"He has beaten us again," Jean Lanni told Judy Stokes resignedly when she arrived at his studio the following evening. He watched Droozle fascinatedly as the snake moved his restless tail over the margins of newspapers spread on the floor. "He doesn't know yet that I know. I discovered the fraud only by the merest accident."
"He isn't writing?" she asked, perusing the newspapers for signs of Droozle's elegant script.
"He most certainly is."
"Where?"
"Look at him!" Jean exclaimed, ignoring her question. "He's doing it again!"
Droozle had ceased wriggling for the moment and lay there shaking violently, as though he had malaria. Then the paroxysm passed and he took up his restless movements again.
"The poor genius," mourned Judy. "He must be sick with frustration."
"Sick, my eye! That snake has learned to centrifuge part of his blood while it is in his body, so that the hemoglobin is separated out. The result is—invisible ink!"
"Why, I'll tell that Droozle off!" raved Judy. "Here I sat feeling sorry for the little crumb!"