oon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets
had just finished their fencing lesson.

"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded,
his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a
mellow French horn on a touring car.

The triplets--Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla--all clothed precisely
alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention,
saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress,
Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.

"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?"
repeated their father impatiently.

The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils
aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they
removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded
the author of their being attentively--more attentively still when that
round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his
monocle into an angry left eye and glared.

"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully;
"didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I
informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of
yours. Didn't I?"

"Yes, Pa-_pah_."

"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"

An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he
demanded in a melodious bellow.

"Oh, no, Pa-_pah!_"

"Did two of you go?"

"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-_pah!_"

"Well, which one did?"

The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to
the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.

"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out
of his eye and reinserting it.

"Y-yes, Pa-_pah_."

"But you _did?_"

"Y-yes----"

"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two
guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they
had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind
them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.

"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.

Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I
noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries----"

"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the
interior economy of a wa