Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris: Fixer - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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The masquerade to be given at Temple’s and the unique costume to be worn by Elsie were the subjects of discussion at luncheon. Pee-wee was too engrossed in his own enterprise to pay much attention to this feminine chat. He gathered that his sister’s costume was considered to be something of an inspiration and a masterpiece in the working out. It was expected to startle the younger set of Bridgeboro and to be the sensation of the evening. Queen Tut, consort of the celebrated King Tut of ancient Egypt. Favorite wife of the renowned mummy.

Mrs. Harris and Elsie were rather hazy about whether his name had been Tut and whether he had possessed a Queen Tut, but anything goes in a masquerade. There would be masked Charlie Chaplins by the score; colonial maids, gypsy maids, Swiss peasant maids, pirates, and war nurses galore. But only one Queen Tut, leader of fashion in ancient Egypt. The great Egyptian flapper....

Pee-wee hurried through his lunch and upstairs so that he might proceed with his work uninterruptedly, while his mother and sister lingered in discourse about the great event. He was well beforehand with his exterior work, for the radio set was not yet in his possession. It was to be a birthday present deliverable several days hence. But the secret (held by women) had leaked out and Pee-wee had thereupon set about preparing his aerial.

He now gathered this up and dragged it into Elsie’s room. The cross-bars were laid together, the connecting wires loosely wound about them. He struggled under the mass, tripped in its treacherous loops, brought it around endways so it would go through the door, and finally by hook or crook balanced it across the window-sill where he sat for a moment to rest. The operations on which he was embarked seemed complicated and large in conception. By contrast, Pee-wee seemed very small.

It was characteristic of him that his career as a radio-bug should be heralded by preparatory turmoil. For several days he had striven with saw and hammer in the cellar, rolls of discarded chicken-wire had been attacked and left for the cook to trip over, the clothes-line had been abridged, not a wrench or screw-driver or ball of cord was to be found in its place.

Pee-wee’s convalescence from grippe had afforded him the opportunity thus to turn the house and garage upside down in the interest of science. He had even made demand for hairpins, and had mysteriously collected all the package handles he could lay hands on. These wooden handles he had split, releasing the copper wires which ran through them and converting these into miniature grapnels with which he had equipped the end of a stout cord. This cord, not an integral part of his aerial, was nevertheless temporarily attached to it, whether by intention or as the result of tangling, one could not say. It dangled from it, however, like the tail of a kite.

The function of his cord, as Pee-wee had explained, was to elevate one end of the aerial to the attic window after the other end had been elevated to the tree. In that lofty position no voice, not even the voice of Honolulu, could escape it. The world (perhaps even Mars) would talk in Pee-wee’s ear.

The operations (conceived while lying in bed) for elevating this wire eavesdropper into position were even more extraordinary than the aerial itself, and Pee-wee was now prepared to take the next important step in his enterprise. This was to fasten to the aerial the cord which he had lodged in the tree and thereupon to ascend the tree himself and pull the aerial up at that end. Following this, he would make his next public appearance at the attic window from which he would dangle his grappling line, catching the other end of the aerial and pulling it up at that end. It could then be drawn tight, adjusted, and made ready against his birthday.

He was anxious to get the acrobatic part of his enterprise completed before the return of Dr. Harris who might be expected to interpose some objection to the flaunting exhibition of broomsticks and rake-handle above the front lawn; and who assuredly would have been expected to veto the acrobatic feature of the work.

The doctor might be expected to return at one o’clock; every minute after that hour would be fraught with apprehension. It was now past twelve-thirty, as Pee-wee knew from the advance guard of returning pupils bound for the high school on the next block.