There was a general exclamation of annoyance and anger from Van de Greutz, of surprise and commiseration from the German, and of something that might have been fright or pain from Julia.
"You clumsy fool!" Van de Greutz cried. "Get out of here, and don't let me see your face, or hear your trampling ass-hoofs again! Do you hear me, I won't have you in here again!"
The German was more sympathetic. "Have you hurt yourself?" he asked.
"No, Mijnheer, nothing," Julia answered; "only a little—my knees and elbows." Had she been playing Othello, though she might not have blacked herself all over, it is certain she would have carried the black a long way below high water mark. This was no painless stage stumble, but one with real bruises and a real thud.
The German had half risen; perhaps he thought of coming to help pick up the pieces of broken cups that were scattered between the cupboard and the chair. But he did not do so, for Herr Van de Greutz went on to speak of his unstable compound.
"I treated it with—" he said, and, seeing this was something very daring, the other's attention was caught.
Julia picked up the pieces alone, and carried them out on the tray, and on the tray also she carried a bottle wrapped into a duster. It was a wide-necked stoppered bottle, two-thirds full of white powder; very much like the one she had brought in, but also very much like the one that stood five from the end on the second shelf of the cupboard.
Soon after that she went up to her room, and took the bottle with her. Then, when she had set it in a place of safety, and securely locked the door, she broke into a silent laugh of delighted amusement. She pictured to herself Herr Van de Greutz's face when, in company with some other chemist, he found the ground rice, while his cook with the "ass-hoofs" carried the explosive to her native land.
"What a thief I should make," was her own opinion of herself. "I believe I could do as well as Grimm's 'Master Thief,' who stole the parson and clerk." She took up the bottle and shook a little of the contents into her hand; she had not the least idea how it was set off, whether a blow, a fall, or heat would reveal its dangerous characteristics. For a little she looked at it with curiosity and satisfaction. But gradually the satisfaction faded; the excitement of the chase was over, and the prize, now it was won, did not seem a great thing. She set the bottle down rather distastefully, and turned away.
"He could not have got the stuff," she told herself defiantly—"he" was Rawson-Clew—but the next moment, with the justice she dealt herself, she admitted, "Because he would not get it this way; he is not rogue enough; while as for me—I am a born rogue."