She saw another thing. An entire fire company, sirens roaring, bells jangling, ground and tore, braked and ricocheted—south, through the jam-packed streets.
“Wonder where the fire is?” Mr. Ellinsen asked. And he tried, without much success, to gain a block or two in the swathe opened by the red-painted trucks.
Lenore did not reply to that either. She thought there was probably no more. She thought that, following regular Condition Yellow procedure, the Green Prairie fire-fighting equipment would all be heading out of town—all save a few stand-by pieces. When the emergency was over, they’d come back. Or else, of course, when the need turned cataclysmic. Doctors, she thought, would, or should, be heading out of town for the same reason. Nurses, also. Certain engineers and technicians. Various Red Cross people and their equipment.
At Arkansas and Walnut Street they let her out. She thanked them and hurried. A car or two went by, fast, on Walnut; otherwise the residential area seemed deserted. She began to run.
There didn’t seem to be anyone at home in the Conner house, she thought; then she saw, bright against the dulling afternoon, a light in the front attic window. She smiled. Ted Conner would be there, at his radio. Her steps slowed and she almost went in, went up, talked to Ted for a moment. She felt Ted would be able to tell her a lot about this alarm. And Ted might know where Chuck was at this point.
Reluctantly, she went on. She’d been summoned and that meant a beeline, not stops made out of curiosity, certainly not stops for inquiry about people, even people you loved.
She swung open her own front door. “Mom!”
“I’m in here!” Nella was reclining on the divan. She had a magazine, a highhall, a box of candy, a fire going in the grate, a radio on, and she talked in a barrage as Lenore stripped off her coat, gloves, galoshes. “What a day! What a hellish day! The new maid’s impossible! I’m not through with cleaning. You’ll have to do your own room, yourself, tomorrow. Why didn’t you go straight to the Ritz? That Conner brat ran away on me!”
“I thought I saw her downtown.”
Mrs. Bailey sat up a little. “ Well! On her way to see Santa, I bet! Beth said she had a cold. I didn’t see any signs. Saddled me with the child, and the child skipped. I even went racing down to River Avenue looking for her. Somebody said that she saw me coming and popped into a manhole. Imagine!”