The man with the gun turned to say to the man at the door, "Keep your
shirt on."
That was all Miss English needed. She kicked off her shoes and ran
pelting in her stocking feet for the door.
* * * * *
The man by the door spread his arms out and shouted, "Hey!" The man
with the gun swung violently back, cursing, and fired the gun. But he'd
been moving too fast, and so had Miss English, and all he hit was the
brass plate on Mr. Featherhall's desk.
The man by the door caught Miss English in a bear hug. She promptly did
her best to scratch his eyes out. Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson went scooting
out the front door and running down the street toward the police
station in the next block, shouting, "Help! Help! Robbery!"
The man with the gun cursed some more. The man with the satchel came
running around from behind the counter, and the man by the door tried
to keep Miss English from scratching his eyes out. Then the man with
the gun hit Miss English on the head. She fell unconscious to the
floor, and all three of them ran out of the bank to the car out front,
in which sat a very nervous-looking fourth man, gunning the engine.
Everyone except Miss English ran out after the bandits, to watch.
Things got very fast and very confused then. Two police cars came
driving down the block and a half from the precinct house to the bank,
and the car with the four robbers in it lurched away from the curb and
drove straight down the street toward the police station. The police
cars and the getaway car passed one another, with everybody shooting
like the ships in pirate movies.
There was so much confusion that it looked as though the bank robbers
were going to get away after all. The police cars were aiming the wrong
way and, as they'd come down with sirens wailing, there was a clear
path behind them.
Then, after the getaway car had gone more than two blocks, it suddenly
started jouncing around. It smacked into a parked car and stopped. And
all the police went running down there to clap handcuffs on the robbers
when they crawled dazedly out of their car.
"Hey," said Eddie Clayhorn, ten years old. "Hey, that was something,
huh, Mom?"
"Come along home," said his mother, grabbing his hand. "We don't want
to be involved."
* * * * *
"It was the nuttiest thing," said Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. "An
operation planned that well, you'd think they'd pay attention to their
getaway car, you know what I mean?"
Detective-Sergeant Pauling shrugged. "They always slip up," he said.
"Sooner or later, on some minor detail, they always slip up."
"Yes, but their _tires_."
"Well," said Pauling, "it was a stolen car. I suppose they just grabbed
whatever was handiest."
"What I can't figure out," said Stevenson, "is exactly what made those
tires do that. I mean, it was a hot day and all, but it wasn't _that_
hot. And they weren't going that fast. I don't think you could go fast
enough to melt your tires down."