“Was it smashed?”
“Partly.”
“What did you do to find it and get it back?”
“Oh, the railroad company was glad enough to assist me,” answered the scientist.
“How?” inquired Jerry, and the boys looked interested.
“Why I once shipped a case of very valuable white rats,” Mr. Snodgrass went on. “It was in a wreck, or something, and the railroad lost track of the case; I couldn’t get trace of it. But in a little while I received urgent letters calling on me to take my white rats away. It seems the case had been side tracked after the accident and sent to a lonely station where the agent was a woman. The rats got loose and frightened her almost to death. She wired to headquarters threatening to resign unless the rats were taken away. In that way the claim agent heard—”
But what the professor was going to say he never finished, for, at that moment some kind of a bug came flying into the room through the opened window, and the scientist was after it at once. With his long-handled net in his hand he pursued the insect about the room.
“Now I have it!” Mr. Snodgrass cried as the bug alighted on the upper part of the door. He was bringing his upraised net down to catch it when the portal opened and a colored man entered, bearing a pitcher of ice water. His head came just in the right place and an instant later the professor had brought his net down on the woolly pate of the negro.
The startled colored man dropped the pitcher of water, which splashed all over himself and the professor, and then the darky let out a yell.