A tall and lanky Finn known as “Swede” kept a drugstore up that way, one of those typical places where one could buy anything from a filthy book to an automobile tire, in season. The Finn also accepted bets on the ponies. The police ambulance was backed to the curb in front of the drugstore.
At the present time the drugstore lacked windows but nobody was paying any heed to that. Every shop up and down the street within a reasonable radius of the explosion lacked windows. A man was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk before the store, experiencing considerable pain to judge by his actions. Swede was on his knees beside him wrapping the guy in yards of bandages. A cop squatted in front of the man, asking questions and jotting down answers in a notebook.
A couple of cops bent over something hidden from view behind the cross-legged man and straightened up with a stretcher in their hands. If whoever it was on the stretcher was moving, Horne was too far away to see it. They slid the stretcher in the back door of the ambulance and returned for the man on the sidewalk. Ignoring the protests of the bandage-waving druggist, they put the man in the ambulance. One of the policemen climbed in with him. The door was shut and the car moved away from the curb.
Two more victims of your joke, redhead.
Charles Horne looked down at the crowd suddenly and wondered why they were making so little noise. They continued to mill and gape. Then, quickly, overwhelmingly, two facts crashed home to him. A jangling, searing headache took complete possession of his skull, instantly making life miserable. And at the same time his sense of hearing began to slip away from him.
He reached for the telephone and found it still in working order. No reason why it shouldn’t be, he reflected, the cables were underground in the business district. It was difficult to understand Mother Hubbard’s words when she answered the phone. He asked for Elizabeth Saari.
He made a brilliant beginning when she came on the wire. Her voice reached him faintly. He cleared his throat.
“Hi, babe.”
The woman made some answer or he may have cut in on her before she finished speaking; he caught only a mumble.
“Elizabeth, please speak louder.”
“Chuck, we heard an explosion. What was it?”
Her voice had always sounded nice on the phone but he was careful never to tell her so. The boys at the pool hall, very free with wise advice, said it was best to keep them guessing for satisfactory results. He wished he could hear that voice right now. As it was, he caught only a few key words to shape the question she was asking.
“Explosion,” he said briefly.
“So we gathered. But what was it?”
“What?”
“I said, what was it? That explosion?”
“Better come down to the office, doctor. Come on down and count your windows. Mine are all gone.”
“O-h, Chuck! My office?”
“All our offices. Up and down the avenue. Come on down and we’ll inspect your damage.”
There were some seconds of silence and then she yelled his name.
He questioned, “What did you say?”
“Chuck, what is the matter with you? You haven’t heard half of what I’ve said.”
“Sorry, babe. My hearing isn’t up to snuff. What did you say?”
“I asked if anyone was hurt.”
He caught only the last word and guessed the rest.
“Hurt? Yeah, two or three guys got themselves blown through windows, or whatever. Two of them have just been taken away in the blue wagon. I think one is kaput.”
In his mind’s eye he could picture the doctor reaching for her compact black bag with one hand and the dinky, trivial hat she affected with the other. He had no idea what she was using to hold the phone.
“Chuck!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Can’t hear you very well.”
“Charles Horne, you are acting very queerly. Were you hurt in that explosion?”
“You’re a mind reader, babe. Yeah. I’m the third guy what was blowed around...”
She smacked the phone down abruptly. He heard that all right. He hung up and sat down on the floor, sliding down the side of the desk for support.
Dr. Saari was a smart girl for her age. She guessed Wilsey Street would be blocked and came the back way, through the alley and up the rear stairs. The man on the floor didn’t hear her coming, his hearing was completely gone by the time she arrived.
Breathing hard from the exertion, she pushed open the door to his office and looked down at him on the floor. He reflected on the pleasant sight he probably presented. His eyes traveled up her slim body from the dark brown shoes to the dark brown eyes.
He spread his hands and grinned. “No hear English.”
She went to her knees beside him and opened the bag. He was suffering nothing more serious than a pair of long gashes in his forehead where one of the windows had fallen on him, the strange loss of hearing, and one of the most morale-crushing headaches since the days of creation, but she acted as if he were a fifty-dollar-a-visit patient with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. He guessed the bloody shirt gave a much worse impression of the damage than actually existed.
She helped him to his feet and guided him across the hall to her own offices. Her reception room was untouched but the inner sanctum was a glass-strewn counterpart of the room they had just quitted. Like his, it faced the street and contained three windows. They were out. She placed her black bag on the floor and brushed the broken glass from the long, leather examining table.
“Lie down there.” She removed her jacket.
He guessed at the words and sat down on the table.
She began by unbuttoning the ruined shirt he was wearing. He pulled it off and tossed it in the waste can.
“Nothing wrong with me there, doctor. Just my head and my ears.”
She ran hot water into the basin, wet a towel and washed away the muck on his face and arms. The sensation was pleasurable.
“You know what?” he smiled up into her face. “This is the first time a woman has given me a bath since I ran away from home to be a hobo.”
She said nothing. Elizabeth Saari would make somebody a swell wife. But not him. He unconsciously shook his head at the thought. Not him. He took a towel from her hands and dried himself.
Standing behind him, she tilted his head back against her and swabbed the gashes in his forehead. Then she reached for the bandages and tape. He put his head against the inviting softness of her bosom and waited for her to finish. The doctor had an elegant bosom.
What, he wondered idly, was the redhead doing now? Now there was a woman! She must have heard the explosion. The streetcar couldn’t have carried her too far away. The daring, icy-steel nerve of her! What manner of motive, how powerful a thrust could be behind her to force her to such an act? He wished he knew.
There had been her careful plan of action. Her every move had been premeditated; the whole crazy thing screamed of sureness, of foreknowledge, of timing and iron ruthlessness.
From somewhere the redhead had ridden to Wilsey Street, carrying with her in her purse that small, deadly bundle of dynamite. Dynamite? Something more powerful than that — it had been one hell of a blast for mere dynamite. Nitro, probably.
From somewhere across town she had ridden on the rattling streetcar, stepped off to walk three-quarters of a block, and planted the package in a waiting automobile. She had known the automobile would be there, at that precise time, somewhere along the block. She had known it would be empty, that the owner was not far away.
And then just as casually she had crossed the street, walked to the corner, and waited for the returning streetcar to carry her back to the unknown point from which she had come. That was timing. It implied practice, or at least an accurate knowledge of the haphazard streetcar schedules. They seldom ran on time.