It was funny
to see the snake-doctor lean across the dead-line and crane his sweet
little neck to try to hear and see Tony inside the shed. And after
Tony had squinted at and touched and nosed almost every inch of the
shed, he came out with his hands in his pockets.
"Any clue?" asked Roxanne, as anxiously as Roxanne could ask about
anything from the cloud.
"N--o," he said in a hesitating sort of way that seemed just as
professional as the way the detectives talk in the wonderful stories
in the magazines that my governess always reproved me for reading.
"That was a slick artist who got away on greased heels, but there is
a--smell in there that I've never felt before in the shed. And yet I
have met it somewhere, I feel certain. It seems to my nose somewhat
like the bug-doctor at his worst."
"No, Tony," said Lovelace Peyton, positively but perfectly calmly, "I
ain't been in that shed and my bottles ain't got legs."
We all laughed and came to the house--but I had got a whiff of that
odor and I knew where I had met it before. It was raw onion and tar,
and it was the mixture that Lovelace Peyton had given Father in the
bottle he wrapped in his handkerchief and put in his pocket.
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