“That’s the same as a dead body,” said Ginger pugnaciously, “it was a body, wasn’t it? an’ now it’s dead.”
“Yes, but it’s bones,” protested Douglas.
“Well, a body’s bones, isn’t it?” said Ginger.
But here Joan interrupted. “Oh, what is it, where is it?” she said, clasping her hands, “it sounds awful.”
Her horror satisfied them completely. With Joan you could always be so pleasantly sure that your effects would come off.
“Come on,” said William briskly assuming his air of Master of the Ceremonies, “we’ll show him you. We c’n get through the hole in the hedge ’n creep up to the window through the bushes without him seein’ us at all.”
******
They got through the hole in the hedge and crept up to the window through the bushes. William, as Master of the Ceremonies, had an uneasy suspicion that in the cold morning light both man and room might look perfectly normal, that the ghostly effect of the night before might have banished completely. But the suspicions proved to be groundless. The room looked, if possible, even more uncanny than it had done. And Mr. Galileo Simpkins still pottered about it happily in his black dressing gown and skull cap (it was a costume in which he rather fancied himself). Mr. Galileo Simpkins liked his nice large downstairs lab. and felt very happy in it. As he stirred an experiment in a little crucible he sang softly to himself from sheer good spirits. He was quite unaware of the Outlaws watching his every movement with eager interest from the bushes outside the window. It was Ginger who saw and pointed out to the others the shelf at the back of the room on which stood a row of bottles containing wizened frogs in some sort of liquid.
Aghast, they crept away.
“Well, I’m cert’n that’s what he’s goin’ to do,” said Douglas as soon as they reached the road, “he’s goin’ to blow up all the world. He’s jus’ mixin’ up the stuff to do it with.”