The street was empty. Dark trees whirled past, swishing down branches to tap his brow, swiftly, swiftly. But in the midst of the stiff thunder he had thought he heard a cry for help, a kind of violent screaming.
He looked in all directions.
“No, nothing.”
He rode on upon the whirl-away brooms.
“What!”
This time he almost fell from his saddle the cry was so apparent. He looked at the trees to see if some man might be up one, yelling. He looked at the pale streetlights, all bleached out with so many years of shining. He looked at the asphalt, still warm from the heat of the day. The cry came again.
They were on the edge of the ravine. Mr. Britt stopped his machine. The bristles still spun about. He stopped one rotary broom, then the other. The silence was very loud.
“Get me out of here!”
Mr. Britt stared back at the big metal storage tank of the machine.
There was a man inside the machine.
“What did you say?” It was a ridiculous thing to ask, but Mr. Britt asked it.
“Get me out of here, help, help!” said the man inside the machine.
“What happened?” asked Mr. Britt, staring.
“You picked me up in your machine!” cried the man.
“I what?”
“You fool; don’t stand there talking, let me out, I’ll suffocate to death!”
“But you couldn’t possibly have gotten into the machine,” said Mr. Britt. He stood first on one foot, then on another. He was very cold, suddenly. “A thing as big as a man couldn’t fit in up through the vent, and anyway, the whiskers would have prevented you from behind taken in, and anyway I don’t remember seeing you. When did this happen?”
There was a silence from the machine.
“When did this happen?” demanded Mr. Britt.
Still no answer. Mr. Britt tried to think back. The streets had been entirely empty. There had been nothing but leaves and gum-wrappers. There had been no man, anywhere. Mr. Britt was a thoroughly clear-eyed man. He wouldn’t miss a pedestrian if one fell.
Still the machine remained strangely silent. “Are you there?” said Mr. Britt.
“I’m here,” said the man inside, reluctantly. “And I’m suffocating.”
“Answer me, when did you get inside the machine?” said Britt.
“A while ago,” said the man.
“Why didn’t you scream out then?”
“I was knocked unconscious,” said the man, but there was a quality to his voice, a hesitation, a vagueness, a slowness. The man was lying. It came to Mr. Britt as a shock. “Open up the top,” said the inside man. “For God’s sake, don’t stand there like a fool talking, of all the ridiculous inanities, a street cleaner at midnight talking to a man inside his machine, what would people think.” He paused to cough violently and spit and sputter. “I’m choking to death, do you want to go up for manslaughter?”
But Mr. Britt was not listening. He was down on his knees looking at the metal equipment, at the brushes under the machine. No, it was quite impossible. That opening was only a foot across, under there, no man could possibly be poked up into it. And anyway he hadn’t been going fast. And anyway the rotary brushes would have bounced a man ahead of the machine. And anyway, he hadn’t seen a man!
He got to his feet. He noticed for the first time that the top of his forehead was all perspiration. He wiped it off. His hands were trembling. He could hardly stand up.
“Open up, and I’ll give you a hundred dollars,” said the man inside the machine.
“Why should you be bribing me to let you out?” said Mr. Britt. “When it is only natural that I should let you out free, after all, if I picked you up I should let you out, shouldn’t I? And yet, all of a sudden, you start offering me money, as if I didn’t intend to let you out, as if you knew that I might know a reason for not letting you out. Why is that?”