Page 17 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

The kitchen connected to the dining room. Bunster kept the latter
almost clear of books, displaying a few objects of non-verbal interest
for his infrequent mealtime guests. Lulu at once glanced up at the
pendant light fixture over the table. It was an unusual geometric
shape executed in stained glass.
“Got it again, Bob! The process of elimination is working for us
now: there could be no other place for ‘rhombicosidodecahedron’ to
hide in the whole house! Why don’t you take off your shoes and get
up on the table?”
“Yes, why don’t I,” her brother grumbled. Demonstrating average
nimbleness, he attained a position from which he could strip off the
word. “I don’t think this fellow would be happy if the light were
turned on: he’d have a whole lot of hot feet.”
He dropped the wriggling string of syllables into the now-bulging
sack. “How come I wound up holding the bag and you got the list?”
“Just lucky, that’s all,” said Lulu, as innocently as she could. “Five
more to go. I’ve run out of brilliant inspirations: we’ll have to go back
to plain old gumshoeing.”
They looked at the bowl of over-ripe fruit on the sideboard. They
looked at the table and chairs from all angles. Nothing.
“Wait up,” said Bob suddenly, after taking back the list. “Why
does Uncle have that old oil painting up there on the wall?”
“Beats me. There’s a little brass nameplate on the frame. The
whole thing is rather too ornate for this house. It says, ‘St. Francis de
Sales, Patron Saint of Writers.’”
“Well, I think you might find ‘honorificabilitudinity’ on it. Now
you can safely turn on the light.” She did so. “That picture is really
dark and cracked.”
“Bingo!” Lulu handed him the wordsack. “It’s right under that
book the saint is holding: it looked like the rest of the chiaroscuro
from a few feet away.”
“Great! Just one more room,” Bob exclaimed. “It’s certainly
cooler at floor level!”

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