“If they have, I know a way to get in,” Ray told him. “You’d better stay here for about five minutes, and let me scout ahead. We don’t want to run into a big gang of them ahead.”
Yetsko shook his head. “No, Ray; the captain told me I was to stick with you. I’ll go along with you. And we better take another of these kids, for a runner, in case we have to send word back.”
“Ramón, you come with us,” Ray said. “The rest of you, stay here for five minutes, and then, if you don’t hear from us, follow us.”
“Mason, you take over,” Yetsko told the guards corporal. “And keep an eye out behind you. We’re in a sandwich, here; they’re behind us, and in front of us. If anything comes at you from behind, send the kids forward to the next conduit port.”
Ray and Yetsko and Ramón Nogales started forward. Halfway to the next conduit port, there was a smear of lubricating oil on the concrete, and in it, and away from it in the direction of the store, they found footprints. It was Ramón Nogales who noticed the oil on the ladder to the next conduit port.
“You stick here,” Yetsko told him, “and when Mason and the others come up, hold them here. Tell Mason to send one of the guards forward, and use the rest of the gang to grab anybody who comes out. Come on, Ray.”
At the port beyond, they halted, waiting for Mason’s man to come up. They lost some time, thereafter, but they learned that the section of conduit between the two ports was empty and that the main telephone line to the store had been cut. Whoever had cut it had gone, either forward or back away from the store. A little farther on, the sound of shots ahead became audible over the clanking and rattling of the conveyor belts.
“Well, I guess this is where we start crawling,” Yetsko said. “Your father’s people seem to be holding the store basement against a gang in the conveyor tunnel.”
One of the boys scouted ahead, and returned to report that they could reach the next conduit port, but that the section of both conveyor belts ahead of him was stopped, apparently wedged.
Yetsko stood for a moment, grimacing in an effort to reach a decision.
“I’d like to just go forward and hit them from behind,” he said. “But I don’t know how many of them there are, and we’d have to be careful, shooting into them, that we didn’t shoot up your father’s gang, beyond them. I wish—”
“Well, let’s go through the conduit, then,” Ray said. “We can slide down a branch conduit that runs a power line into the basement. I’ll go ahead; everybody at the store knows me, and they don’t know you. They might shoot you before they found out you were a friend.”
Before Yetsko could object, he started up the ladder, Yetsko behind him and the others following. At the next conduit port, they could hear shooting very plainly, seeming to be in front of them. At the next one, the shooting seemed to be going on directly under them, in the tunnel. With the flashlight Yetsko had passed forward to him, Ray could see that the dust on the concrete floor of the three-foot by three-foot passage between and under the power and telephone cables was undisturbed.
A little farther on, there was an opening on the left, and a power cable branched off downward, at a sharp angle, overhead. Ray was able to turn about and get his feet in front of him; Yetsko had to crawl on until he had passed it, and then back into it after Ray had entered. Bracing one foot on either side, Ray inched his way down the forty-degree slope, hoping that the two hundred pound weight of Doug Yetsko wouldn’t start sliding upon him.
Ahead, he could hear voices. He drew his hands and feet away from the sides of the branch conduit and let himself slip, landing in a heap in the electricians’ shop, above the furnace rooms. Two men, who had been working at a bench, trying to assemble a mass of equipment into a radio, whirled, snatching weapons. Ray knew both of them—Sam Jacobowitz and George Nyman, who serviced the store’s communications equipment. They both stared at him, swearing in amazement.
“All right, Doug!” Ray called out. “We’re in! Bring the gang down!”
Frank Cardon and Ralph Prestonby were waiting at the freight-elevator door when it opened and Russell Latterman emerged, a rifle slung over one shoulder. Cardon stepped forward and took the rifle from him.
“Come on over here, Russ,” he said. “And don’t do anything reckless.”
They led him to one side. Latterman looked from one to the other apprehensively, licking his lips.
“It’s all right; we’re not going to hurt you, Russ,” Cardon assured him. “We just want a few facts. Beside rigging that business with Bayne, and almost killing Chet Pelton, and forcing Claire to blow her cover, how much did you have to do with this business?”
“And who put you up to it?” Prestonby wanted to know. “My guess is Joyner and Graves. Am I right?”
“Graves,” Latterman said. “Joyner didn’t have anything to do with it; didn’t know anything about it. He’s in charge of the Retail Merchandising section, and any action like this would be unethical, since Pelton’s is a client of the Retail Merchandising section. All Graves told me to do was fix up a situation, using my own judgment, that would provoke a Literate strike and force either Claire or Frank here to betray Literacy. But I had no idea that it would involve a riot like this. If I had, I’d have stood on Literates’ ethics and refused to have any part in it.”
“That’s about how I thought it would be,” Cardon nodded. “Graves probably was informed by Literates with the Independent-Conservatives that this riot was planned; he wanted to get our people out of the
