“She sent me a few keys, when she wrote and asked me to come here and open up the house for her. I imagine she has all the rest, the desk key included.”
“Can you think of any reason,” Poppy then sprung the question, “why she should send some one here, with the key, to rob the desk just before her grandfather’s will was read?”
Staring, the woman started to say something, to better get the leader’s meaning, I imagine. Then, on a call from above, she dropped her breakfast and flew up the stairs to the sick room, where the unlucky invalid, in trying to doctor his itchy back, had gotten the ammonia bottle by mistake. From the way he was yipping and dancing around, his back was the next thing to being on fire, I guess.
Dr. Madden was called at nine o’clock, for the sick man was in bad shape now, and when Poppy and I learned that the family doctor was already on his way to the big house, having left his own home before eight o’clock, we had the jumpy feeling that something big was getting ready to drop.
While we were waiting, eager-like, for the doctor to drive in, the leader and I went to the barn. The gander was gone, all right. There was no doubt about that. In looking around for possible clews, we discovered a small room, without windows, that seemed to be a sort of storage place for empty bottles, the most of which were of the same size and shape.
“Phew!” gagged Poppy, pulling a cork. “Smells like rotten eggs.”
Getting a whiff, I quickly took down several bottles, smelling of them one after another, convinced now that we were getting closer to a solution of the mystery. For here was the same smell that had come to me through the bunghole!—and probably the same smell that Mrs. Doane had noticed in the house, and on the dead man!
Poppy was excited when I told him. Then, in further quick detective work, we made the most amazing discovery of all.
Shoved into a dark corner of the room was a corrugated-paper box filled with bottles that hadn’t been opened. There appeared to be a dozen of the bottles, all packed carefully in excelsior. The liquid, we saw, taking a bottle into the light, was red, like blood. But what excited us, more than the discovery of the filled bottles, was the name on the box cover. Here it is:
Dr. A. J. Neddam,
Sandy Ridge,
Illinois.