A light appeared; someone shouted; and she managed a groan.
A face materialized out of the fog, a kindly, anxious face.
The man bent over her. He spoke soothingly for a moment; he
straightened up and called into the fog. "It's a girl, Alica! She's
hurt! Bring a blanket! Quickly!"
In less than a minute a sturdy woman appeared. The two of them, the man
and the woman, slid the blanket under Martha and lifted her up.
In another minute she was carried out of the fog into a cozy lighted
house and tenderly laid on a couch.
While the man telephoned for a doctor, the woman Alica asked Martha
where she was hurt the most.
Martha wasn't sure. She hurt all over, but not in any special place.
The woman brought a wet cloth, a glass and a pitcher of water. After
Martha had rinsed out her mouth, the woman gently washed her face.
The man came into the room. "The doctor's coming right over! Now don't
you worry!"
Martha sat up and carefully moved her legs. They felt bruised but
assuredly not broken. And she could move her arms without any
concentrated pain.
The man nodded. "Good! No bones broken, by the looks. You were lucky,
child. You struck the turf outside and not the hard cobbles!"
The woman peered at her intently. "What happened, dear--if you want to
tell."
Martha suddenly remembered that splintering crash which had followed
shortly after her frenzied leap from the speeding bus.
"Oh, that poor man!" she said. "Has anybody gone to help him?"
They both looked at her. "What man, dear?" the woman asked.
"The bus driver," Martha said. "That was such a horrible crash!"
They went on looking at her without saying anything. A queer uneasiness
overcame her. "Didn't you--hear it?" she asked.
The man shook his head. "We heard you scream. But we didn't hear
any--crash."
"But--there was," Martha explained frowning. "The bus I jumped out of
didn't have any lights and it was speeding and--I heard it crash!"
They were looking at her strangely now. As if they didn't believe a
word she was saying. As if, Martha thought, they were patiently hearing
out the imaginary story of a feverish child.
"What bus did you jump out of?" the woman asked, laying a cool hand
against Martha's forehead.
"The midnight bus," Martha replied. "I was visiting a friend on
Coverton Street. I got the last bus--the midnight bus--just after
twelve."
The woman smiled gently. "The last bus on Coverton Street runs through
at eleven. The midnight bus was discontinued a year ago. Nobody used it
much and then after the crash--"
"What crash?" interrupted Martha with an eerie feeling that she knew
what the answer would be.
"A year ago," the woman explained, "the driver of the Coverton Street
midnight bus ran off the road into a wall and was instantly killed.
Luckily, no passengers were on the bus. It happened not far from here.
There were no witnesses to the crash, but someone claimed later that
the bus had been seen speeding along Coverton Street through the fog
without any lights--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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