On the table Andy noticed several foreign magazines and reviews. A large portion of the contents of the bookcases were European scientific magazines. One of these, turned over on the table, was a German periodical devoted to chemistry.
On the far side of the room a steep stairway led to the second floor. While his elders ascended to the rooms above the boy opened a door in the rear. The scientific publications had instantly revived his curiosity concerning the shop or workroom. The door led into a small, bare room with a door opening on the side gallery—evidently a dining room. Beyond this, was a kitchen and a door leading out on the orange grove.
A few yards within the grove, the boy found, in a clearing, the building that his uncle had used as a shop. It was of weather-worn boards, and had a tar-paper roof. The windows, on two sides of the shed, were almost continuous, and protected by shutters. The door, on a windowless side, was fastened with a padlock. But this did not long deter the curious Andy. Many kinds of pipe, bars of iron, empty carboys, boards, boxes, and barrels of hard and soft coal were about the shed. Catching up a piece of bar iron, Andy demolished the lock staple with a blow.
The spaces between the board siding had been filled in with laths and, as the shutters were closed, it was a moment or two before the prying visitor could make out his surroundings. As he began to do so he knew that Captain Anderson’s suggestions were more than justified. He was plainly in the workroom of an experimenter of wide scope.
The intruder’s first work was to throw open the wooden shutters. Then, despite the dust-covered windows, he began a quick inventory of the place. The side where there were no windows looked like the disordered shelves of a country drug store. Glass bottles and smaller vials, wicker demijohns, and labeled boxes were jammed together in confusion. There was an acid, mouldy smell about the place, as if sunshine and air had not entered for a long time.
Beneath the windows on the long side of the room was a little workbench such as watchmakers use. It was littered with tools looking much like a watchmaker’s outfit. In a cleared place on it was tacked a sheet of paper, now brown with dust. In lead pencil, on this, were chemical formulae and algebraical equations. By its side was a box of drawing instruments, steel rules, drawing curves and dividers, with pens and drawing inks.
[“Nothing much doing!”] chuckled Andy to himself, smacking his lips. He reveled in places of this character. It meant many possible hours of prolonged examination and the joy of almost any kind of discovery.
On the right of this bench was a heavier one for metal working, with two vises and a lathe operated by shaft and pulley. The shaft extended through the side of the room and connected with a small gasoline engine outside.
