My knees giving out, I sat down. And it was then that my chum showed me the article in the evening newspaper. It wasn’t much—just three or four lines in small type. But it sure told the whole story.
Over a hundred patients were being treated by Tutter physicians for ptomaine poisoning, the result of eating contaminated pickles, the newspaper said. The state board of health was expected to act on the case immediately.
CHAPTER X
THE GOLD CUCUMBER
Poppy and I were in a bad fix. There were no “if’s” or “and’s” about that. Not only was our pickle business shot sky high, but we were liable to end up in jail. In fact, it was something of a wonder to us that we weren’t already in jail.
Plainly enough something had gone wrong with the pickle making. While we were running around with a microscope looking for specks of dirt, old Butch had gotten hold of the fly poison or furniture polish by mistake. From the way the pickles tasted I could imagine, too, that he had dumped in an old rubber boot. Anyway, something had gotten into the pickles that didn’t belong there. And it was this something, whatever it was, that had poisoned them.
But the mere fact that the pickle maker, himself, had pulled the boner didn’t let us out. Not at all. For he was just a hired part of our business. As its owners, we would be held responsible.
Oh, how dumb we had been to let him go ahead—sloppy old coot that he was—without checking up on every little thing that he had done! We realized that now. But a fellow it seems always realizes those things when it’s too late, like the time I sent the homely valentine to the teacher. Ouch!
Old Butch, we learned, on sending a message into Zulutown, had gone up the canal on a towing job. So we had no chance of finding out from him how the poison had gotten into the pickles, or what it was. To that point, though, the chances were ten to one he couldn’t have told us, anyway. For it wasn’t to be believed for a single moment that he had known that there was poison in the pickles. He was sloppy and dirty. But he wasn’t a fool.
The same kid who brought us word of the closed Zulutown house carried a note to Mother in which I explained that Poppy and I wouldn’t be home for supper. Eat? Say, we hadn’t any more appetite than a seasick totem pole.
It came dark. And finally we locked up the store and went down the street. Nor did we try to hide when we saw the marshal coming. For we realized that our medicine was waiting for us. So we might just as well take it first as last.