The Mouse and the Motorcycle - Beverly Cleary [26]
Keith sighed but he slid his feet out from under the sheet and, hanging onto the bedside table, reached over and opened the door.
Ralph was already seated in the white ambulance with the red cross painted on the side. “Wh-e-e. Wh-e-e. Wh-e-e.” He took the corner into the hall on two wheels and sped down the bare floor between the wall and the carpet until he came to Room 211. Here he slowed down and then went, “Wh-e-e! Wh-e-e! Wh-e-e!” good and loud. This carried him, as he had planned, to the elevator. It was a crucial moment. Now he would find out if his plan was going to work.
The little dog in Room 211 began to whimper and then to bark just as Ralph had planned.
In a moment the door opened and the man stumbled out with the little terrier in his arms. “Oh, all right,” he grumbled. “I’ll walk you. Shut up, will you?”
Ralph waited, his paws tense on the steering wheel.
The man walked groggily to the closed elevator door, where he managed, in spite of the wriggling dog in his arms, to push the button. Soon the elevator door slid open.
Ralph knew that timing was important. The man entered the elevator. The dog barked. “Wh-e-e! Wh-e-e!” said Ralph hard enough and fast enough to shoot the ambulance at great speed across the yawning crack between the floor of the hall and the floor of the elevator before the man turned around. As the dog’s owner turned, Ralph steered skillfully around his feet and parked the ambulance behind him. The man pressed the button, the doors closed, and the elevator actually began to descend.
“Do you know what you are?” the man sleepily asked the dog. “You are a nuisance, that’s what you are. A four-footed, hair-covered nuisance.”
The dog ignored his master. “I know you’re down there,” he yapped to Ralph. “If I could just get down I’d get you!”
Ralph did not answer. He was taking no chances. He waited quietly inside his ambulance until the man had carried the dog out before he drove out of the elevator. He jumped out of the ambulance, opened the rear doors, seized the precious aspirin, and boosted it inside. Slamming the doors, he ran around and jumped into the driver’s seat. There was not an instant to lose.
“Wh-e-e. Wh-e-e.” The ambulance moved toward the open elevator, but unfortunately by this time Ralph was slightly out of breath. The front wheels of the ambulance caught in the crack between the floor of the lobby and the floor of the elevator. The ambulance was stuck.
Oh, no, thought Ralph. Not now. I can’t fail now. “Wh-e-e. Wh-e-e,” he managed to gasp. The wheels spun but the ambulance did not move. Ralph jumped out, put his shoulder to the rear of the vehicle, and pushed with all his strength. Nothing happened. In a moment the man would be returning with his dog.
Desperate, Ralph climbed back into the ambulance. He took a breath so deep he thought his lungs would surely burst. “Wh-e-e! Wh-e-e! Wh-e-e!” He made the sound hard and fast and high-pitched. The wheels spun. The ambulance moved, slowly at first, and then as the tires got a grip on the floor of the elevator, it shot out of the crack and across the elevator and hit the rear wall with a bump. Ralph collapsed over the steering wheel, limp with relief, just as the man came back through the lobby with his dog.
“I guess some boy lost his toy ambulance,” muttered the man, more awake now, as he stepped in and pressed the button.
Toy! thought Ralph indignantly. This ambulance is carrying medical supplies to the sick.
“Boy, my foot!” yapped the terrier. “It’s that dastardly mouse. Let me down and I’ll get him!”
Ralph did not try to answer. He was saving all his breath now to get the ambulance across that crack once more.
The man slapped the dog lightly on the nose and said, “Be quiet! I took you outside, didn’t I?”
Fortunately the elevator door stayed open behind the man as he walked out, so Ralph had no trouble driving the ambulance out and down the hall to Room 215. The door had blown shut but he did not