“You mentioned a gentleman named Dickenson who drinks the acid from car batteries,” he remarked. “What happens?”

Young Keith opened his mouth to reply but remained silent at a warning glance from his mother.

“Hospital,” replied Inspector Walters. “Old Dickenson is a queer character, but quite a decent old pot when sober. Receives a little money every quarter day, and that gives him about two weeks on the whisky. As he hasn’t any credit at the pubs, after his benders he will, if given the opportunity, milk a car battery and drink the fluid. Naturally, when found he has to be taken to hospital. Battery acid is bad for the stomach, so they say.”

“Wonder he doesn’t die,” observed Bony.

“Too tough to pass out for keeps. He doesn’t take it straight, mind you. Ten drops in a tumbler of water is the correct strength, I understand.”

“Poor old thing,” murmured Mrs. Walters. “They paint him blacker than he really is. Has been quite a gentleman. He was very rich at one time in his life. He owned an estate in Hampshire, England, and an ocean-going yacht.”

“Been living in Broome long?”

“Fifty years. What finally broke him was thewillie of March, 1935. Twenty-one luggers and a hundred and forty lives were lost, and old Dickenson’s remaining fortune went down with three of those luggers.” Walters snorted. “I’ve been asked to move him out of town, but I won’t do it. The only harm he does is tohimself. You can’t tell a man to move out of town when the nearest town is 130 miles to the north, and the next nearest 300 miles to the south.”

“All the kids like him,” edged in young Keith.“Tells us yarns about foreign places, and his adventures among the Indians in South America.”