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Show 64 a motor, and barely had time to duck behind a rose arbor before the general superintendent's automobile chugged down the driveway from the mansion. Charles Bonner sat alone in the back seat of his big Franklin Landolet. Feeling fairly confident that he couldn't be seen, Karl peered out through the roses to admire the shiny brass headlamps of the motor car, the rubber bulb horn he would have loved to squeeze, the tall steering wheel he would have loved to turn. Bonner's chauffer stopped the automobile and climbed down from the front seat to open the gate, then drove through and locked the gate behind him. As the car drove away, Karl stepped from behind the roses to yearn after it. The shiny blue chassis was set so high on the wheels that it looked more like a royal coach than an automobile. Relaxing, because since Charles Bonner and the chauffer had left, the groundskeeper was probably slipping off somewhere to sneak a nap or a pint of beer, Karl headed in the direction of the fishpond. Sunlight and leaf shadows patterned the surface of the pond, but Hunnie was not lying belly-down, his usual position, on the edge of the pool. Where could he be? It had been more than an hour since Francis X had seen him. A terrible fear stopped Karl's breath as he ran to the pond and stared into the water, because Hunnie might have slipped and fallen in. But the water, clear except for dots of soot on its surface, held only fat, orange fish. Karl couldn't holler for Hunnie in the superintendent's grounds, |
