“What’s the matter, Professor?” asked Jerry, though he thought he could guess without being told what had happened.
“One of my most valuable specimens—a black pinching beetle which I have been keeping alive in order to study its wing action—has just got away from me!” explained the former instructor at Boxwood Hall. “I saw it crawling up into this berth, and I want to get it back. It is a very large beetle, with enormous pinching jaws and——”
“Ow! Oh, something hit me! I’m shot! He used a silencer on his gun and shot me!” cried the fat man, sticking his head out between the curtains. “I’m shot, conductor!” he cried, as that official entered the car, followed by the porter who had emerged from his “den.”
“You aren’t shot!” exclaimed the professor. “That’s probably my beetle pinching you. Where did you feel the pain?”
“Here! On my arm! Oh, there it goes again!”
He extended a fat arm, and, the pajama sleeve falling back, there was revealed a large black bug firmly fixed in the soft flesh of the heavy man.
“Yes, there he is, the beauty!” exclaimed the scientist. “Just a moment now, I’ll have him!” Quickly and skillfully Uriah Snodgrass transferred the beetle from the fat man’s arm to a glass-topped specimen box, and then the little scientist climbed down off the ladder.
Jerry wanted to laugh but dared not, while Bob and Ned, looking from their berths, were in the same predicament. As for Bill Cromley, he did not stir. As he announced later, when he went to bed to sleep he did that and nothing else.
“What’s all the row?” asked the conductor, while some other passengers, heads sticking out of their berths, looked on interestedly.