“Yes. This is the second time. Do you recall the first?”
“Not in the least. And yet I must have done so if you saw me. Probably some night later I went down in the cellar with it and put it on the furnace. Say, I’m mighty sorry.”
“That’s all right. Better lock your door after this.”
“I will. Come in, and tell me what a fool I made of myself.”
Tom, who had on a warm bath robe this time, consented, and in a whisper related the details of the first occurrence. Johnson was contrite, and admitted that it must have been he who had taken the clock, though in his waking hours he recalled nothing of it.
“It must have been the tick that attracted me,” he explained. “Well, I guess I’d better take some treatment. Have a glass of ginger ale?”
“Don’t care if I do, though it’s breaking training.”
As Johnson got a bottle from a closet he uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Look here!” he called to Tom. “Where did these things come from?” and in the bottom of a little case, where the bottles had been, he pointed to a collection of things.