She slipped into the pool and Fluke glided eagerly to greet her.
“The two Poles,” Jupe said, pinching his lower lip. “Keep them in line.” He looked at Bob and Pete. “Suggest anything to you?”
“Poles,” Bob repeated. “I guess Paul Donner could be Polish. He does have, well, not a foreign accent. But the way he talks —”
“Good observation,” Jupe told him. “It’s the precise way he picks his words. But if he’s one of the two Poles Constance ought to keep in line, who’s the other one?”
“Beats me,” Pete admitted. “Wow! Look at that!”
Fluke was racing around and around the pool while Constance rode lightly stretched out on his back with her arms around him.
For the next half hour the three boys watched Constance and the little whale play together. It looked like play, but Bob knew it was really work. She was training Fluke, not so much to obey commands as to know from her slightest gesture, the expression on her face, what she wanted him to do and to respond to her immediately.
They were like close friends, Pete thought. So close they seemed to be able to read each other’s minds and share the same impulses, think and move together as one person.
After Constance had fed Fluke, she suggested the Three Investigators join her in the pool so that Fluke could get used to them and be friendly with them too.
It was a little scary at first, Pete found as he swam beside Fluke and felt the whale nudging playfully against him. Fluke seemed so big, so solid and powerful. But he was so gentle too. It wasn’t long before all three boys felt thoroughly at home with him.
“You’re doing fine,” Constance congratulated them as they climbed out of the pool. “Now let’s try that recorder.”
Fluke was floating at the other end of the pool. By now Constance had taught him to stay there and wait until she called him.
She took the metal box and switched it on to Record. Then, after fastening a weighted belt around her waist, she dived to the bottom of the pool.
After a second Fluke dived too and stayed at his end, lying flat on the bottom.
The Three Investigators watched Constance, fascinated. It was incredible how long she could stay underwater, Jupe thought. She was resting there as comfortably as Aunt Mathilda in her living room. Pete could see that as she held the recorder out in front of her, she was snapping the fingers of her other hand.
She stopped. She was smiling, cocking her head to one side.
After what seemed a long time but was probably no more than two minutes, she swam to the surface and took a deep, controlled breath.
“I think I got it,” she said. “Let’s see what it sounds like.”
Jupe wound back the tape and switched the recorder to Play.
There was no sound from the speaker at first, except for a gentle rippling. Then the three boys heard a quick clicking sound. That was Constance, Pete realized, snapping her fingers underwater.
The snapping stopped, then quite clearly over the speaker came a birdlike chirping. It rose and fell, the pitch constantly changing, and was accompanied, the way a Spanish song might be accompanied by castanets, by a sharp clacking sound.
It wasn’t exactly like a bird, Jupe thought. It was too deep-throated, too vibrant. It was — it was like nothing he had ever heard before.
It ended after a minute, and Constance turned off the recorder.
“That was Fluke?” Bob asked in an awed whisper. “That was Fluke singing to you?”
“Singing. Talking. Whatever you want to call it,” Constance told him. “All whales communicate with one another by sound. And of course sound carries a long way under water. We’ve never been able to learn or understand their language, but if we did we’d probably find it’s as meaningful and complicated as ours is.”
She paused, taking off her flippers.
“Except I don’t think they ever quarrel with one another,” she went on. “Just as they never fight. They’re much too civilized. And I’m sure they never lie to one another either, the way we do. They’ve got too much sense. After all, what’s the point of having a language if you use it to twist things instead of to say what you mean?”
“Could we hear it again?” Pete asked.
“In a moment. First I want Fluke to hear it.”
Jupe wound back the tape and switched to Play. Then Constance knelt down and held the metal box under the water. The Three Investigators watched Fluke.
He was still lying restfully on the bottom of the pool. His body suddenly seemed to quiver. His flippers straightened away from his sides. Then, in a single powerful movement, he glided the length of the pool toward them. He looked as though he were smiling, Bob thought, the way he had when they were trying to rescue him on the beach.
Fluke slowed as he reached the metal case. He hesitated. Then he gently rubbed his lips against it.
“Good,” Constance said, lifting the case out of the water. “Good Fluke. Good baby. Good little boy.”
She was smiling with pleasure as she threw up a fish for him and he caught it in midair.
“That’s what I wanted to see,” she told the boys. “It looks as though it’s going to be okay. If he strays away from us out at sea, we can call him back by playing his own voice to him underwater.”
“I could re-record it if you like,” Jupe suggested. “Play it over and over so we’d have a whole half hour of his voice on one tape.”
Constance thought that was a good idea. She gave the metal case back to Jupe.
“I want to go to the hospital and visit Dad,” she said. “I’ll drop you three off at the yard on the way.”
She had left the pickup truck on the street outside the ranch house. Pete climbed into the back again, and the other two boys sat in front with Constance.
The road was level until the first corner, then it started to wind steeply down the hill. Constance was going awfully fast, Jupe thought. He wondered why she didn’t brake on the curves. She was usually a skillful, careful driver. But the way she was going now, hurtling around the bends, she seemed to be trying to beat the speed record.
Then Jupe saw that Constance was using the brake. She had it pushed all the way down to the floor.
There was a sharp, almost right-angle turn ahead.
The truck was rushing toward it like a bolting horse. Instead of slowing, the truck was going faster and faster.
Constance reached for the hand brake and eased it back. The truck was still racing along. She wrenched the emergency brake full on. The speedometer was still climbing. Forty. Forty-five. Fifty miles an hour.
“Is there something —” Bob asked in a choking voice. “Something wrong with the brakes?”
Constance nodded, gripping the stick shift. “They don’t work,” she announced briskly. “Sorry.”
She changed rapidly down to low gear, trying to slow their speed by using the engine as a brake. Jupe could feel the truck tremble like a boat in a storm, but a glance at the dashboard told him it was still going fifty.
Straight ahead of them, where the road turned sharply to the right, was an old house set back among some trees.
Surrounding the house was a solid stone wall.
Traveling so fast, Jupe thought, there was no way the truck could make the turn.
There was no way it could do anything but crash head-on into that wall!
8
The Three Suspects
Constance was wrenching the truck into the center of the road. Then far over into the left lane. If a car came around that corner now, both vehicles would end up a tangle of twisted metal.
But there was nothing ahead. Nothing but that stone wall that looked as solid and unyielding as a cliff.
Bob and Jupe were bracing their legs against the dashboard, waiting for the impact, the shock, the sudden rending crash.
Constance tore the wheel hard over to the right. At the same instant she threw the gear shift into reverse.