Angelo had bent over to lift up the rear seat of his boat. He was looking for something. Plainly it was not there. Another object was there that apparently annoyed him.
“Who’s been making my boat into a junk wagon?” He lifted out a bent iron bar and was about to drop it in the river, when Johnny stopped him.
“Hey! Don’t do that!”
“Why not? You want it? All right. Here it is.” The boy tossed the bar to Johnny’s feet. It fell with a noisy jangle.
Thinking he had caught some sound from above, Johnny looked up in time to surprise a black look on the older Piccalo’s usually smiling face. One moment it was there. The next it was gone.
“Strange!” Johnny thought. “I must have been mistaken.” Yet he knew he had not been, and found himself disturbed by that insistent question, “Why?”
“That’s a curious band you have for your wrist watch,” he said to the boy in the speed boat. “All green.”
“Made of green stones,” Angelo explained. “Got ’em on Isle Royale last summer. Fine place, Isle Royale. Plenty big fish, wild moose. Plenty pretty girls.” He grinned broadly. “Found these stones on the beach up there.”
Johnny picked up the iron bar, climbed the stairs and walked away. This bar might at one time have been used by a merchant for opening boxes and at another by some gentleman of evil intentions in opening the window of some other person’s home. It is, I believe, known in some circles as a “jimmy.”
Feeling a little foolish walking down the street, he wondered why he had saved the bar at all.