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Rh unearthed a ponderous tome. "Here is what you want: 'Pathogenic Bacteria.' That covers the whole field. Take it along if you want to; but I don't believe you will find the cause of my mother's death lurking in any vegetable organisms."

"I'd like to take them both, if I may." Odell tucked them under his arm. "I don't know much about septicemia, or what poisons would produce it or its counterfeit. That was one of the points in which I fancy you could be of assistance to me."

"I?" The boy laughed again. "So that is how the wind blows, is it? I told you at our last interview that I wouldn't take the trouble to put any of the family out of the way; but I was evidently not convincing. I'll give you all the rope you want, Sergeant. As a matter of fact, I have been reading up and experimenting quite a bit lately on pathogenic bacteria; the bugs, you know, which produce, among other things, blood-poisoning. Damaging, isn't it, especially when I admit that I turned my attention to the subject some months before my mother's death?"

"Experimenting?" Odell repeated sharply. "Do you mean that you had the living specimens here?" Rannie nodded coolly; but the detective noted a sudden quiver of his distorted face.

"Yes. I got them a month before my mother was taken ill. I have a friend, Phil Hampton, a young bacteriologist, who lets me fool around his laboratory when I feel able; and he taught me a lot. Lent me an incubator and gave me various forms of cocci to develop and experiment with from time to time."

"Did you have in your possession at the time of your