“No, but I’m going to start a list of names. You’ve got some corkers around here! What do they call Mr. Moon for short? Sirocer?”
“They call him Si,” replied the clerk with the hauteur of one who discovers that he has made a humorous remark and doesn’t know what it was. “Don’t know what you mean about Si Rocker.”
“Never mind. What happened to old Si-moon?”
“He was sick as a horse, he and the Deacon, too. And——”
“Perhaps it was horse liniment?” suggested Rodney gravely.
“No, ’twa’n’t, it was Hipplepot’s Embrocation. I know because I found the bottle behind the fountain there. ’Most half empty it was, too. Might have killed ’em!”
“How did you find out Watson did it?”
“Why, he’d been in here a while before, and I just naturally suspected him. And when I asked him he owned right up.”
“Well that was honest anyway, wasn’t it? He might have told a lie about it.”