“Is that so?” he asked quietly. “It’s rather surprising that you can have them so readily. Of course”—he laughed to relieve the tension—“you don’t go after them yourself, do you?”
The alleged buyer and seller of specimens faltered for a brief period, but at last looked up.
“These I was able to secure from a collector friend, who went on an expedition merely for the pleasure it afforded him, and not for the advancement of science.”
“Oh, yeah?” whispered Bob to his friends who were hiding like himself. “He got ’em from his ‘collector friend’ like I got ’em off a hot-dog stand.”
“No wise-cracking,” grinned Joe. “You might get me to laughing.”
The next few moments of conversation convinced the youths’ fathers that the man in the adjoining room was the thief. A few descriptions of the specimens, which Mr. Jordan purposely read aloud, were sufficient to convict the stranger in the minds of Mr. Holton and Mr. Lewis.
From then, the conversation appeared uninteresting, although Bob and Joe, as well as the naturalists, were anxious to see how the attorney would dispose of the stranger.
“And,” continued Mr. Jordan, “what are you asking for these five specimens?”
“The small sum of a hundred dollars,” was the reply.