The area in front of Morris’s store was one of vast confusion. A hook-and-ladder truck blocked it off from the east and a chemical truck from the west. Traffic had piled up behind both of them, in a solid mass. And the sidewalks were jammed with people. It looked as if everyone in Brentwood had converged on the spot.
The voice of Andy Kane, chief of Brentwood’s five-man police force, rose over the hubbub. “All right, keep moving there!” he shouted. “There’s nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving!”
Ken and Sandy squeezed through to him. Chief Kane glared when he saw them. “There’s nothing for you here either,” he said. “That’s the fire—the whole thing!” He pointed a scornful finger at a metal wastebasket standing in the middle of the street, still smoking faintly but now safely covered with the white foam from chemical extinguishers.
“So that’s all it is!” Sandy’s glance took in the busy policemen, urging the crowd along, the two great fire engines with their coils of hose, the firemen in heavy black waterproofs, and the jammed traffic.
“This is something the fire chief will want to remember,” he said with a grin. “See you later,” he added to Ken, and disappeared into the crowd with his camera.
A few minutes later Ken spotted him on the roof of Morris’s two-story building, aiming his lens at the crowd below and at the small foam-shrouded wastebasket at its center. When Sandy rejoined Ken again he was still grinning.
“I’ll print this up for the chief’s New Year’s card,” Sandy said. Then he straightened his face quickly as Chief Dick James emerged from the jewelry store.
“Everything under control, Chief?” Ken asked.
James nodded shortly. “Total damage one wastebasket and a black smudge on about five square feet of wall. Quick thinking on Sam Morris’s part, of course,” he added, “or it might have been a real fire. The minute he saw flames coming out of the basket he picked it up and carried it into the street.”
“How’d it start?” Ken asked. “Cigarette?”