“Oh, Jerry, I’m so glad you’ve come. Help me to get him! I can’t reach him!”
“What is it?” asked the lad, looking about, and noting that nothing in the room had been disturbed, in spite of the terrific racket.
“It’s a new kind of water bug,” explained the professor. “One with red stripes down his back. I must get the specimen, but it is so high up on the wall that I can’t reach it, even by standing on a chair. I tried to jar it down, by pounding on the walls, but the little beauty is still there. See, there he is!” and Mr. Snodgrass pointed to a curious insect high upon the wall.
“Was that what made the pounding?” demanded the hotel clerk, evidently much chagrined.
“It was, my dear sir,” replied the professor calmly. “I knocked as softly as I could, yet I felt I must have that bug. It is worth a hundred dollars at least.”
“Say, the hotel’s full of ’em,” murmured the bell boy. “I’ll catch you a dozen for a quarter.”
“Ah, but they have no red stripes down their backs,” declared the scientist. “Help me get this one, Jerry.”
Jerry said little. In fact there was not much he could say. The professor gazed calmly at the crowd that had entered his room. Then he inquired mildly:
“Has there been a fire, or anything like that?”