【郭伟英文文学】The Ambulance Made Two Trips.doc

PAGE PAGE 1 【郭伟英文文学】The Ambulance Made Two Trips Title: The Ambulance Made Two Trips Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins Release Date: January 3, 2008 [EBook #24149] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMBULANCE MADE TWO TRIPS *** Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at THE AMBULANCE MADE TWO TRIPS By MURRAY LEINSTER Illustrated by Scoenherr [Transcribers Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction April 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _If you should set a thief to catch a thief, what does it take to stop a racketeer...?_ Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald found a package before his door that morning, along with the milk. He took it inside and opened it. It was a remarkably fine meerschaum pipe, such as the sergeant had longed irrationally to own for many years. There was no message with it, nor any card. He swore bitterly. On his way to Headquarters he stopped in at the orphanage where he usually left such gifts. On other occasions he had left Scotch, a fly-rod, sets of very expensive dry-flies, and dozens of pairs of silk socks. The female head of the orphanage accepted the gift with gratitude. I dont suppose, said Fitzgerald morbidly, that any of your kids will smoke this pipe, but I want to be rid of it and for somebody to know. He paused. Are you gettin many other gifts on this order, from other cops? Like you used to? The head of the orphanage admitted that the total had dropped off. Fitzgerald went on his way, brooding. Hed been getting anonymous gifts like this ever since Big Jake Connors moved into town with bright ideas. Big Jake denied that he was the generous party. He expressed complete ignorance. But Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald knew better. The gifts were