The Red Signal: DO SOMETHING!
The first thing Hilda does is, of course, think of God.
“Oh, God, my Father in heaven,” she cried with a breath of her soul, “come help me, please, now, and show me what to do if there is anything I can do. Forgive me for being such a fool and come and help me quickly from this terrible predicament!"
So the next time that you are captured by German spies you have a model for how to react. There, done.
Then she rolled herself softly over and tried to stand up and look about her. Her head swam, and the gag and the cords about her wrists hurt horribly, but something must be done quickly while yet she was alone and had her senses. If there was no other way she must find means to kill herself.
I'm not buying this. The woman indecisively fluttered over running away from her housework while spies were carrying boxes of dynamite back and forth around her. What kind of hash she'd make out of hanging herself is just unthinkable. As a hat-folding, train-jumping housemaid Hilda meets the bar, but some kind of samurai housewife she is not.
But first she must find a way to send word about the airman. He must be caught, even if she died for it.
Seriously, first the Girl from Montana and her horse were plunging suddenly into nihilistic gloom, and now Hilda can barely picture a future in which she survives.
She must get those cords off her wrists and untie that gag. It could be done if she tried hard enough. God would help her.
There we go. Okay, let's see what we have to work with.
The shades were down at the two windows, showing long, slanting rays of light from the late afternoon sun where it crept through the scratches and pinholes in the old green shades. The room was papered with ugly dark paper and carpeted with a faded old ingrain, accentuating the darkness of the place. Besides the bed there was a bureau, washstand and chair. Several boxes, some open, some nailed shut, stood about the room and between the bed and the door was an old leather trunk with iron straps and rims. She would not have noticed it if it had not caught her dress as she started to move slowly toward the door.
I have seen ugly dark wallpaper before, and am mentally covering this room in Hellish Papers I Have Known.
One of the iron rims was broken and bent upwards, showing a jagged edge. The girl gave a gasp of eagerness and slipped softly to her knees, backing up to the trunk and struggling to bring her wrists up to the broken place in the iron.
No, she is not trying to do herself in, she is trying to work the cord apart on the rough metal. I'm just going to let Grace tell it, because for the first time since Hilda started folding and pinning an apron, Grace really puts her back into it:
It was hard work , for her hands were tied in such a position that she could scarcely move, and she could not, of course, see what she was doing behind her back. There was also the added problem of rubbing the cords back and forth over the rough iron hard enough to cut them without making any noise that might be heard below. She worked away for some time in a fever of horror and agony. The blood was running down her wrists, and the gag made her sick and dizzy. Once she staggered to her feet, the perspiration dripping from her brow, and crept softly, slowly about the room, trying to find some more effective means of severing her bonds, but finding none returned and went at the task more desperately, stopping every now and then to listen and make sure she had not roused her captors.
See now? Isn't that actually pretty good? I'm proud of Grace. She spends all this time bogged down on dishes and tours of the Capitol and permits and boarding-passes. But when she finally gets to a tied-up girl freeing herself in an attic, she just goes for it.
Her first thought on getting out of her fetters was to place a bar at her prison door that would keep her captors out. There was the trunk. Dared she move it across the door? It was heavy as lead. But it would make a noise and bring someone up to see what was the matter, perhaps. However, she must try, and she must do it quickly.
Her plan here is to slow her captors down so she can yell out the window. So she wrangles the chest across the door.
But it wouldn't last for long. She must brace it somehow to the opposite wall. If she could only get a couple of those heavy boxes between the bed and the trunk the thing would be done. Softly she dropped to her task again, endowed with almost superhuman strength it seemed, and with a will that would not let mere weakness of the flesh prevail against her great need.
There. She has now built a barricaded lair in the secret villain's barricaded lair. They will never look here. All this, though, is not solving her problem. She doesn't want to be inside; she wants to be outside.
As the second box began to wheel into place her mind grew keen and she knew what she had to do. She must write a letter to Mr. Stevens.
Hilda, you lost me.
She had her fountain pen in her pocket and plenty of envelopes and stamps. She would put on stamps enough, write “Special Delivery” and drop the letter out of the window. She must not be seen at the window lest some one set to watch across the street might see her. That white face at the window! He would be on the lookout. He had a telephone over there. She must be very cautious. If she could get that letter out of the window when some one was passing perhaps it would be picked up and mailed.
I, uh
You know what? Fine. This is not my time and world, it is Hilda's, and we might as well just let her do whatever she's doing. She's trapped in an attic, nobody's getting in anytime soon, why not spend some time catching up on correspondence? Dan Stevens is a Washington DC homeboy, he'll get it in tomorrow's mail and maybe after a good night's sleep she'll be less suicidal. They can bust her out and laugh over it.
Then she thought of Daniel Stevens fighting over in France
What the hell, Hilda. Are you going to barricade yourself in there for weeks until he gets it? Okay, let's see this letter.
“I am shut up in the third story of a house somewhere down in the lower part of the city, near the river, I think. The Schwarzes are here. The airman is across the street in a house numbered 2217."
I thought she had a street address. She doesn't, just the house number.
“Send someone quick! I will draw a map of the way I went as nearly as I can remember after I left Wanamaker's. If anything happens to me and I don't come home tell my mother I was glad to die doing my duty. If I had been a boy I'd have gone to France to fight. I want her to be glad she had a girl to give. Please get here before dark or he will be gone! If I find any way give you a signal where I am, but don't worry about me. Get the man first!"
Wait, is he in France, or not? Also, Wanamaker's shows up a lot in GLH books. I think Grace really liked the place. Kind of like a Macy's or something, I guess.
She tore the sheet from her notebook and enclosed it in one of her envelopes, addressing it to Mr. Stevens's office , where he was usually to be found in the late afternoon. If he was not there his trusted secretary might
Might SEND IT TO FRANCE.
open it or hurry it on to him. She wrote Haste! in large letters across the corner, and “Important!” under that. She put on the usual postage and then ten cents in stamps and wrote “Special Delivery” as she had seen Mrs. Stevens do when she had no special stamp, and crept softly over to the window, taking care that she kept to the side of the shade where no one would see her from across the street. Cautiously she slipped her hand along the sash and turned the fastener, trying to push up the window, but it would not budge. She tried again, pulling the curtain down to hide herself, but the window was firm as a rock. She examined it carefully along the sides. It was nailed shut with two big nails driven through the sash into the window frame!
Yeah, maybe this whole "write your congressman" idea is kind of a bust no matter how many things you write on the envelope.
She prayed. again, “Oh, God! Help me! Help me to catch him before it is too late!”
Cart before horse, Hilda. First, un-catch self. Then, catch spies.
Then she lifted up her head and set her lips determinedly. She would have to break the glass! But how to do it so that it would make no noise?
First, we'll need an apron and some pins. No.
She must just trust that it would lie in the path and somebody coining along would pick it u p and mail it. Was there a mail box in sight? She slipped to her feet again and peered out. Yes, she thought she had remembered it, just across the street. How wonderful! But, oh, would there be another collection in time? Well, the glass must be broken first and then if she heard the people below coming up she would fling out her letter before they had time to get in.
What everyone really needs in their thrilling spy novel: details of postal route scheduling.
Stealthily she collected what she needed for her purpose, a blanket from the bed, a slat that had evidently slipped out of place and lay beneath the bed. She looked up the street and down to see if it was empty. Then, with a prayer for help, she arranged the blanket in thick folds where she meant to strike and drew back with the slat in hand. First she leaned her weight with all her force against the slat and she heard the glass strain and crack,
Suddenly we're back in the land of suspenseful, interesting things! If there were only an editor helping out the whole time, this could be a very different book.
There was a minute of awful silence, during which she seemed to hear in her soul the tinkling echo of that glass striking on the pavement below. It seemed so little and insignificant compared to what she had expected, yet it seemed as if the whole universe could hear it.
And then there's more good stuff I'm not going to copy out because I really have no comment on it, it's just more welcome change after all that time talking about how often the postman visits the mailbox. Somewhere in the last few pages Grace took a little lie-down and tea break and came back invigorated.
What if the post box were an abandoned one, because this region was so little peopled? But there! She must not think such things. She must trust in God.
Then I guess she got tired again.
With a last look at her letter as if it were the only remaining link between herself and the world, she lifted her hand in a quick motion and flung it forth through the opening in the glass, stepping back at once so that she could not be seen if anyone watched across the way.
Then there's a lot of fuss where the actual, government-servant postman comes right down in the street below, and instead of yelling "HELP I AM KIDNAPPED" at him she just watches him in terrible suspense until he picks up her letter and leaves.
She longed to lie down now and die. Her work was done. She had tried her utmost. The letter would reach somewhere sometime, and there was nothing more for her to do, except to contrive a way to save herself if it were possible. But how would that be possible? She could break down the frame of the window perhaps and drop three stories to the pavement below, if she found herself unable to keep the enemy at bay, but that could hardly save her from them.
Dear Government:
I was here with that spy you wanted and a bunch of other people I could have ID'd if you'd found me right then, but I wrote you a letter and then killed myself. Toodles!
PS - Hey, what happens when a Patriot kills herself in Patriot Heaven? Does she get to haunt the place or is she sent to hell for the crime of suicide? Just askin'.
resort. There was only a shadow of a chance that her letter might reach Mr. Stevens before dark, and some one might come to whom she could signal. She had seemed to know from the first that she was in an alien street, in a lonely region, where her cries would be practically useless, because they would reach the ears of her captors before they could bring any succor. It would be necessary to bring outsiders in some way if she were to be saved. The few who passed this way might not care to step aside and trouble themselves, and how easy the Schwarzes could say she was a crazy girl, confined there until they could take her to the asylum
Oh, shove it! There was just a postman right there!
Perhaps she might try tying the bedclothes together and letting herself down after dark. How would it do to get a sheet or blanket and wave it out that broken pane if anybody came by, and then call?
Surely they will not think you are crazy if you just wave a blanket at them first. Actually, maybe they will take you seriously if you are wearing a fetching white hat and jacket. You'll need that sheet, and some pins...
Stealthily she stole about her room, looking the half -open bureau drawers, feeling in the open boxes. One contained thousands of pamphlets, She lifted one and saw it was something about peace. She wondered if this could be what they called German propaganda. Another was an appeal to all loyal Americans to protest against the draft. But she had no time to look at such things now. She slipped a copy of each in her pocket and then smiled grimly at herself. She had no idea of ever getting out of this place alive, much less being able to communicate with her friends again. Why did she put these away? Well, perhaps if she dropped from the window they would find them about her and understand a little of where she had been imprisoned since her disappearance.
You know who is against the draft? SPIES. Soon it will be communists, but for now it is SPIES. Find everyone who thinks differently, because they are a SPY. It is kind of breathtaking how much the world has changed.
In the washstand drawer beside a half-used cake of brown soap, she found three matches! Ah She clutched them and examined them closely to see if they were good. She could not tell, but if they were, here, indeed, was a means of signaling that would be more effective than anything else. The thought of it made her put her hands on her heart and draw a deep breath. Had she the courage to do it? Set fire to the room where she had barred herself from escape, except through the third-story window? Well, why not?
Why not barricade yourself in the top story of a house and set fire to it? Why not indeed? Bonus: all that terrible no-good peacetime propaganda will go with you.
She would sit down and get quite calm and cool and think out what was best to be done.
Best idea Hilda came up with since she broke the window. It doesn't last long.
Softly she stole across the room and pulled the mattress from the bed, punching it carefully. Yes, it was straw. Straw would burn! But she ought to have more than that. She dragged it to the broken window and stood it up against the shade so that it leaned against the window frame. Then she gathered an armful of pamphlets from the box and began methodically twisting them as she had been taught to do in kindling a fire.
I end up agog a lot in GLH novels, but this is the first one where Hilda loses me at every jump. I know we got from "if I yell for help out the window, everyone will think I am crazy!" to "HI, I AM NOT CRAZY, I AM JUST PITCHING ARMFULS OF BURNING STRAW INTO THE STREET." I just don't know how we got there.
However, in all her mad ripping of mattresses, she has forgotten to stay out of sight of the window. Meanwhile, independent of everything Hilda has done, four people come to take the airman across the street into custody. This causes the lookout on the other side of the street to call the house and tell them to go get the girl, tie her up again, and take their revenge when they have her out to sea. Hilda sees him leaving while the search party dithers around, and, heedless of being taken for a madwoman, begins pounding on the glass with her bare hands shrieking that he is a German spy. All that fussing around with letters when these men were on the way to move the plot along!
Then Hilda flings herself down for a long paragraph to start lighting matches. Where can she strike them? What if they were waterlogged? She draws the first match across the carpet and we promptly leave her chapter and go see what Dan Stevens is up to.
Dan Stevens got exposed to poison gas, and he's fine but he's off the front lines. He's been keeping a diary. He hasn't liked combat very much. He gets along fine with god and his mother. He likes Hilda. He is sent home. These are the sorts of things we putter around with Dan Stevens while Hilda is back there working on self-immolation, and it is exactly as frustrating as you'd think.
Hilda's letter arrives when they are greeting him.
the father frowned and was for throwing the letter aside.
This is your stupid letter-plan, Hilda. Anyway, the soldier who was sent home for his health after being gassed is now leaping into the brisk DC smog to go save Hilda.
Slowly, feebly the match burst into a flame, fizzled weakly, and went out!
That's one now. With Mrs. Schwarz and the American, or maybe the German, I don't know who Grace means at this point, thundering up the stairs, Hilda tries again.
The head broke off without a spark, and there was now only the meanest little old half match available. She nerved herself to do her best with it. She took the match carefully, held it close, struck with it firmly, and held her breath till it flickered up into a flame and blazed bright up the length of the stick. The moment was tense till it caught the first piece of paper,
Hooray! She is successfully starting fires in a sealed-up room!
and then she drew her breath, and held another paper above the first and so on until the whole little pile was blazing and the edge of the tick began to scorch and and curl and then blazed into a roar. It was started at last.
Her sentence structure is usually better than that. I think Grace is working hard here.
In a moment more it would reach the window-flame and then it would be seen.
Hooray! She has blocked off her only source of fresh air with a conflagration!
Hilda, kneeling beside her funeral pyre, was feeding it with pamphlets on peace, slowly, painfully, fearing lest her fire would go out before it had caught the woodwork and made blaze enough to be seen.
Oh, is THAT the problem. Good thing she has a handle on it.
And then, with sudden alarm, she realized for the first time what a thing she had done in starting this great power of fire in her defense.
No! You can't mean it!
How the flames in that brief moment when her back was turned had licked their way up through the mattress and caught the shade and the window-frame and the paper on the wall. The whole corner of the room seemed suddenly bathed in flame. Horrified, dazed with the heat,
You have three guesses.
she retreated toward the other window and, catching up the bed slat that lay on the floor, she dashed it through the glass of the other window, pane after pane, smashing through the framework with an almost superhuman strength. In a moment more she had a wide opening, and the cold air leaping from outside sent the blaze roaring higher than ever.
Yes, she MAKES IT WORSE, why stop now? Did you seriously think she was just going to fan little bits of smoke under the door, or anything other than going all in? She just set the house on fire!
So, as the Schwarzes break down the upper panel of the door, she soaks her handkerchief and part of a bedsheet in the water pitcher and climbs onto the windowsill, where she realizes she is kind of high up. She hears sirens and fire-trucks. The Schwarzes are still trying to get in, but since the room is full of smoke and fire that is not going very well. The fire trucks are trying to save her, but that is not going well either. Because the way is on fire.
They were putting up a ladder now over the blazing, tottering way. They had seen her and were going to try to save her, but it was too late; the fire was almost upon her. She could feel its hot breath on her cheek. It had cast a wall of flames between her and Schwarz. Its kind, protecting arms were reaching out and crisping up the floor between them, so he could not walk to her. Kind, safe fire! It would all be over in minute now.
So she hears them escaping down the back stairs and puts her dripping wet smoke-mask to yell above the fire, clamor, and shouting that the spies are getting away. Why this should start working now, I don't know, but it does split off some rescuers.
Meanwhile, the soldier who was exposed to poisonous gas, was sent home for his health, went racing across Washington DC, and is now in the thick of smoke goes dashing up the rickety ladder as she finally starts to swoon. Good job endangering yourself, the neighbors, and your soldier, Hilda-girl.
“Oh, God, my Father in heaven,” she cried with a breath of her soul, “come help me, please, now, and show me what to do if there is anything I can do. Forgive me for being such a fool and come and help me quickly from this terrible predicament!"
So the next time that you are captured by German spies you have a model for how to react. There, done.
Then she rolled herself softly over and tried to stand up and look about her. Her head swam, and the gag and the cords about her wrists hurt horribly, but something must be done quickly while yet she was alone and had her senses. If there was no other way she must find means to kill herself.
I'm not buying this. The woman indecisively fluttered over running away from her housework while spies were carrying boxes of dynamite back and forth around her. What kind of hash she'd make out of hanging herself is just unthinkable. As a hat-folding, train-jumping housemaid Hilda meets the bar, but some kind of samurai housewife she is not.
But first she must find a way to send word about the airman. He must be caught, even if she died for it.
Seriously, first the Girl from Montana and her horse were plunging suddenly into nihilistic gloom, and now Hilda can barely picture a future in which she survives.
She must get those cords off her wrists and untie that gag. It could be done if she tried hard enough. God would help her.
There we go. Okay, let's see what we have to work with.
The shades were down at the two windows, showing long, slanting rays of light from the late afternoon sun where it crept through the scratches and pinholes in the old green shades. The room was papered with ugly dark paper and carpeted with a faded old ingrain, accentuating the darkness of the place. Besides the bed there was a bureau, washstand and chair. Several boxes, some open, some nailed shut, stood about the room and between the bed and the door was an old leather trunk with iron straps and rims. She would not have noticed it if it had not caught her dress as she started to move slowly toward the door.
I have seen ugly dark wallpaper before, and am mentally covering this room in Hellish Papers I Have Known.
One of the iron rims was broken and bent upwards, showing a jagged edge. The girl gave a gasp of eagerness and slipped softly to her knees, backing up to the trunk and struggling to bring her wrists up to the broken place in the iron.
No, she is not trying to do herself in, she is trying to work the cord apart on the rough metal. I'm just going to let Grace tell it, because for the first time since Hilda started folding and pinning an apron, Grace really puts her back into it:
It was hard work , for her hands were tied in such a position that she could scarcely move, and she could not, of course, see what she was doing behind her back. There was also the added problem of rubbing the cords back and forth over the rough iron hard enough to cut them without making any noise that might be heard below. She worked away for some time in a fever of horror and agony. The blood was running down her wrists, and the gag made her sick and dizzy. Once she staggered to her feet, the perspiration dripping from her brow, and crept softly, slowly about the room, trying to find some more effective means of severing her bonds, but finding none returned and went at the task more desperately, stopping every now and then to listen and make sure she had not roused her captors.
See now? Isn't that actually pretty good? I'm proud of Grace. She spends all this time bogged down on dishes and tours of the Capitol and permits and boarding-passes. But when she finally gets to a tied-up girl freeing herself in an attic, she just goes for it.
Her first thought on getting out of her fetters was to place a bar at her prison door that would keep her captors out. There was the trunk. Dared she move it across the door? It was heavy as lead. But it would make a noise and bring someone up to see what was the matter, perhaps. However, she must try, and she must do it quickly.
Her plan here is to slow her captors down so she can yell out the window. So she wrangles the chest across the door.
But it wouldn't last for long. She must brace it somehow to the opposite wall. If she could only get a couple of those heavy boxes between the bed and the trunk the thing would be done. Softly she dropped to her task again, endowed with almost superhuman strength it seemed, and with a will that would not let mere weakness of the flesh prevail against her great need.
There. She has now built a barricaded lair in the secret villain's barricaded lair. They will never look here. All this, though, is not solving her problem. She doesn't want to be inside; she wants to be outside.
As the second box began to wheel into place her mind grew keen and she knew what she had to do. She must write a letter to Mr. Stevens.
Hilda, you lost me.
She had her fountain pen in her pocket and plenty of envelopes and stamps. She would put on stamps enough, write “Special Delivery” and drop the letter out of the window. She must not be seen at the window lest some one set to watch across the street might see her. That white face at the window! He would be on the lookout. He had a telephone over there. She must be very cautious. If she could get that letter out of the window when some one was passing perhaps it would be picked up and mailed.
I, uh
You know what? Fine. This is not my time and world, it is Hilda's, and we might as well just let her do whatever she's doing. She's trapped in an attic, nobody's getting in anytime soon, why not spend some time catching up on correspondence? Dan Stevens is a Washington DC homeboy, he'll get it in tomorrow's mail and maybe after a good night's sleep she'll be less suicidal. They can bust her out and laugh over it.
Then she thought of Daniel Stevens fighting over in France
What the hell, Hilda. Are you going to barricade yourself in there for weeks until he gets it? Okay, let's see this letter.
“I am shut up in the third story of a house somewhere down in the lower part of the city, near the river, I think. The Schwarzes are here. The airman is across the street in a house numbered 2217."
I thought she had a street address. She doesn't, just the house number.
“Send someone quick! I will draw a map of the way I went as nearly as I can remember after I left Wanamaker's. If anything happens to me and I don't come home tell my mother I was glad to die doing my duty. If I had been a boy I'd have gone to France to fight. I want her to be glad she had a girl to give. Please get here before dark or he will be gone! If I find any way give you a signal where I am, but don't worry about me. Get the man first!"
Wait, is he in France, or not? Also, Wanamaker's shows up a lot in GLH books. I think Grace really liked the place. Kind of like a Macy's or something, I guess.
She tore the sheet from her notebook and enclosed it in one of her envelopes, addressing it to Mr. Stevens's office , where he was usually to be found in the late afternoon. If he was not there his trusted secretary might
Might SEND IT TO FRANCE.
open it or hurry it on to him. She wrote Haste! in large letters across the corner, and “Important!” under that. She put on the usual postage and then ten cents in stamps and wrote “Special Delivery” as she had seen Mrs. Stevens do when she had no special stamp, and crept softly over to the window, taking care that she kept to the side of the shade where no one would see her from across the street. Cautiously she slipped her hand along the sash and turned the fastener, trying to push up the window, but it would not budge. She tried again, pulling the curtain down to hide herself, but the window was firm as a rock. She examined it carefully along the sides. It was nailed shut with two big nails driven through the sash into the window frame!
Yeah, maybe this whole "write your congressman" idea is kind of a bust no matter how many things you write on the envelope.
She prayed. again, “Oh, God! Help me! Help me to catch him before it is too late!”
Cart before horse, Hilda. First, un-catch self. Then, catch spies.
Then she lifted up her head and set her lips determinedly. She would have to break the glass! But how to do it so that it would make no noise?
First, we'll need an apron and some pins. No.
She must just trust that it would lie in the path and somebody coining along would pick it u p and mail it. Was there a mail box in sight? She slipped to her feet again and peered out. Yes, she thought she had remembered it, just across the street. How wonderful! But, oh, would there be another collection in time? Well, the glass must be broken first and then if she heard the people below coming up she would fling out her letter before they had time to get in.
What everyone really needs in their thrilling spy novel: details of postal route scheduling.
Stealthily she collected what she needed for her purpose, a blanket from the bed, a slat that had evidently slipped out of place and lay beneath the bed. She looked up the street and down to see if it was empty. Then, with a prayer for help, she arranged the blanket in thick folds where she meant to strike and drew back with the slat in hand. First she leaned her weight with all her force against the slat and she heard the glass strain and crack,
Suddenly we're back in the land of suspenseful, interesting things! If there were only an editor helping out the whole time, this could be a very different book.
There was a minute of awful silence, during which she seemed to hear in her soul the tinkling echo of that glass striking on the pavement below. It seemed so little and insignificant compared to what she had expected, yet it seemed as if the whole universe could hear it.
And then there's more good stuff I'm not going to copy out because I really have no comment on it, it's just more welcome change after all that time talking about how often the postman visits the mailbox. Somewhere in the last few pages Grace took a little lie-down and tea break and came back invigorated.
What if the post box were an abandoned one, because this region was so little peopled? But there! She must not think such things. She must trust in God.
Then I guess she got tired again.
With a last look at her letter as if it were the only remaining link between herself and the world, she lifted her hand in a quick motion and flung it forth through the opening in the glass, stepping back at once so that she could not be seen if anyone watched across the way.
Then there's a lot of fuss where the actual, government-servant postman comes right down in the street below, and instead of yelling "HELP I AM KIDNAPPED" at him she just watches him in terrible suspense until he picks up her letter and leaves.
She longed to lie down now and die. Her work was done. She had tried her utmost. The letter would reach somewhere sometime, and there was nothing more for her to do, except to contrive a way to save herself if it were possible. But how would that be possible? She could break down the frame of the window perhaps and drop three stories to the pavement below, if she found herself unable to keep the enemy at bay, but that could hardly save her from them.
Dear Government:
I was here with that spy you wanted and a bunch of other people I could have ID'd if you'd found me right then, but I wrote you a letter and then killed myself. Toodles!
PS - Hey, what happens when a Patriot kills herself in Patriot Heaven? Does she get to haunt the place or is she sent to hell for the crime of suicide? Just askin'.
resort. There was only a shadow of a chance that her letter might reach Mr. Stevens before dark, and some one might come to whom she could signal. She had seemed to know from the first that she was in an alien street, in a lonely region, where her cries would be practically useless, because they would reach the ears of her captors before they could bring any succor. It would be necessary to bring outsiders in some way if she were to be saved. The few who passed this way might not care to step aside and trouble themselves, and how easy the Schwarzes could say she was a crazy girl, confined there until they could take her to the asylum
Oh, shove it! There was just a postman right there!
Perhaps she might try tying the bedclothes together and letting herself down after dark. How would it do to get a sheet or blanket and wave it out that broken pane if anybody came by, and then call?
Surely they will not think you are crazy if you just wave a blanket at them first. Actually, maybe they will take you seriously if you are wearing a fetching white hat and jacket. You'll need that sheet, and some pins...
Stealthily she stole about her room, looking the half -open bureau drawers, feeling in the open boxes. One contained thousands of pamphlets, She lifted one and saw it was something about peace. She wondered if this could be what they called German propaganda. Another was an appeal to all loyal Americans to protest against the draft. But she had no time to look at such things now. She slipped a copy of each in her pocket and then smiled grimly at herself. She had no idea of ever getting out of this place alive, much less being able to communicate with her friends again. Why did she put these away? Well, perhaps if she dropped from the window they would find them about her and understand a little of where she had been imprisoned since her disappearance.
You know who is against the draft? SPIES. Soon it will be communists, but for now it is SPIES. Find everyone who thinks differently, because they are a SPY. It is kind of breathtaking how much the world has changed.
In the washstand drawer beside a half-used cake of brown soap, she found three matches! Ah She clutched them and examined them closely to see if they were good. She could not tell, but if they were, here, indeed, was a means of signaling that would be more effective than anything else. The thought of it made her put her hands on her heart and draw a deep breath. Had she the courage to do it? Set fire to the room where she had barred herself from escape, except through the third-story window? Well, why not?
Why not barricade yourself in the top story of a house and set fire to it? Why not indeed? Bonus: all that terrible no-good peacetime propaganda will go with you.
She would sit down and get quite calm and cool and think out what was best to be done.
Best idea Hilda came up with since she broke the window. It doesn't last long.
Softly she stole across the room and pulled the mattress from the bed, punching it carefully. Yes, it was straw. Straw would burn! But she ought to have more than that. She dragged it to the broken window and stood it up against the shade so that it leaned against the window frame. Then she gathered an armful of pamphlets from the box and began methodically twisting them as she had been taught to do in kindling a fire.
I end up agog a lot in GLH novels, but this is the first one where Hilda loses me at every jump. I know we got from "if I yell for help out the window, everyone will think I am crazy!" to "HI, I AM NOT CRAZY, I AM JUST PITCHING ARMFULS OF BURNING STRAW INTO THE STREET." I just don't know how we got there.
However, in all her mad ripping of mattresses, she has forgotten to stay out of sight of the window. Meanwhile, independent of everything Hilda has done, four people come to take the airman across the street into custody. This causes the lookout on the other side of the street to call the house and tell them to go get the girl, tie her up again, and take their revenge when they have her out to sea. Hilda sees him leaving while the search party dithers around, and, heedless of being taken for a madwoman, begins pounding on the glass with her bare hands shrieking that he is a German spy. All that fussing around with letters when these men were on the way to move the plot along!
Then Hilda flings herself down for a long paragraph to start lighting matches. Where can she strike them? What if they were waterlogged? She draws the first match across the carpet and we promptly leave her chapter and go see what Dan Stevens is up to.
Dan Stevens got exposed to poison gas, and he's fine but he's off the front lines. He's been keeping a diary. He hasn't liked combat very much. He gets along fine with god and his mother. He likes Hilda. He is sent home. These are the sorts of things we putter around with Dan Stevens while Hilda is back there working on self-immolation, and it is exactly as frustrating as you'd think.
Hilda's letter arrives when they are greeting him.
the father frowned and was for throwing the letter aside.
This is your stupid letter-plan, Hilda. Anyway, the soldier who was sent home for his health after being gassed is now leaping into the brisk DC smog to go save Hilda.
Slowly, feebly the match burst into a flame, fizzled weakly, and went out!
That's one now. With Mrs. Schwarz and the American, or maybe the German, I don't know who Grace means at this point, thundering up the stairs, Hilda tries again.
The head broke off without a spark, and there was now only the meanest little old half match available. She nerved herself to do her best with it. She took the match carefully, held it close, struck with it firmly, and held her breath till it flickered up into a flame and blazed bright up the length of the stick. The moment was tense till it caught the first piece of paper,
Hooray! She is successfully starting fires in a sealed-up room!
and then she drew her breath, and held another paper above the first and so on until the whole little pile was blazing and the edge of the tick began to scorch and and curl and then blazed into a roar. It was started at last.
Her sentence structure is usually better than that. I think Grace is working hard here.
In a moment more it would reach the window-flame and then it would be seen.
Hooray! She has blocked off her only source of fresh air with a conflagration!
Hilda, kneeling beside her funeral pyre, was feeding it with pamphlets on peace, slowly, painfully, fearing lest her fire would go out before it had caught the woodwork and made blaze enough to be seen.
Oh, is THAT the problem. Good thing she has a handle on it.
And then, with sudden alarm, she realized for the first time what a thing she had done in starting this great power of fire in her defense.
No! You can't mean it!
How the flames in that brief moment when her back was turned had licked their way up through the mattress and caught the shade and the window-frame and the paper on the wall. The whole corner of the room seemed suddenly bathed in flame. Horrified, dazed with the heat,
You have three guesses.
she retreated toward the other window and, catching up the bed slat that lay on the floor, she dashed it through the glass of the other window, pane after pane, smashing through the framework with an almost superhuman strength. In a moment more she had a wide opening, and the cold air leaping from outside sent the blaze roaring higher than ever.
Yes, she MAKES IT WORSE, why stop now? Did you seriously think she was just going to fan little bits of smoke under the door, or anything other than going all in? She just set the house on fire!
So, as the Schwarzes break down the upper panel of the door, she soaks her handkerchief and part of a bedsheet in the water pitcher and climbs onto the windowsill, where she realizes she is kind of high up. She hears sirens and fire-trucks. The Schwarzes are still trying to get in, but since the room is full of smoke and fire that is not going very well. The fire trucks are trying to save her, but that is not going well either. Because the way is on fire.
They were putting up a ladder now over the blazing, tottering way. They had seen her and were going to try to save her, but it was too late; the fire was almost upon her. She could feel its hot breath on her cheek. It had cast a wall of flames between her and Schwarz. Its kind, protecting arms were reaching out and crisping up the floor between them, so he could not walk to her. Kind, safe fire! It would all be over in minute now.
So she hears them escaping down the back stairs and puts her dripping wet smoke-mask to yell above the fire, clamor, and shouting that the spies are getting away. Why this should start working now, I don't know, but it does split off some rescuers.
Meanwhile, the soldier who was exposed to poisonous gas, was sent home for his health, went racing across Washington DC, and is now in the thick of smoke goes dashing up the rickety ladder as she finally starts to swoon. Good job endangering yourself, the neighbors, and your soldier, Hilda-girl.