Fob was rather dismayed to note that Mrs. Crattan was now pointing the up-until-now unused sawed-off shotgun at him. And a rather stupidly grinning Saint Francis with that damn squirrel were standing behind her, a position which, given the current direction in which the shotgun was pointed, was either incredibly lucky or surprisingly canny of the old man. And squirrel. Though he wouldn't have been surprised if it weren't the squirrel feeding Francis clues, as between the pager incident and the incredibly ill-timed lunch break Saint Francis was not impressing Fob in the least.
The flattened glump of lead against the wall directly over his head and the door at which he stood was the unfortunate result (though not as unfortunate as it could have been, he would grant) of Mrs. Crattan's hitherto unused shotgun being used at long last. Over the top of the little wisp of smoke coming out of the foreshortened barrel of the shotgun he could see that the shot had knocked her shower cap even further askew.
"Uhm," Fob said. He pointed. Not at anything in particular, though the shotgun was within the path of his finger.
"Wa HA!" was what Mrs. Crattan said to that. The HA! bit of her exclamation tilted the shotgun barrel down, and a few delinquent pieces of lead dribbled out on to the pavement. Saint Francis stared down at the lead as it bounced then stopped still on the sidewalk, his beard snagging against his sweater. She staggered backwards a little bit, as a result of the HA!, and nudged Saint Francis, which is when he realised his beard had snagged on his sweater. He let go with a quiet little "Erk."
"Ehm, Mrs. Crattan...," certain possibly inappropriate things leapt to his mind to say, not nearly as inappropriate, of course, if she'd intended to fire the gun at him, "ehm... watch. Gun." In light of his speech coming out in small bursts of stuff not necessarily quite the way he'd hoped Fob crouched in the corner of the doorway, and tried the knob.
The Professor, who had been watching from the second floor window with just his eyes showing above the sill (which turned out to be an intelligent move, it turned out, the smoking lead in the wall below being a prime example of why it might be considered so to keep as much of oneself as possible away from things that react rather poorly to lead moving at impressive speeds), ducked down below the sill.
The Professor, Professor Jones, Professor Gregory Jones, had been a former philosophy professor who, at some point, took up the art of arson. To be honest, it wasn't much of an art, as he tended to just pour gasoline over things and then touch a match to them and watch them burn. There wasn't a whole lot of concern over technique or style; if the things he put a match to burst into flame he was generally quite happy, though there were a few times he pledged to pay more attention to form, particularly at those times he happened to catch his sleeve on fire due to either overexuberant application of the gasoline or inexpert application of the match to the thing he'd intended to set alight.
It had happened twice, and he had to say that was probably the part of the job he liked least about his new vocation. Philosophy, even with his Humeian concentration, hadn't quite held as dramatic drawbacks as arson-ing, as he called it, though he'd often thought Logic could be considerably improved by adding in an element of setting the students on fire.
And he wasn't terribly happy with what being below the sill was doing for himself at the present moment, which was not a whole lot.
So he decided to stand up.
Saint Francis gave a small whimper as he got his beard free from his sweater. Which was about the same time, and in the same movement, that he knocked Mrs. Crattan over, and the squirrel took off for greener pastures, surely.
"Hey," said the Professor.
Fob, scrambling inside the door, which turned out to be unlocked, swore to himself a little more loudly than he'd intended.
disclaimer:
The only bit that I've had to come back and add to this excerpt to make it vaguely make sense (just as much as the whole novel, really, which some might argue isn't a lot of sense at all) is the description of the professor and his background, which, obviously, is covered slightly earlier in the novel.
And yes, I did intend the word 'glump.'
-WM
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This is not a conspiracy.
Now carry on, then.
Yer Weekly Horoscopes. You sexy beast, you.