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Bob went to the front window and pulled aside the curtains. He heard a car start and saw the red glow of tail lights on the cement below. Then a grey sedan began to back out from under the building.

“I’m surprised her battery doesn’t go dead, if she only uses the car once a week,” said Bob.

“She has to summon the men from the garage fairly often,” said Prentice.

The sedan backed into the street, turned, and started forward slowly.

Then, in the pre-dawn stillness, the boys and Prentice heard an explosion and a scream.

Prentice jumped up from the sofa. Jupiter leaped to the window.

A little way down the street, the sedan swerved first to the left and then to the right.

Smoke billowed out from under the hood.

Mrs. Bortz screamed again. The car, now completely out of control, smashed into the kerb, blowing both front tyres. With a horrible crunch, it struck a hydrant head on.

Mrs. Bortz screamed again and again. The hydrant had snapped off level with the ground, and water spurted up around the car.

“Call the fire brigade!” shouted Pete to Prentice.

Bob ran towards the doors. “We’d better get her out of there before she drowns,” he said.

The boys reached the courtyard just as Murphy, clad in a bathrobe, and Elmquist, who had thrown a coat on over his pyjamas, were going out through the front gate.

“Mrs. Bortz!” shouted Murphy. The big man ran towards the wrecked car.

The boys passed Elmquist and overtook Murphy. They waded through ice-cold water and then groped through the bone-chilling cascade from the broken hydrant to reach the door of the sedan.

Mrs. Bortz sat rigidly behind the wheel, staring straight ahead and screaming —

screaming as if she would never stop.

“Mrs. Bortz!” Jupe pulled at the door handle. The car door was locked.

Murphy beat at the window next to Mrs. Bortz.

The woman turned, stunned, and stared at him.

“Open the door!” yelled Murphy.

She fumbled with the button on the door. A second later Murphy had yanked the door open. He and Bob dragged the hysterical woman out of the car.

There were sirens on the street then, and an emergency truck from the fire brigade pulled up. Men in black raincoats swarmed down. One took a look at the situation and turned to say a few words to the driver of the truck. The man put his vehicle in gear and sped off towards the corner.

A moment later, the fire hydrant stopped spouting. Murphy, Elmquist, Bob, and Jupe stood with Mrs. Bortz, who was speechless from shock.

“How’d you do that?” said Murphy to a fireman.

“There’s a master valve at the corner,” said the fireman. He looked at Mrs. Bortz.

“Were you driving?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“We’d better get her inside,” said Murphy. “She’ll catch pneumonia standing out here.”

Bob and Jupe almost had to drag Mrs. Bortz up the steps into the building. Murphy got her keys from the car to open her door. The fireman had come to the door and stood there. A policeman appeared behind him.

“Who hit the hydrant?” the policeman said.

Mrs. Bortz stood in her living room. “Someone shot at me,” she said. She seemed to speak without moving her lips.

“You’d better get out of your wet things, ma’am,” said the policeman quietly. “Then, if you’re feeling okay, maybe you’d like to tell us about it.”

She nodded and disappeared into a hallway.

Jupe realized that his own teeth were chattering. “I’m going to change, too,” he told the officer.

“You see anything?” asked the policeman.

“I saw the car start up the street,” said Jupe.

“Okay, go and change your clothes, then come back here.” He turned to Bob and Pete. “You, too.”

A few minutes later the boys returned in dry clothes and gave their report to the police.

A breakdown truck had arrived on the street. Several men in police uniforms and one man in plain clothes were clustered around the wrecked car.

“If anybody shot at her, he missed,” said the plain-clothes man.

“There was a shot,” said Jupe. “I heard it. Just as she started to drive down the street, there was a shot or … or an explosion.