Figger Bush reached for a hammer, and Tella Tandy stood by with a cigar box full of long wire nails, handing them to Figger as he nailed Deo in the box. Then Tella produced a long rope, and the husky negroes bound that box as a trunk is wrapped for a journey. When all were satisfied they stepped back, but Figger returned for a moment and made another careful examination of the box and the ropes.
Finally the curtains were drawn around the little booth and the crowd waited breathlessly.
Skeeter Butts arose and hastily departed from the hall.
Two things had happened to Deo Diddle which were sure to cause him trouble, and Deo found it out instantly.
First, Figger Bush had nailed Deo’s coat-tail to the top of the box. And second, when Figger went back to examine the box a second time he had emptied a small bottle of formaldehyde into one of the air-holes!
If there is one chemical fluid with which the inhabitants of Louisiana, white and black, are familiar, it is that colorless, volatile liquid, chemically intermediate between methyl alcohol and formic acid, called formaldehyde. It has an odor which suggests all the dead and decaying things of earth, animal and vegetable, all the putrefaction and corruption imaginable. When a man gets a whiff of it for the first time, he kneels down right there and prays to die—he doesn’t want to live another second with that stench in his nostrils. It is the supreme germicide and disinfectant of every yellow-fever epidemic, which accounts for Louisiana’s close and intimate acquaintance with it. Any self-respecting yellow-fever germ will instantly tuck his tail and scoot when he gets a good smell of that gosh-awful disinfectant.
But formaldehyde was a preparation with which Deo Diddle was not acquainted.
Figger Bush, listening intently, heard sounds which resembled those made by a dog having a fit in a cigar box and knocking his feet against the box on all sides. Then Figger heard a loud panting like a worn-out engine pulling a grade with a log-train. After that, a moan, which deepened into a hoarse cry; then Deo Diddle lost hold of himself completely and began a hideous sort of sharp yelping like a dog.
“Hel-lup! Hel-lup! Fer Gawd’s sake——” he screamed.
But long before this Tella Tandy had torn the curtains aside and was fighting the box with her hands, trying to let in the air.