From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.
[Illustration]
XII
SYBILLA
_Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste_
About noon 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.
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