At the mention of Pinion, Giles looked suddenly saddened. Jim couldn’t fathom it. Pinion was so slimy.
“Speaking of Pinion,” Latzarel continued, “how are you getting along with your device? Your subterranean prospector.”
Giles shrugged.
“Get that perpetual motion engine of yours working yet?” Latzarel winked through the porthole at Jim.
“I believe so,” said Giles. “I needed a part that I couldn’t find. But just this afternoon I saw one in a junk store up on Colorado.” He paused for a moment then said; “Oscar Pall-check thought it was a nasal irrigator.” He’d meant the remark as a comment on Oscar’s stupidity and coarseness, Jim was sure of that, but Gill turned immediately red, embarrassed at his own coarseness in simply having said it.
Professor Latzarel chuckled. “A nasal irrigator, eh? And you need this for your machine?” He laughed out loud.
“Well it wasn’t, really. It was a relay attached to a vapor box, but Oscar …”
“Vapor!” said Latzarel, punching at a brass toggle switch on the control panel. “A vaporizer, you mean. Your friend was right. It was a nasal irrigator.” Then Latzarel straightened up, held the index finger of his right hand in the air, and uttered profoundly, “A nose is a nose, is a nose, is a nose,” and then blew his own so monumentally into a checked handkerchief that the diving bell rang with the blast. Latzarel laughed hugely, beside himself. He shoved up through the hatch and repeated the gag for Edward’s benefit, telling him that if William were there, with his literature background and all, it would break him up.
It didn’t seem to break Gill up much at all. In fact he shook his head sadly and fell silent, staring toward the distant mountains outlined against a blue, late afternoon sky, the dying wind blowing his lank blond hair up out of his face. Five minutes later he had slipped away unseen without uttering another word. Jim had the illogical feeling that Professor Latzarel would do well to be less cavalier with Giles, who didn’t half understand humor. The idea of Oscar’s nasal irrigator being part of a perpetual motion engine was foolish enough, but Gill wasn’t foolish — crazy, perhaps, but not foolish. And there was the matter of Hasbro’s car, a phenomenon that Uncle Edward had written off as a figment. He’d been concerned, there was no doubting that, but his concern had the same worried look about it that surfaced when William Hastings made one of his intermittent visits home.
“Can you beat this?” cried Uncle Edward on Saturday morning, nearly choking on his coffee. Jim looked up from his bock: The Abominations of Fu Manchu. His mother had never allowed turn to read at the table, but Uncle Edward hadn’t any objections. Edward slapped his newspaper with the back of his hand. “John Pinion was accosted and beaten by a gang of toughs not three blocks from here Thursday afternoon! Hospitalized!”
Jim laid his book on the table and swallowed some milk. “Hurt bad?”
“No, more’s the pity,” said Uncle Edward, shaking his head. “Knocked the wind out of him, apparently. A bystander rushed him down to Glendale General but they let him go an hour later. Apparently he didn’t know his assailants.” Uncle Edward paused and raised his coffee cup, his eyes darting back and forth across the column. Jim sighed deeply and picked up Fu Manchu.
“Ha!” cried Edward. “Listen to this! No wonder he didn’t know his assailants! He was dressed as an ice cream vendor. And he had a tricked-up panel truck with a bell and speaker that played ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep.’ That’s who it is! By God!” Edward dropped the paper and lunged at the phone, dialing Professor Latzarel’s number. “Listen,” he said into the phone.
“Don’t talk, listen. Do you recall my mentioning an ice cream truck that hung about on the road? Yes. Well, you won’t believe this. Pinion’s up to some deviltry, and you can lay to it.”
And he read Latzarel the article from one end to the other. Witnesses, apparently, had seen Pinion attempting to lure three boys into his ice cream truck, performing some sort of song and dance for their amusement. But the boys wouldn’t have any of it, and one, a hulking fellow in a tiny red t-shirt, punched Pinion in the abdomen. The three youths fled west on Hubbard Street.
“They suspect Pinion of being a pervert! Can you imagine?” Edward paused, listened, and nodded grimly. “More than meets the eye. That’s just what I was saying to myself. Something’s up.” Then he looked across at Jim who was hiding behind his open book, the cover of which depicted a bearded Fu. Manchu, a pink mushroom, and a plump, alien-looking scorpion all caught up in a sort of wind devil. “I’ll call you back,” said Edward. ‘To heck with it; I’ll see you in an hour at the docks.”
Uncle Edward cleared his throat meaningfully. Jim looked up, knowing what was coming. “Doesn’t Oscar wear a red t-shirt?”
“Yes, mostly.”
“Didn’t he have one on Thursday afternoon?”
“I guess.”
Edward nodded. “Care to tell me about it? This may be important. It has to be. What’s Pinion up to? That’s what I want to know. He wasn’t trying to lure you into his truck, was he?”
“Not me, that’s for sure. I think he was after Giles ….” And with that, Jim related the whole incident — how he’d tried to call Oscar off, and how Pinion had seemed ready to kidnap Gill, and how Oscar, seeing Pinion go for Giles, had punched him one and the lot of them had run for it, knowing things would go hard for them, having assaulted a polar explorer and all. Already waist deep in his story, Jim went on to describe Pinion’s earlier conversation with Gill and the argument with Velma Peach. He stopped short of any mention of the flying bicycle, assuming that the story would throw a cloud of implausibility and doubt over the entire confession — perhaps deepen the suspicions that had been awakened in Uncle Edward by Jim’s recounting of the Hasbro’s Metropolitan incident.
Edward listened intently, but admitted, finally, to being every bit as confused as he had been before. That Pinion was planning some phenomenon there could be no doubt. But why he had such evident interest in Giles, beyond his scientific curiosity at Giles’ abnormalities, was a mystery. He was still pondering and speculating as they drove out the Harbor Freeway an hour later toward San Pedro.
Chapter 7
Except for the rhythmic heaving of the ground swell, the ocean was still. Six-inch wind waves lapped against the shore at low tide, and the faint remnants of the Santa Ana winds — little, willowy offshore breezes — mussed Jim’s hair, from time to time as he munched black licorice on the foredeck of the Gerhardi Roycroft Squires’ old fishing boat. The boat itself was of peculiar shape — vastly wider in the bow than in the stern, and Jim, understanding nothing of boats, could make little of the strange shape, although it appealed to him: It seemed to be a nautical cousin of his uncle’s Hudson Wasp. The cabin had a sort of humped and globular look to it which reminded him of the sweep of a tiny, almost round Airstream trailer. The boat seemed to have been built by someone with a lively imagination, and it was an altogether fitting companion to the diving bell perched in the stern.
In the sunlight glowing off the surface of the sea, the hull of the bell sparkled like an immense jewel — a running together of sapphire and emerald and gold. Rays of reflected light played off the polished glass ports, regularly bathing the lone watcher on the shore in bright sweeps of luminescence as the Gerhardi rose and sank on the swell.