The Dead of Night Read Online Free PDF

they learnt some of the things they did.
    Homer was creeping towards the Outpatients' section again, this time with Robyn fifty metres behind, on the lookout. He got to the door at the end of the building that he and Robyn had tried before. This time he didn't bother with it, but went instead to the little metre-high door under the building, about halfway along. He had to grope his way through the lavender bushes to reach it, but from the angle we were watching we had a good view. I saw him pull on the door but it must have been locked, as we'd expected. He used a chisel then, to try to lever it open, but that didn't work, although the door
seemed flimsy enough. It consisted only of four vertical white slats nailed to two crossbars.

    Homer was undeterred, however, and he was well-prepared. His hand went to his bag of tools again and pulled out the screwdriver. He set to work on the hinges. It took five or six minutes, then at last he took a firm hold on the door and lifted it gently off. Without a backward glance he wriggled—he's a big guy, Homer—through the opening.
    We couldn't see him any more but I knew exactly what he'd be doing. Lee and I both tensed, knowing that it was nearly time for us to go into action. I could picture Homer,' undulating through the cold dark underworld like a big worm. He'd seemed so certain that his plan would work, once I'd given him the initial idea. But after all, he was just recreating one of his more outrageous school stunts. He'd had a dress rehearsal.
    He had to find a place to make a hole in the floor. The building he was in, being rickety and old, seemed a good choice for that, and he had a keyhole saw and a brace and bit with him. We'd thought this through very carefully. We didn't want to leave any evidence of our visit: that's why we wanted to do it through a hole in the floor, rather than the easier method of breaking a window and throwing Homer's bomb through. So we watched and waited and shivered, glancing at our watches, then at each other, then anxiously back at the Outpatients' Department.
    When the action did happen it happened with knobs on. We hadn't wasted our evening, sneaking into house after house in Barrabool Avenue to find ping-pong balls. Homer had promised us a worthwhile result, as he
wrapped the balls in foil. We'd watched, fascinated, not prepared to cast doubts as we thought back to the evacuation of the AC Heron High School just six months earlier. It had certainly worked then. And it worked now. Suddenly, sharp loud beeps started to emerge from Homer's end of the building, and almost immediately, through the clear night air, came a series of announcements. These were in English and loud enough for us to hear. They seemed to come from all over the Hospital; I think they were prerecorded and came on automatically. The first one was "Code two, code two, code two," repeated every fifteen or twenty seconds. After a minute or so came the next message: "Zone four, zone four, zone four." Then: "Level three. Level three." By now the Hospital was stirring into life. Lights were coming on everywhere and we could hear people calling out. A second round of announcements began; the same as the first I think, but by then I'd stopped concentrating on them. Instead, Lee and I were creeping forward, looking for our chance. I couldn't see any smoke actually emerging from the end of Outpatients' but the people coming out of the wards were all heading in that direction. There were two soldiers, running, then a few men and women in ordinary clothes, then a woman in a nurse's uniform, and three or four people in pyjamas. I couldn't see their faces, so couldn't tell which ones were friends, if any. But it was quite a party for two o'clock in the morning.

    We didn't want to do any harm to sick people. Homer's smoke bomb was guaranteed not to start a fire, and we were hoping that the staff wouldn't rush around evacuating patients. We had gambled that the Hospital
would have