“Oh! Help!” she uttered a muffled scream, and, before she realized what she was doing, threw the door leading into the main cabin wide open. Before her, regarding her in great astonishment, were Marian and Florence. For a few seconds they stood there, then of a sudden they began to act in the most startling manner. Jumping up and down, waving their arms, laughing, screaming, they vaulted over tables, knocked chairs end-over-end and sent books and papers flying in every direction.
Having recovered her power of locomotion, Lucile dashed for the outer door. This she flung wide open. Then, watching her chance, she propelled her two delirious, dancing companions out into the open air.
There, for a moment, she was obliged to cling to them lest they throw themselves over the rail, to go crashing to the frozen earth below.
In another moment it was all over. The two wild dancers collapsed, crumpling up in heaps on the deck.
“Oh, girls, I’m so sorry. I really truly am.” Lucile’s mortification was quite complete, in spite of the fact that she was fairly bursting with a desire to laugh.
“What—what—made us do that?” Florence stammered weakly.
“Gas, a new gas,” answered Lucile. Then, seeing the look of consternation on the girls’ faces, she hastened to add, “It’s perfectly harmless; doesn’t attack the tissues; works on the motor nerves like laughing-gas only it gets all the muscles excited, not just those of the face.”
“Well, I’ll say,” remarked Marian, “you really created something.”
“I only wish I had,” said Lucile regretfully, “but that chances to be a formula worked out by Dr. Holmes. I merely mixed it up. The bottle slipped from my hand and smashed on the floor—I didn’t aim to try it out on you.”
After the cabin had been thoroughly aired, the three girls went back to their work. As Lucile put the laboratory in order she noted the vial containing the remainder of the strange fluid. Having labeled it, “Quick action gas,” she put it away on the shelf, little dreaming that she would find an unusual use for it later.