The procedure was very methodical and thorough. First, the sergeant picked up a bottle or jar, looked it over carefully read the label if there was one, uncovered or uncorked it, smelled it and passed it to the superintendent, who, when he had made a similar inspection, put it down at the opposite end of the table.
“Can you tell us what this is?” Miller asked, holding out a bottle filled with a thickish, nearly black liquid.
“That is caramel,” Madeline replied. “I use it in my cookery classes and for cooking at home, too.”
The superintendent regarded the bottle a little dubiously but set it down at the end of the table without comment. Presently he received from the sergeant a glass jar filled with a brownish powder.
“There is no label on this,” he remarked, exhibiting it to Madeline.
“No,” she replied. “It is turmeric. That also is used in my classes; and that other is powdered saffron.”
“I wonder you don’t label them,” said Miller. “It would be easy for a mistake to occur with all these unlabelled bottles.”
“Yes,” she admitted, “they ought to be labelled. But I know what each of them is, and they are all pretty harmless. Most of them are materials that are used in cookery demonstrations, but that one that you have now is French chalk, and the one the sergeant has is pumice-powder.”
“H’m,” grunted Miller, dipping his finger into the former and rubbing it on his thumb; “what would happen if you thickened a soup with French chalk or pumice-powder? Not very good for the digestion, I should think.”
“No, I suppose not,” Madeline agreed, with the ghost of a smile on her pale face. “I must label them in future.”