“Evidently your burglar didn’t know the truth last night.... Did you tell Bill Hadley?”
“Not yet.”
“Bill is pretty smart at keeping an eye on strangers. And he’ll know if there’s any suspicious characters hanging around town.”
I was then told by my chum that he had gotten nine more letters at the newspaper office. We went through these together. And later Poppy did the usual calling and pickle-sampling act. But to no success.
I hardly knew what to think. It didn’t seem possible to me that any woman in Tutter could have missed seeing our ad. Then, too, there had been a lot of talk among the women about the “lucky pickle jar,” which all helped to make the news general. Yet, in all of our calls we hadn’t found the slightest trace of the particular pickles of which we were in need.
Could it be, as I had told Poppy that the one jar of pickles that had cranked up his imagination to such rosy Pickle Parlor dreams had been an accident, like the original Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde drug? And had we unknowingly talked with the woman who had made the pickles? If such was the case, certainly we ought to step on the gas and find her. For having once done the job right, even though by accident, she probably could learn to repeat. A little experimenting would do the trick.
I didn’t see any more of Poppy until evening. He had put in the afternoon slinging paint, he told me. Having finished the store-painting job, both inside and out, everything was now as slick as a button, and all we had to do was to wait for the paint to dry, which wouldn’t take more than two or three days.
“I even painted the sign,” he laughed. “Gee, you ought to see it. It looks like a million dollars.”
“But, Poppy,” says I, sort of perplexed, “what are we going to do with the store if we fall down on finding this star pickle maker? Had you thought of that?”
“Before I give up,” says he, “I’ll borrow every pickle recipe within ten miles and try them out myself.”