their unpleasant fix.

But the boys did not wait for this. As soon as the case was over they
hastened back to the Wondership. The run home was made without
incident and it was not till the Wondership was safely in its shed
that Jack suddenly thought of the odd cylinder of lead that he had
picked up by the man's side as he lay on the road.

"I ought to have left it at the hospital," he thought, "but I entirely
forgot it."

He drew it out and looked at it. He now saw that the lead cylinder
enclosed a glass vial carefully corked and sealed. The bottle was
wrapped in flannel. Jack could not withstand the temptation of pulling
it out and looking at it. He hardly knew what he had expected to see,
but he was distinctly disappointed, as was Tom, to find that the
carefully protected vial contained nothing more than some dark, almost
black, stuff that looked like sand. In it were particles that
glittered like mica.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed in a disappointed tone, "nothing but a bottle
full of sand. Wonder why in the world that fellow carried trash like
that so carefully wrapped up for?"

The solution of the question, which was near at hand, was to have an
important bearing on the lives of the Boy Inventors, and that in the
immediate future.