“Oh, thunder!” replied an aggrieved voice. “I need that table, awfully.” The door opened wider, disclosing a strange apparition――a boy in a bath-robe of barbaric coloring; a tall, extremely thin youth with unkempt black hair above a pale, annoyed countenance, and a pair of round spectacles which lent him the likeness of a perturbed owl. One hand held a glass jar in which some livid object floated nauseatingly in a cloudy fluid, the other a squirming, palpitant green frog of heroic proportions. There was a shriek from Mrs. Lyle, a startled grunt from the boy, and the frog leaped into space. “Now!” cried Toby Nott, anguish on his face. “Now see what you’ve done!” CHAPTER II JONES LENDS A HAND The frog’s name was Antonio, explained the boy in the bath-robe as he and Barry began the search. He had been having his supper――that is, Antonio had――when Mrs. Lyle knocked. He had refused to eat and Toby had been obliged to resort to forcible feeding. He had brought Antonio from home, and of course the frog hadn’t had time to get used to the place yet. Maybe he had gone downstairs. He had. Barry found him under the telephone table. He seemed very nervous, Barry thought, which was not unnatural under the circumstances. Toby recaptured him expertly and bore him back upstairs. Mrs. Lyle, recovered from her shock, was inclined to be tragic. “Really, Toby, I don’t see how I can allow you to keep such dreadful things in your room! I don’t mind the――the bugs, because they’re dead, and last year I said nothing when you had those snakes in the cracker-box, but things that jump, like frogs, and scare folks to death――” Toby viewed her in genuine surprise from behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. “Why, Mrs. Lyle, frogs won’t hurt you! Anyway, I’m going to have an aquarium for him just as soon as I can find one. And that’s what I need that table for. I just don’t see how I can do without it.” Barry didn’t, either. Just now the table, which was a small affair, was loaded with jars and tin boxes and various other articles, and if Toby moved them they must, it seemed, go on the floor, since every other surface appeared fully occupied. It was a strange apartment that Barry viewed from the doorway. How its occupant managed to get around in it was a mystery. Barry counted four tables, including the one recently acquired, three packing-boxes substituting as tables, and a bench, the latter evidently home-made. Then there were shelves on every side, it seemed, and all were full. Barry caught glimpses of impaled butterflies and moths and beetles, of gruesome objects in bottles and jars, of receptacles of whose unseen contents he was more than suspicious, and felt thankful for the impenetrable if unlovely wall that stood between Toby Nott’s room and his! “But, Toby,” Mrs. Lyle was protesting weakly, “it belongs in Mr. Key’s room, and it’s the only one I have left. You’ll really have to――”