Willis was kneeling, listening to Mrs. Sloan’s heart.
Her eyes were shut.
Willis said, ‘Well, clear a way through somehow! There’s plenty of cellar exits. But just that one, up from here.”
Pretty soon, they had moved the barrel. The butler, whose name was at least Jeff, Nora thought, was looking at Mrs. Sloan’s legs, holding another lighted candle and pulling up her skirts in a most casual manner. “Busted—smashed,” the butler said. “Have to make a stretcher.
Some weight!”
From the door of the wine cellar, the gardener yelled, “We can get around this junk. But hurry! I hear it crackling up there!”
So they dragged Mrs. Sloan. The maids went first, though—they ran. And Nora was next to the gardener, who went last. As she followed the dragged woman, she saw Mrs. Sloan’s pocketbook on the floor underneath the place where she’d been lying. Nora took it along and nobody paid any attention.
“Hurry up, kid,” the butler said. That was all.
The cellar was half caved in and you could sec lines of fire, through cracks overhead. The smoke was awful. Nora ran past the men with their slow-moving burden to the square of outdoor light, and she raced up stone steps, gratefully, for she was at last outdoors. She hoped she was in time to see the mushroom cloud, and she eyed the sky eagerly, ignoring her smoke-induced cough.
She was in time. In plenty of time.