Police Comics #6 (1942)

At City Hospital, Dr. Kruger has been putting paralysis germs in the donated blood supply, and this is discovered by volunteer nurse Joan Rogers. Dr. Kruger tries to grab back the evidence of this, and threatens Joan with a scalpel; Joan hand-chops his neck and foot-sweeps him, and he hits his head on a bench for a knock out. Joan calls Rod Reilly's house, Slugger gets the call, leaves a note, and immediately drives to the hospital. Rod gets home, reads Slugger's note, changes clothes, and follows. There's a confrontation at the hospital, and two burly orderlies slap some handcuffs on Firebrand to whisk him away. Rod plays along with this just long enough to get close to Kruger, then snaps the chains, and mops up the two orderlies. Kruger flings a jar of nitric acid at Firebrand's head, then he and henchman Rudolf escape down an elevator. Firebrand wrenches open the elevator door and slides down the cable, bursting through the steel top of the elevator car, which is already empty. He races through the hospital and reaches an operating room, where Kruger is preparing to do some quick and dirty surgery to both Joan and Slugger, who are strapped down on gurneys. Firebrand disrupts all this and locks Kruger plus two thugs inside an X-ray room, and frees Slugger and Joan. New problem: some of the contaminated blood has already been shipped to the Army's Camp Roberts. While Rod and Slugger are speeding south to Camp Roberts, Kruger and his hench orderlies escape from the X-ray room, and start looking for Joan, to shut her up. While they scramble along a narrow ledge along the hospital's outer wall, Kruger turns on his assistants, Anton and Rudolf, and pushes them to their deaths. At Camp Roberts, Slugger tells his story to the first doctor he sees, who turns out to be in on the plot. He prepares to murder the unsuspecting Slugger, with an injection of prussic acid, but is pounced on by the Firebrand and flung to the floor. Instead of getting up, the doctor injects himself with the acid, and dies. Firebrand and Slugger tell what they know to the hospital's duty officer, then jump into Rod's roadster and zoom back to town. They meet up with Joan inside the hospital, and Kruger has still got at least one gunman still working for him. This loser empties his whole clip, indoors, and still fails to hit him, then gets punched out. Kruger blunders onto the scene, then flees, is chased and cornered, then attempts to subdue the Firebrand with a big pressurized tank of nitrous oxide. Firebrand is barely able to turn off the gas valve, shakes off the dizzying effects, and soon rejoins Slugger. They chase Kruger to the furnace room, where Kruger shoots and wounds the watchman, who in turn shoots and kills Kruger. Shortly later, Rod Reilly shows up at the hospital and pretends to not be Firebrand. Joan actually seems to be buying this act.