Waiting till the Picaroon's attention was on the car in the distance, Comstock pointed at the house and whispered to Pat, "That's it." She nodded. Then they reached the car and the Picaroon's almost idiot glee reached its apogee as he poked at the thing under the hood that made the "car" move. Comstock didn't have the vaguest idea of whether or not the car could run. When he and Grundy and Helen had abandoned it, it had simply gone careening downhill and finally stopped. Why it stopped, or whether it would ever go again was an impenetrable question to Comstock. But he didn't allow his lack of knowledge to stand in his way. Becoming dictatorial he told the Picaroon to stop fooling about with the mechanism and to watch and try to learn how to make the car go. Then with the Picaroon standing at attention, Comstock got into the car, and went through the complex series of actions which in Grundy's case had served to animate the vehicle. There was a muttering rumble from the "car" and it surged internally. However the rock which had halted its forward progress in the first place, still served to prevent it from proceeding. * * * * * The Picaroon snapped into action, and going to the rear of the "car" he pushed as the wheels of the vehicle began to spin to no avail at all. At this point, Comstock, anxious to stall things as long as he could, since there was no chance of entering Bowdler's house till the sun was overhead, tried to turn off the motor. Instead he threw the motor into reverse and the car instantly backed up, carrying the Picaroon along with it. He dangled from the rear of the car trying to muscle himself up out of the danger of the wheels while he yelled at the top of his lungs for Comstock to stop whatever he was doing. Pat sat on the side of the road being of no help to Comstock at all, since she was busy being convulsed by giggles. The sight of the long-legged madman, his no longer jaunty cape entangled in his thrashing limbs, while Comstock wildly snapped things on and off on the control board, and the unguided car veered and yawed as it ran backwards up the steep hill was a little more than she could stand. When the car had backed almost to the crest of the hill, Comstock found the key which turned the ignition on and off and managed to bring the "car" to a halt. The Picaroon was in a towering fury. "Poltroon!" he roared at Comstock who was red-faced with embarrassment and anxiety. "How dare you treat a criminal figure of my stature in a manner more befitting some low comedy person like you?" Dropping from the rear of the "car" the Picaroon raced around towards the driving wheel where Comstock sat helplessly trying to deduce what had gone wrong with his method of driving the "car".