‘I want the Herald,’ said the man. ‘I want to tell ‘em…’
‘This is Crane of the Herald,’ Crane told him. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘You a reporter?’
‘Yeah, I’m a reporter.’
‘Then listen close. I’ll try to tell this slow and easy and just the way it happened. I was walking down the street, see…’
‘What street?’ asked Crane. ‘And what is your name?’
‘East Lake,’ said the caller. ‘The five- or six-hundred block. I don’t remember which. And I met this sewing machine rolling along the street and I thought, thinking the way you would, you know, if you met a sewing machine — I thought somebody had been rolling it along and it had gotten away from them. Although that is funny, because the street is level. There’s no grade to it at all, you see. Sure, you know the place. Level as the palm of your hand. And there wasn’t a soul in sight. It was early morning, see …’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Crane.
‘My name? Smith, that’s my name. Jeff Smith. And so I figured maybe I’d ought to help this guy the sewing machine had gotten away from, so I put out my hand to stop it and it dodged. It — ‘
‘It did what?’ yelped Crane.