He came. He held the bowl out to me and waved a fork in triumph.
"I have solved it," he said. "Or, rather, Flannigan and I have solved
it. The mixture awaits the magic touch of the cook."
I honestly thought I could do the rest. It was only to be put in a pan
and browned, and then in the oven three minutes. And I did it properly,
but for two things: I should have greased the pan (but this was the
book's fault; it didn't say) and I should have lighted the oven. The
latter, however, was Mr. Harbison's fault as much as mine, and I had wit
enough to lay it to absent-mindedness on the part of both of us.
After that, Aunt Selina or no Aunt Selina, we decided to have boiled
eggs, and Mr. Harbison knew how to cook them. He put them in the
tea kettle and then went to look at the furnace. And Officer Timothy
Flannigan ground the coffee and gave his opinion of the board of health
in no stinted terms. As for me, I burned my fingers and the toast, and
felt myself growing hot and cold, for I was going to be found out as
soon as Flannigan grasped the situation.
Then, of course, I did the thing that caused me so much trouble later.
I put down the toaster--at least the Harbison man said it was a
toaster--and went over and stood in front of the policeman.
"I don't suppose you will understand--exactly," I said, "but--but if
anything occurs to--to make you think I am not--that things are not what
they seem to be--I mean, what I say they are--you will understand that
it is a joke, won't you? A joke, you know."
Yes, that was what I said. I know it sounds like a raving delirium,
but when Max came down and squizzled some bacon, as he said, and told
Flannigan about the robbery, and how, whether it was a joke or deadly
earnest, somebody in the house had taken Anne's pearls, that wretched
policeman winked at me solemnly over Max's shoulder. Oh, it was awful!
And, to add to my discomfort, the most unpleasant ideas WOULD obtrude
themselves. WHAT was Mr. Harbison doing on the first floor of the house
that night? Ice water, he had said. But there had been plenty of water
in the studio! And he had told me it was the furnace.
Mr. Harbison came back in a half hour, and I remembered the eggs. We
fished them out of the tea kettle, and they were perfectly hard, but we
ate them.
The doctor from the board of health came that morning and vaccinated us.
There was a great deal of excitement, and Aunt Selina was done on the
arm. As she did not affect evening clothes this was entirely natural,
but later on in the week, when the wretched things began to take, nobody
dared to limp, and Leila made a terrible break by wearing a bandage on
her left arm, after telling Aunt Selina that she had been vaccinated on
the right.