“If you have any idea who I am,” said Frosticos slowly, “you’ll be on your way north yourself.”
Edward attempted a feeble laugh — a ha, ha, ha that amounted to nothing at all. Less than nothing. He began to suggest that Frosticos leave town himself, but was cut off.
“The boy in the steamer trunk was an unfortunate bungling. An assistant of mine, no longer with me, wasn’t as handy with a scalpel as he might have been. Giles won’t be as unfortunate as was his uncle. He’s just as promising. Reginald wasn’t a complete failure, however; he’s alive today, in fact, living in an aquarium. People who have seen him are certain he’s a fake. The impossibility of him confounds them. They can’t imagine anything quite so — how shall I put it — grotesque. Han Koi has an interest in breeding him with giant tri-colored carp. The offspring would be remarkable, don’t you agree?”
Edward couldn’t speak. Reason had flown. He wanted to shout something, to infuriate Frosticos, to confound him, to set him off, but nothing came.
“My advice to you,” said Frosticos evenly, “is to not allow Mr. Hastings to be taken alive.” And with that he hung up.
“Did you get to him?” asked William.
“Not entirely.” Edward picked up a half-filled coffee cup and dumped it onto the kitchen counter, rattling the empty cup down onto the pool that flooded along into the sink in a little rush.
“He has that effect,” said William, sitting down tiredly. “What did he say about the Humboldt County nonsense?”
“Saw through it right off. There wasn’t a bit of hesitation. For all I know he understood that you were standing at my elbow.”
“Did he mention last night’s broken window?”
“No,” said Edward, “he didn’t.”
“Hah!” William struck his open palm with his fist. “We’ve got him there. The Reginald Peach case is too old now to do him any damage. But Giles is different. He’s worried, all right. We’ll move today. He’s at the sanitarium now; let’s strike.”
“What?” said Edward. “Now?”
“Of course now. Jim’s in school, so he won’t be fighting to come along. We can pick up Russel and be in the sewers in half an hour. We’ll stop at the army surplus on Brand and pick up three of those miner’s helmets with head lamps.”
“I don’t know,” said Edward, shaking his head. “I think you’d better lie low for a couple of days until some of this blows over.”
William gave him an incredulous look. “Lie low? To what end? They’ll be here with a van before the afternoon’s out. Where do you expect me to do this lying low? In a hotel somewhere? A man can’t lie any lower than in a sewer. That’s my motto. I’m going in after Giles. Are you coming with me, or not?”
“I’m coming,” said Edward resignedly. “Phone Latzarel Tell him we’ll pick him up in ten minutes. He won’t have to be persuaded.”
“That’s the ticket,” cried William ecstatically. “We’ll rip their lungs out. Dig up Pince Nez. I’ll lay out a route.”
And with that they were off and running, grinding away toward Professor Latzarel’s house in Pasadena, sitting desperate and stony-faced in the Wasp, both of them feeling conspicuous — William proudly so and Edward utterly certain that his eyes would betray his criminal intent. No one, however, threatened to stop them. No accusatory fingers were pointed. Nobody at the army surplus store intimated that the three miner’s helmets were intended to light the sewers for the purpose of carrying off an illegal venture, for smashing into a man’s house and kidnapping a merman out of the clutches of a mad doctor. And when, shortly before noon, the three of them slid down the concrete slope of the Los Angeles River near Los Feliz, opened a great circular metal door painted like the face of a grinning cat, and slipped into a descending tunnel, no one saw them except a half dozen carloads of freeway travelers, bound for Bakersfield and Saugus and San Fernando, who took the helmeted trio for county workmen.
Chapter 15
“Why in the devil did we start out so far from our damned destination, that’s what I want to know. Economy of movement, that’s always been my way, and here we are God knows where. We’d have saved money parking at Rusty’s again.” Latzarel pushed at his miner’s helmet, which had slid down over his eyes. There was a fearful stench in the sewers, but fortunately the corridor they traveled was broad enough so dial they could keep up out of the muck.
“If I’m not mistaken,” said William, striding along purposefully ahead of them, “this tunnel runs smack up to the foothills, straight as a die. There must be a hundred exits. And down toward Brand there’s a passage or two that I can’t make out from the map. Little notched lines like an intermittent stream on a topographic map, leading in a curious direction. Very puzzling. I thought we’d have a look at it.”
“We haven’t the time to have a look at anything,” said Latzarel angrily. “It’s time to strike, not sightsee.” He started to say more, but the light in his helmet went out, tossing him into darkness. William and Edward were at the perimeter of two moving pools of light ahead. “Wait!” hissed Latzarel, pulling off his helmet. He messed with the two wires up under the crown. The thing blinked on and then went dead. It revealed, briefly, a perpendicular corridor that angled off dark and enormous into the earth. And dragging along it, slowly, in a long triple S of luminous green and pink, was an immense serpent, bound for deeper levels. No one stirred. The creature disappeared into shadow as if it were passing through a veil.
Latzarel’s lamp blinked on again of its own accord just as the beast’s tail flicked into obscurity.
“By God,” said William, letting out a whoosh of suspended breath. “I’ve half a mind to follow it. I’ll bet it’s making for the realm of Pince of Nez and the subterranean sea.”
“Some other time,” said Edward, who’d never seen much in snakes. He pushed ahead and hastened on, leaving his two companions to follow.
“Here we are in front of Squires’ house,” said William some time later, pointing up at a black circle of iron through which shone two little cylinders of sunshine. “I spent a good long time here, writing notes. When the level of water rose late in the afternoon, I made a paper sailboat and sent it off northeast. Sometime, if we pull through all of this, I’m going to make an enormous origami clipper ship and pilot it into the setting sun. I have this feeling — a certainty — that when it finally sinks I’ll find myself somewhere …” William paused, not knowing, apparently, exactly where he’d find himself.
“Where?” asked Edward.
“Wet,” said Latzarel, who wasn’t concerned with the mystery of paper boats. “In a state of watery decline. That’s what my father would have said. ‘Where were you born?’ they’d ask him. ‘In the state of nakedness,’ he’d say. Hah! I’ll never forget that. It still cracks me up.” William shined his headlamp at Latzarel, chagrined at his friend’s spirited reminiscence that had so quickly scuttled his origami boat.
“Somewhere in the midst of a cottage garden,” William said to Edward. “Only beneath the sea — all blue and aquamarine. The sort of thing that comes to mind when you read The Water Babies, and with maybe an octopus and a seahorse playing a cello and a flute with bubbles just pouring out and my paper boat listed over on its side, propped against a reef of pink coral.”
Edward nodded. “I believe I know the place.”
“Listen,” said Latzarel, who’d been fiddling with his helmet and was still caught up in his father’s wit. “He had another one. Pulled it off every day almost. ‘Have some mo-lasses,’ he’d say, into the air, you know, not at anyone in particular. Then, in a different voice, he’d say, ‘Mo-lasses, I ain’t had no lasses yet!’ and laugh and laugh and laugh.” Latzarel smiled, remembering it. “Of course we never actually ate molasses. I didn’t even know what it was. But he’d point at something — a salt shaker, a milk glass; it didn’t much matter what. It was hysterical.” He chuckled to himself and shook his head. His lamp abruptly went out again. “Damn!” he said in a low voice. It blinked on and off as he toyed with it.