The Ambulance Made Two Trips Read online

there was a car parkedbefore it. Two men from that car were in the act of entering the Eliteplant through the same door the detective had used earlier. He parkedhis car behind the other. Fuming, he crossed the sidewalk and enteredthe building. As he entered, he heard a scream from the back. He heard acrashing sound and more screams.

  He bolted ahead, through the outer office and into the working area hehad not visited before. He burst through swinging doors into atwo-story, machinery-filled cleaning-and-dyeing plant. Tables andgarment racks and five separate people appeared as proper occupants ofthe place. But something had happened. There was a flood ofliquid--detergent solution--flowing toward the open back doors of thebig room. It obviously came from a large carboy which had been smashedas if to draw attention to some urgent matter.

  The people in the room seemed to have frozen at their work, except thatBrink had apparently been interrupted in some supervisory task. He wasnot working at any machine to clean, dye, dry, or press clothing. Helooked at the two individuals whom Fitzgerald had seen enter onlyfractions of a minute earlier. His jaw clenched, and Fitzgerald wasclose enough behind the bottle-breakers to see him take an angry,purposeful step toward them. Then he checked himself very deliberately,and put his hands in his pockets, and watched. After an instant he evengrinned at the two figures who had preceded the detective.

  They were an impressive pair. They were dressed in well-pressed garmentsof extravagantly fashionable cut. They wore expensive soft hats, tiltedto jaunty angles. Even from the rear, Fitzgerald knew that handkerchiefswould show tastefully in the breast pockets of their coats. Their shoeshad been polished until they not only shone, but glittered. But byprofessional instinct Fitzgerald noted one cauliflower ear, and thebarest fraction of a second later he saw a squat revolver being wavednegligently at the screaming women.

  He reached for his service revolver. And things happened.

  * * * * *

  The situation was crystal-clear. Big Jake Connors was displeased withBrink. In all the city whose rackets he was developing andconsolidating, Brink was the only man who resisted Big Jake's civicenterprise--and got away with it! And nobody who runs rackets can permitresistance. It is contagious. So Big Jake had ordered that Brink bebrought into line or else. The or else alternative had run into snags,before, but it was being given a big new try.

  There was the shrill high clamor of two women screaming at the tops oftheir voices because revolvers were waved at them. One Elite employee,at the pressing machine, took his foot off the treadle and steambillowed wildly. Another man, at a giant sheet-iron box which rumbled,stared with his mouth open and blood draining from his cheeks. Brink,alone, looked--quite impossibly--amused and satisfied.

  "Get outside!" snarled a voice as Fitzgerald's revolver came out readyfor action. "This joint is finished!"

  The companion of the snarling man rubbed suddenly at his eye. He rubbedagain, as if it twitched violently. But it was, after all, only atwitching eyelid. He reached negligently down and picked up a woodenbox. By its markings, it was a dozen-bottle box of spot-remover--thestuff used to get out spots the standard cleaning fluid in thedry-cleaning machine did not remove.

  The man heaved the box, with the hand with which he had rubbed histwitching eye. The other man raised a hand--the one not holding arevolver--to rub at his own eye, which also seemed to twitch agitatedly.

  Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald had his revolver out. He drew in hisbreath for a stentorian command for them to drop their weapons. But hedidn't have time to shout. The hurtling small box of spot-remover struckthe large sheet-iron case from which loud rumblings came. It was adryer; a device for spinning clothes which were wet with liquid from thedry-cleaning washer. A perforated drum revolved at high speed within it.The box of spot-remover hit the door. The door dented in, hit thehigh-speed drum inside, and flew frantically out again, free from itshinges and turning end-for-end as it flew. It slammed into the thrower'scompanion, spraining three fingers as it knocked his revolver to thefloor. The weapon slid merrily away to the outer office betweenDetective Fitzgerald's feet.

  But this was not all. The dryer-door, having disposed of one threateningrevolver, slammed violently against the wall. The wall was merely a thinpartition, neatly paneled on the office side, but with shelvescontaining cleaning-and-dyeing supplies on the other. The impact shookthe partition. Dust fell from the shelves and supplies. The hood whohadn't lost his gun sneezed so violently that his hat came off. He bentnearly double, and in the act he jarred the partition again.

  Things fell from it. Many things. A two-gallon jar of extra-specialdetergent, used only for laces, conked him and smashed on the floorbefore him. It added to the stream of fluid already flowing withsingular directness for the open, double, back-door of the workroom. Thehood staggered, sneezed again, and convulsively pulled the trigger ofhis gun. The bullet hit something which was solid heavy metal,ricocheted, ricocheted again and the second hood howled and leapedwildly into the air. He came down in the flowing flood of spilleddetergent, flat on his stomach, and with marked forward momentum. Heslid. The floor of the plant had recently been oiled to keep down dust.The coefficient of friction of a really good detergent on top offloor-oil is remarkably low,--somewhere around point oh-oh-nine. Hoodnumber two slid magnificently on his belly on the superb lubricationafforded by detergent on top of floor-oil.

  The first hood staggered. Something else fell from the shelf. It was acarton of electric-light bulbs. Despite the protecting carton, they wentoff with crackings like gunfire. Technically, they did not explode butimplode, but the hood with the revolver did not notice the difference.He leaped--and also landed in the middle of the wide streak ofdetergent-over-oil which might have been arranged to receive him.

  He remained erect, but he slid slowly along that shining path. Hisrelatively low speed was not his fault, because he went through all themotions of frenzied flight. His legs twinkled as he ran. But his feetslid backward. He moved with a sort of dignified celerity, running fastenough for ten times the speed, upon a surface which had a frictionalcoefficient far below that of the smoothest possible ice.

  Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald gaped, his mouth dropped open and his gunheld laxly in a practically nerveless hand.

  The thing developed splendidly. The prone gunman slid out of the widedouble door, pushing a bow-wave of detergent before him. He slid acrossthe cement just outside, into the open garage whose delivery-truck wasabsent, and slammed with a sort of deliberate violence into a stack offour cardboard drums of that bone-black which is used to filtercleaning-fluid so it can be used over again in the dry-cleaning machine.The garage was used for storage as well as shelter for theestablishment's truck.

  The four drums were not accurately piled. They were three and a halffeet high and two feet in diameter. They toppled sedately, falling witha fine precision upon the now hatless, running, sliding hood. One ofthem burst upon him. A second burst upon the prone man--who had buttedthrough the cardboard of the bottom one on his arrival. There was adense black cloud which filled all the interior of the garage. It wasbone-black, which cannot be told from lamp-black or soot by theuninitiated.

  From the cloud came a despairing revolver shot. It was pure reflexaction by a man who had been whammed over the head by ahundred-and-fifty-pound drum of yielding--in fact bursting--material.There was a metallic clang. Then silence.

  In a very little while the dust-cloud cleared. One figure struggledinsanely. Upon him descended--from an oil drum of cylinder-oil storedabove the rafters--a tranquil, glistening rod of opalescentcylinder-oil. His last bullet had punctured the drum. Oil turned thebone-black upon him into a thick, sticky goo which instantly gatheredmore bone-black to become thicker, stickier, and gooier. He fought it,while his unconscious companion lay with his head in a crumpledcardboard container of more black stuff.

  The despairing, struggling hood managed to get off one more shot, as ifdefying even fate and chance. This bullet likewise found a target. Itburst a container of powder
ed dye-stuff, also stored overhead. Thecontainer practically exploded and its contents descended in awidespread shower which coated all the interior of the garage with alovely layer of bright heliotrope.

  Maybe the struggling hood saw it. If so, it broke him utterly. What hadhappened was starkly impossible. The only sane explanation was that hehad died and was in hell. He accepted that explanation and broke intosobs.

  * * * * *

  Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald had witnessed every instant of thehappening, but he did not believe it. Nevertheless, he said in a strangevoice: "I'll phone for the paddy-wagon. It'll do for a ambulance, incase of need."

  He put away his unused service revolver. Thinking strange, dizzythoughts of twitching eyelids and plastic scraps and starkly incrediblehappenings, he managed to call for the police patrol. When he hung up,he gazed blankly at the wall. He gazed, in fact, at a spot where apeculiar small machine with no visible function