It was nearly eleven. Mike would have long since come back to Blackfriars looking for her. He’d have no idea where she’d gone. She had to get back there.
But how? The planes were growing steadily louder, and fires were already blocking nearly every street that led back to Blackfriars. And they’d have spread during the time they’d been here. Soon no one would be able to get anywhere near it or St. Paul’s. The entire City would be ablaze, and there’d be no way to get to Mike or Polly. Or to Mr. Bartholomew, whom they’d surely found by now. They’d each promised they wouldn’t go without the others, but what if the drop was only open for a short time? What if they hadn’t any choice but to go without her?
“Where did you say the ambulance was?” she asked.
“This way.” Alf plunged down a corridor.
“Wait,” Eileen said. “How do you know it’s still there? Someone else may have taken it out.”
Alf reached in his pocket and held the key up. “I took it out when I was lookin’ for you. So nobody could pinch it.”
“Alf!”
“There’s lots of thieves about during raids,” he said innocently.
“We better go before that nurse comes back and asks us our names,” Binnie said.
“This way,” Alf said, “quick,” and led them back through a maze of corridors to the one that led to the dispensary.
Binnie balked. “I don’t think we should go this way. What if that lady’s there?”
“What if she is?” Alf said. “We ain’t doin’ nothin’, only walkin’ past. This way’s the nearest.”
“All right,” Binnie agreed reluctantly, dropping her voice to a whisper, “but tiptoe.”
“Tiptoeing will look suspicious,” Eileen whispered back. “Just walk past normally. She won’t even notice us.”
Binnie didn’t look convinced. “She looked like she was the sort who don’t miss a trick.”
Alf nodded. “Like the ticket guard at Bank Station.”
“That’s your guilty conscience speaking,” Eileen said. “She was no such thing.” She started confidently down the corridor.
The door to the dispensary stood half open. Inside, the woman who’d helped her was counting out white tablets with a metal stick, her head bent over the tray.
Don’t look up, Eileen willed as they passed.
She didn’t. Eileen opened the door, and they scooted through it. She’d counted on the darkness hiding them once they were outside, but the drive was nearly as bright as the corridor had been. The cloudy sky above them was orange-pink, and the hospital buildings cast odd, wrong-angled, blood-red shadows across the ambulance parked there.
Eileen made Alf and Binnie climb in back. “Get down so they can’t see you till we’re away from the hospital,” she said, putting the key in the ignition and hoping she could start it. It had been running when the rescue worker had handed it over to her.
She pulled on the choke and let the clutch out, praying for the engine to catch.
It did, and then promptly died. “Come on,” Alf said from the backseat. “’Urry.”
Eileen tried again, pulling the choke out slowly and easing up steadily on the clutch as the vicar had taught her. This time it didn’t quite die, and she glanced in the rear-vision mirror and began to back away from the door.
A fist pounded on the passenger-side window.
Eileen nearly jumped out of her skin and killed the engine.
A man in a white coat was standing there knocking. “We’re for it now,” Alf said.
“Step on it!” Binnie ordered, leaning over the seat. “Go!”
“I can’t!” Eileen said, trying desperately to start the engine.
It wouldn’t catch. The man, in his sixties, opened the door and leaned in. “Are you the young woman who brought in the ambulance driver?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he said, getting in. He was carrying a black leather bag. “Mrs. Mallowan told me you were out here. Thank goodness you hadn’t left. I’m Dr. Cross. I need you to take me to Moorgate.”
Both children had ducked down out of sight. “Moorgate?” Eileen said.
He nodded. “There’s a young woman at the tube station there. She’s too badly injured to be moved.” He shut the ambulance door. “We’ll have to treat her at the scene.”
“But I can’t—I’m not a real ambulance driver—”
“Mrs. Mallowan told me you’d been recruited to bring the injured driver and the lieutenant in.”
“She can’t take you,” Alf said, popping up from the back.
“Good Lord, a stowaway,” Dr. Cross said, and as Binnie appeared beside him, “Two stowaways.”
“We’re ’er assistants,” Binnie said. “She can’t take you to Moorgate. She’s got to go to St. Paul’s.”
“To pick up a patient?”
