The house was silent.
Montag approached from the rear, creeping through a thick night-moistened scent
of daffodils and roses and wet grass. He touched the screen door in back, found
it open, slipped in, moved across the porch, listening.
Mrs. Black, are you asleep in there? he thought. This isn't good, but your
husband did it to others and never asked and never wondered and never worried.
And now since you're a fireman's wife, it's your house and your turn, for all
the houses your husband burned and the people he hurt without thinking. .
The house did not reply.
He hid the books in the kitchen and moved from the house again to the
alley and looked back and the house was still dark and quiet, sleeping. On his
way across town, with the helicopters fluttering like torn bits of paper in the
sky, he phoned the alarm at a lonely phone booth outside a store that was closed
for the night. Then he stood in the cold night air, waiting and at a distance he
heard the fire sirens start up and run, and the Salamanders coming, coming to
bum Mr. Black's house while he was away at work, to make his wife stand
shivering in the morning air while the roof let go and dropped in upon the fire.
But now, she was still asleep. Good night, Mrs. Black, he thought.