too late.

Diana James was straightening up, reaching for the flashlight. Then, abruptly, Madelon Butler pushed away from me and walked out into the open. I tried to grab her, but it was too unexpected. She picked up the light and shot it right into the other’s face.

“Really, Cynthia,” she said, “I would have thought you’d have better sense than to come here yourself.”

Cynthia? But there wasn’t time to wonder about that. The whole thing was like trying to watch the separate stages of an explosion and knowing all you were ever going to see was the end result and that all in one piece. Diana James straightened in the merciless glare of the light, her eyes going bigger and bigger in terror. Her mouth tried to form something, but just opened and stayed there.

It was at exactly this moment that I felt the lightened weight of my coat and knew why she had pressed up against me in the dark. I lunged for her, still knowing there was nothing I could do, that I was just trying to catch pieces of something that was happening all at once.

She shot. The gun crashed. It roared and reverberated back and forth across the concrete-walled sound chamber of a basement where I’d been afraid of the tapping of her heels against the floor. Before I could grab her, she shot again, the sound swelling and exploding against my eardrums with almost physical pain. In all this madness of noise I saw Diana James jerk around, one hand going up to her chest, and then spill forward onto the floor like a collapsing column of children’s blocks. Just as I reached Madelon Butler and got my hands on her, the light tilted downward and splashed across the fallen dark head and the grotesque swirl of skirt and long legs and arms already still.

Silence rolled back and fell in on us. It was like a vacuum. I could hear it roaring in my ears. I grabbed her. “You—” I said. But there were no words. Nothing would come out. I had an odd feeling I was merely standing there to one side watching myself go crazy. I tried to shove her toward the window.

“Here’s your gun,” she said calmly.

I didn’t even know why I took it. I threw it, and heard the clatter as it hit a wall and fell to the floor.

“Get out that window!”

But she was gone. The flashlight snapped off and I was in total darkness, alone. I swept my arms around madly and felt nothing. Somehow I remembered the other flashlights in my pocket. I clawed one out and started to switch it on, but some remnant of sanity stopped me just in time. We had less than one chance in a thousand of getting out of there now before the whole town fell in on us, and we wouldn’t have that if we showed any light.

I started groping toward where the window should be. Maybe she was already there. Light flared behind me. I whirled. “Turn that out!” I lashed at her. Then I saw what she was doing. It was the ultimate madness.

It wasn’t the flashlight. She had struck a match and was setting fire to the mountainous pile of old papers and magazines beside the coal bin. An unfolded paper burst into flame. I leaped toward her. She grabbed up another and spread it open with a swing of her arm, dropping it on the first. I slammed into her and beat at the flames. It was hopeless.

Another caught. The fire mounted, throwing flickering light back into the corners of the basement and beginning to curl around the wooden beams above us. I fell back from it.

“Run!” I shouted.

She went toward the window. I pounded after her. I stumbled over something. It was the small traveling case I had set down. Without knowing why, I grabbed it up as I bounced back to my feet and lunged after her. I boosted her out the window. I threw the bag out. Then I knelt beside Diana James. I touched her throat, and knew it made no difference now whether we left her there or not. She was dead.

We ran across the black gulf of the lawn. The night was still silent, as if the peace of it had never been broken by the sound of shots. At the gate I looked back once. The basement windows were beginning to glow In a few minutes the house would be a