The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [133]
Mrs. Enderby had given the alarm twenty minutes after the theft and two plain-clothes men and an agent from the insurance company were waiting for Badger when he got off the train in Grand Central. Wearing tails, and carrying a paper bag that seemed to be full of hardware, he was not hard to spot. They followed him, thinking that he might lead them to a ring. He walked jubilantly up Park Avenue to Saint Bartholomew’s and tried the doors, which were locked. Then he crossed Park Avenue, crossed Madison and walked up Fifth to Saint Patrick’s, where the doors were still open and where many charwomen were mopping the floors. He went way forward to the central altar, knelt and said his Lamb of God. Then—the rail was down and he was too enthralled to think of being conspicuous—he walked across the deep chancel and emptied his paper bag on the altar. The plain-clothes men picked him up as he left the cathedral.
It was not one o’clock when the police department called Clear Haven to tell Justina that they had her jewelry. She checked the police list against a typewritten list that had been pasted to the top of her jewel box. “One diamond bracelet, two diamond and onyx bracelets, one diamond and emerald bracelet,” etc. She tried the policeman’s patience when she asked him to count the pearls in her necklace, but he did. Then Papa Confettiere called for music and wine. “Dancinga, singinga,” he shouted, and gave the ladies’ orchestra a hundred-dollar bill. They struck up a waltz and then the fuses blew for the second time that night.
Moses knew that Giacomo was around—he had seen him in the halls—but he went to the cellar door anyhow. A peculiar smell surrounded him but he didn’t reflect on it and he didn’t notice the fact that as he went down the back hallway sweat began to pour off his body. He opened the cellar door onto a pit of fire and a blast of hot air that burned all the hair off his face and nearly overcame him. Then he staggered down the hall to the kitchens where the maids were cleaning up the last of the dishes and asked the major-domo if anyone was upstairs. He counted off the help and said that no one was and then Moses told them to get out; that the house was on fire. (How Mrs. Wapshot would have been disappointed with this direct statement of fact; how cleverly she would have led the guests and servants out onto the lawn to see the new moon.)
Then Moses called the fire department from the kitchen telephone, noticing, as he picked up the receiver, that much flesh had been burned off his right hand by the cellar doorknob. His lips were swollen with adrenaline and he felt peculiarly at ease. Then he ran down to the hall where the guests were still waltzing and told Justina that her house was burning. She was perfectly composed and when Moses stopped the music she asked the guests to go out on the lawn. They could hear the bull horn in the village beginning to sound. There were many doors onto the terrace and as the guests crowded out of the hall, away from the lights of the party, they stepped into the pink glow of fire, for the flames had blown straight up the clock tower and while there were still no signs of fire in the hall the tower was blazing like a torch. Then the fire trucks could be heard coming down the road toward the drive and Justina started down the hall to great them at her front door as she had greeted J. C. Penney, Herbert Hoover and the Prince of Wales, but as she started down the hall a rafter somewhere in the tower burned loose from its shorings, crashed through the ceiling of the rotunda and then all the lights in the house flickered and went out.