I was on a lovely stretch of road cutting across the back part of the city. It travelled through an industrial centre with a few factories scattered around, spur tracks crossing the highway at intervals, vast vacant spaces — little traffic and lots of darkness.
The agency car coughed and went dead, picked up again for a few seconds, then coughed, spluttered, and this time quit for keeps.
I had the door open by the time the car came to a stop. There was no traffic anywhere along the road, but behind me those steady, persistent lights coming with dogged purpose.
I looked around and didn’t like what I saw. Over to one side was a factory, standing dark and silent, surrounded by a high fence that had signs placed along it at regular intervals, “Keep Out.” There was a spur track, with some box cars standing on the siding just clear of the road. Farther down, I could see a storage yard with a high board fence blotting out all view of what was inside of it.
The logical thing of course was to stick around the car and beg some motorist for a push to the nearest petrol station.
I didn’t feel that it was advisable to do the logical thing.
I looked around for a good place to hide. There wasn’t any.
I ran across the road and climbed under the rods of one of the box cars. I huddled up in the shadows.
It was a damn poor hiding place.
Headlights danced shadows along the road, then the car that had been rolling along behind me came to a stop. I heard doors open and slam shut. A man’s voice called, “Hello, what’s the trouble? Everything okay?”