disgust. Then he realized that they’d doubtless seen the fire almost as soon as the alarm had been turned in, and also that Biff had been driving fast, after all.