“A couple of drops.”
“Let’s see it.” The General, limping, led the way to a small laboratory he had upstairs. Silently the other two watched him test the few drops left. At last he tossed the vial into a basket, laughing.
“That’s about as much prussic acid as I am. It’s pure water! Well. Well!”
The General seated himself wearily in a straight-backed wooden chair, then started up and exclaimed, “Can’t I even have a comfortable chair, after all this? Come on down to the library. Mr. Adeler, we’ll have a couple of cigars. Do you smoke, you, young Griffin? No? Well, I’m glad to hear you don’t.”
When they were all seated in the great library, the General mused:
“Well, we’ve been busy to-night. It isn’t much after midnight, but it’s all over. By the way, Mr. Adeler, did you telephone those orders to the police-station to have the tetrahedral’s house, and your rooms, watched? That’s good. Some of those thugs might make trouble yet.
“But I don’t think they will. I think we’ll have them all in jail in a few hours. Jolls included. As for Captain Welch—it doesn’t make much difference whether we catch him or not. He’ll be disgraced and kicked out of the Army just the same. In fact, I think we might as well drop the ‘Captain’ from his name, and call him plain ‘Welch,’ from now on. He’s a private citizen—and without honor.
“As for the tetrahedral, I think that the Board will have adopted that as the Army model by noon to-morrow. You can telegraph Mr. Priest, at once.
“Well, that’s about all.” The General’s official sternness disappeared, and he became a gentle, humorous old man. “And now, where is that young Darby? I think that at least I might have him here, to talk to. He’s the only one I’ve ever met with sufficient sense of humor to understand my grievances.
“Here I’ve comported myself with a fair amount of dignity as a high-ranking army officer for some years. And what happens to-night? I ride in night-flying infernal contrivances. I fight mosquitoes on a ridiculous thatch-roof. I get covered with dirt—and I associate with other persons like you two, who are about equally dirty. I sprain my ankle dropping through a hole, as though I were an actor in a moving-picture company. I kill captains and don’t kill them dead. I act like a second lieutenant who got out of the Point about three years too early.