"Confound Shattuck!" he exclaimed. "That man is the limit. I'll get him, if he doesn't look out. He's a game bird—but he flies funny."
"Why, what has he done now?" asked Kennedy.
"Done?" fumed Doyle. "Done? Been threatening, I hear, to have me 'broke'—that's all. I don't care about that, not a whoop—even if he had the influence with the administration. What I care about is that he is putting every obstacle in the way of my finding out anything from that woman. She's hard enough to manage, Heaven knows, without his butting in."
"What about that bean Jameson picked up here?" asked Leslie, impatiently, as Doyle paused. "Have you any idea what it may be?"
"A bean?" inquired Doyle, looking from one of us to the other and not understanding. "A bean? Picked up here? Why, what do you mean?"
I was inclined to be vexed at Leslie for having mentioned it, but I soon saw that Kennedy betrayed no traces of annoyance. On the contrary, he seemed rather eager to answer, as he drew the thing from his pocket, where he had placed it when Pete came in.
"Just something Jameson happened to find on the very edge of the rug, quite by accident, over by the letter-files," Craig explained, with a certain gusto at showing Doyle a thing that he had overlooked. "Ever see anything like it?"
Doyle took the bean, but it was evident that both it and its discovery meant nothing to him.
"No," he admitted, reluctantly. "What is it?"
"Without a doubt it is one of the famous so-called 'ordeal beans' of Calabar," replied Kennedy, offhand.