“Well, sir, I don’t see any other way of accounting for this state of things.”
“The greenhouse was filled with some suffocating, smelling, blasting stuff that knocked me back’ards,” put in Jenkins. “Every crack and crevice was stopped where a breath of air could have got in. I wish it had been you to find it; you’d not have liked to be smothered alive, I know.”
“I wish it had been,” said Monk. “If there was any such thing here, and not your fancy, I’ll be bound I’d have traced it out.”
“Oh, would you! Did you do anything to them there pot-stands?” continued Jenkins, pointing to them.
“No.”
“Oh! Didn’t clean ’em out?”
“I wiped a few out on Wednesday morning before we brought back the plants. Somebody—Drew, I suppose—had stacked them in the wrong place. In putting them right, I began to wipe them. I didn’t do them all; I was called away.”
“’Twas me stacked ’em,” said Jenkins. “Well—them stands are what had held the poison; I found a’most one-half of ’em filled with it.”
Monk cast a rapid glance around. “What was the poison?” he asked.
Jenkins grunted, but gave no other reply. The fact was, he had been so abused by the Squire for having put away the trace of the “stuff,” that it was a sore subject.