“Get a look at him if I can.”
So we tiptoed to the door. But when we got there we didn’t dare to put out our heads. It was too risky.
To one side of the kitchen, against the wooden wall, was a stairway leading to a room directly above. This gave us an idea. And going back up the stairs, to the second floor, we sought the room over the kitchen, hoping that we would be able to see into the room where the spy was through a knot hole in the board ceiling.
We were lucky. Not only was there many knot holes, but directly over the spy was an open trapdoor. [[215]]
It took careful walking, I want to tell you. For you know how a board floor sort of groans and creaks when you step on it. We were fully three minutes crossing the room to the trapdoor. Each step was taken with extreme caution.
Below us, seated on a box, the soap man was hard at work. A dozen or more bars of soap lay on the floor at his feet. He was cutting these bars into slices. Each slice was given a few drops of perfume and then squeezed separately in an iron jigger, which seemed to be a sort of mold. In went a thin slice of soap, then squeeze, then out came a cake of Bubbles of Beauty with the name pressed into the soap just as slick as you please. The big bars on the floor were marked I-V-O-R-Y.
“What the dickens?…” I breathed in Scoop’s ear. “Does he make his beauty soap out of Ivory?”
“Seems so.”
I was dizzy.
“But it made Miss Prindle beautiful.”