The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun Read Online Free PDF

done it, this combining of a water pistol and his soap bubble game. The rubber bulb of the air bag he had got out of the medicine chest at home, a game provided the ring that formed the soap bubbles at the muzzle, the tubing, too, had come from the medicine chest, but the spring, the compressors and the plungers he had designed and manufactured in his school shop.
    He was still niggled by and slightly worried over its occasional crankiness in operation when it would not function entirely correctly at odd moments and he wondered again where he might have made a mistake, or which part was responsible for the aberration. But, in point of fact, it even had its attraction when instead of the large bubble, a stream of smaller ones emerged for then you could go “Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah,” and give a machine-gun or wholly automatic effect.
    And with a little thrill of remembered delight he thought back to the day when he had first shown it to the other boys in his class and he heard again their impatient clamour.
    “Hey, Julian, lemme shoot it.”
    “No, no, it’s my turn.”
    “Aw, Julian, let me.”
    “He said I could next.”
    “Can you make me one, Julian?”
    They had all wanted one. When he had got it patented every kid would want one and there were millions and millions. Then his father wouldn’t laugh any more.
    Now a voice said, “What have you got there, sonny?” And the effect was most astonishing. It was as though Julian had been living under some kind of a glass dome or that his ears had been plugged up and his eyes unseeing and now with this voice his ears were unplugged and his vision quite clear. He saw and heard everything, the arid landscape whizzing by, the whine and rumble and roar of the bus and all the passengers within, those he recognized as having seen before and those he did not, waking up, yawning, stretching, adjusting their clothing and chattering. He looked about and saw the grubby ten-gallon hat of the baddie where he sat up front and the short-cropped grey hair of the man who had forgotten his briefcase, the honeymoon couple not yet awake, their hands clasped and her head on his shoulder, the man with the strange instrument and all of the rest of the passengers, black and white. Across the aisle the young man, the goodie who had taken his part over the intrusion of the baddie, still had his head thrown back in the sleeping position, but his eyes were open.
    And the question, of course, had come from the man sitting next to him and, in the stuffy morning air of the bus, Julian was aware that this man exuded some pleasant kind of fragrance as though he used scented soap or some flowery toilet water.
    Instinctively Julian’s hand dropped over his diagram. He knew very well why the first thing he had to do was patent his invention. If you didn’t patent it, someone could steal it. But he looked up at the man beside him and saw only the round, dimpled face and a pleasant smile which boded no evil intentions. He then replied, “My B-B-Bubble Gun,” but he did not remove his hand.
    Gresham said, “A Bubble Gun, eh? Well, well. What does it do?”
    Julian replied, “It shoots bubbles.”
    Gresham’s smile grew even sweeter and he leaned closer. “You don’t say. Did you draw that?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “What a clever little boy you must be.”
    Julian studied the man again and saw no further cause to distrust him. Besides which the praise had pleased him. He said, “I’m g-g-going to Washington to p-p-patent it.”
    Across the aisle this extraordinary statement from a small, stammering boy caused Frank Marshall to turn his head slightly to look and take in Julian and his scented companion, for his fragrance reached to Marshall and suddenly caused all his hackles to rise. He recognized the boy as the one who had been crowded out of line by that bum, but had thought at the time that he must surely be travelling with someone. Other fragments that had filtered through to his only half-attentive