Johnson crawled along the wall on his hands and knees. He kept crawling and then, wedging himself between a tree trunk and the wall, edged up the wall, over it, and dropped to the other side. He ran across the grounds desperately looking for Zeke.
He saw nothing on the grounds, no sign of anything or anybody. Then he saw Zeke up there in the gray drizzle, three stories up on the fire-escape platform. He didn't yell. He ran and then he felt the harsh wet cold of the metal as he climbed.
He followed wet tracks down the floor of the hall, found a door. As he started to open it he saw the police come around the corner at the other end of the hall. They stopped when they saw him. Johnson heard laughter coming from beyond the door. The laughter got louder. The shrill, high, spontaneous and abandoned laughter of children.
The police moved cautiously toward him. Johnson opened the door and went in, shut it quickly behind him.
A nurse came over to Johnson, smiled at him.
She stood with her arms folded and stood beside him and the both of them watched Zeke in the middle of the big hospital ward.
"We're so glad Zeke came back," the nurse said. "And surprising us this way makes it so much more delightful for the children."
Yes, thought Johnson dully, Zeke was here before, once. A benefit performance. For crippled children. And neither the kids nor the two nurses in here had heard about Zeke's sudden status as a criminal. No radios in here—only recording machines playing pleasant things for the kids. Too much unpleasantness on the regular programs.
An isolated world in which they still saw Zeke only as a clown.
The kids on the beds lining the walls, many of whom would never leave this room except in wheeled chairs, were screaming and hollering and shrieking with laughter at Zeke's antics. Their laughter bubbled higher and louder. Zeke twisted round and round, his arms swinging, as he did a shambling jig, danced this way and that. "The clown's back!" "Dance, dance, dance some more!" "Stand on your head, Zeke!"