Chapter 14
It was late in the evening, almost ten o’clock, when Edward and Professor Latzarel parked the Hudson Wasp at Rusty’s Cantina some six blocks off Western Avenue and walked up the hill toward Patchen Street. A Hudson Wasp, both of them agreed, is not the car to drive when it’s secrecy a man wants. It was damp and cold, the weather having taken a turn toward winter, and there was a breeze that must have been blowing straight onshore across the South Bay beaches. Edward could smell just a hint of sea salt on it. He pulled his corduroy coat tighter and lit his pipe. A slice of moon like a section of a luminous orange hung over low foothills in the east.
The shaded residential streets were deserted and noiseless, and it seemed to Edward that their footfalls must carry for miles — that four blocks up in the shingled house of Dr. Hilario Frosticos, the doctor himself was cocking an ear, sensing their vibrations on the sea wind, listening for the clack, clack, clack of their approach on the sidewalk. The shadows of bushes and sighing, leafless trees stretched away in the lamplight, shifting and waving. Edward started at the sudden blinking on of a light beyond a window, knowing as he did that Latzarel would hiss at him under his breath to stop being so remarkably obvious. The air of a nonchalant stroller was called for.
If questioned by a suspicious policeman they’d say they were in the neighborhood to visit Roycroft Squires on Rexroth. Wiry hadn’t they driven there? They’d had car trouble and had been forced to leave the car at Rusty’s Cantina. Damn those old cars. Nothing but headaches. Edward went over the lie in his mind, watching in fear the headlights of an approaching car, a rattling old junker that passed and disappeared. They crossed Rexroth with two blocks to go. The turret on the front of Squires’ house was visible halfway down the street. Edward could see that there was a light on behind the drawn Venetian blind. He thought about Squires’ refrigerator, a paradise of beer, rows and rows of it, and determined to have a look at the lot of it before the night was through.
They turned right onto Patchen, keeping to the far side of the street, slowing down. Frosticos’ house sat on a double size lot. The front yard was green, even in midwinter, and was cropped so closely and evenly that it might have been a rug. The house itself was a shingled bungalow, sitting dark and silent, almost black beneath a pair of monumental camphor trees. Edward could imagine Yamoto the gardener zooming around them in little circles, flying at the rear of his mower.
There was a light on in the second story and another in the cellar, which appeared from a distance to be the flickering glow of candlelight. Professor Latzarel, punching Edward on the shoulder, dashed across the street, melting into a wall of juniper bushes along the side of the house.
The two men crackled and smashed in the bushes for what seemed an age; then everything was silent again. No new lights popped on. No one shouted. Dogs remained silent. They tiptoed along the edge of the house, crouching through the shadows until they reached the cellar window behind which burned the light. It wasn’t a candle after all; it was a single dim bulb covered by a blown-glass tulip shade. So feeble was the light that Edward could at first see almost nothing. The floor was either packed earth or concrete. An old spindle-sided Morris chair with leather upholstery sat directly beneath the lamp, as if somebody had dragged it there to take advantage of the light. Beyond were shadows.
A faint gurgling noise sounded from the room. Edward squinted, trying to peer through the gloom. He could see the edge of some sort of circular structure, unidentifiable in the darkness. As the moments passed it grew more clearly defined — a raised concrete pool or a circle of cut stone. Trailing over the rock edges were strands of what must have been waterweeds, elodea from the look of it. Edward could just make out something — someone — in the pool. Water splashed and gurgled. A stream of it ran down along the strands of weed and pooled up on the floor, reflecting the dim yellow light. Someone was bathing in a pool full of water plants. The shape of a head was visible. An arm rose to scratch it, a webbed finger doodling with an ear. Edward was aghast, even though he knew he’d found what he sought.
He heaved on the sill, thrusting his knee out toward a utility meter that sat beneath the window between him and Latzarel. He had to edge across and get a better look — just one good glimpse. With his knee anchored securely against a pipe, he pushed himself across toward the edge of the window where Latzarel stood, his face pressed against the glass, watching as the person in the pool slipped beneath the surface. Edward pulled himself up onto the meter box, feeling the pipe give way beneath him almost at once. The iron broke with a wild hiss. Edward toppled forward, banging against the window with his head, shattering the glass.
There was a fearful splashing within. A light blinked on in the house next to them. A door slammed. There was shouting from the house behind. Edward suddenly became aware of three things: a trickle of blood that ran down along his nose from a cut on his forehead, the smell of escaping gas, and the sight of Professor Latzarel, hunched and running across the lawn in the thin moonlight, up Patchen Road. Edward was after him like a shot.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see someone — an alerted neighbor probably — poking around on a front porch. He told himself that Latzarel had been a fool to run, that they could have brassed it out, made up a lie. Frosticos would be the last one to give them away, what with a seemingly kidnapped Giles Peach afloat in his cellar. But it was too late now — there was nothing for it but to follow Latzarel, who was running wonderfully fast for his size, his hair awash above his head in a frenzy of excitement. The two of them rounded the corner, dashed the two blocks to Rexroth without looking back, then cut across a lawn and up Rexroth to Squires’ house. Latzarel rang the bell at the same time he pushed open the door and stumbled through, puffing and red faced, Edward on his heels.
“Shut the door, old man,” Latzarel wheezed, and not waiting even a moment for a response, threw the door shut himself, catching it just before it slammed and easing it home with a trembling hand. “They’ll be after us.”
“Who will?” asked Squires, taking his pipe out of his mouth.
“Your ghastly neighbors.”
“My ghastly neighbors have been chasing you up the road?”
“Yes,” said Edward, catching his breath. “For an easily explained reason.”
“St. Ives!” Latzarel shouted, taking a good look at his friend’s face.
“Were you attacked?” asked Squires, hauling Edward into the kitchen. He soaked a tea towel in water and wiped at the cut on Edward’s forehead.
“No, no,” Latzarel assured him. “We were two streets up. Frosticos lives up on Patchen …” But he was interrupted by a pounding on the door. He grabbed Edward by the shoulder and shoved him toward the library, yanking what he thought was a beer out of the refrigerator as he pushed the library door closed. Edward shouted something in a surprised voice, but Latzarel didn’t wait to hear it. He pulled the cap off his drink, poured half of it down the sink, nodded to Squires, and sat down on a chair in the breakfast nook, affecting the attitude of a man who’d been discussing philosophy for an hour or two. Squires opened the front door and stood back, pushing curly black tobacco into his pipe. A man in a t-shirt stood on the porch, looking in suspiciously.
“Did two men run in here?” he asked, giving Squires an appraising look. “A fat man with wild hair and a tall one in a brown coat? One of them might have been hurt.”