Explore "Felo De Se?" by R. Austin Freeman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE APPEARANCE OF THE PARTY that gathered that same evening round the table in our sitting-room to examine Polton's gleanings from John Gillum's chambers struck me at the time as slightly ludicrous. And that is still my impression when I recall the scene. In the middle of the table was a collection of the labelled bags, containing the floor-sweepings, or vacuum-cleanings, from the respective rooms. Before each of the three investigators was a microscope with triple nose-piece, flanked by a large photographic dish, a jar for waste, and a small covered glass pot for "reserved specimens"; and the appointed procedure consisted in scanning the material with a very low magnifying power, examining objects of interest with the higher powers, and the preservation of special "finds" for subsequent consideration.
We began by each taking a bag and turning out its contents on to the dish; the said contents forming an unsavoury heap of the material known to housewives as "flue" -- the sort of stuff that you can rake out from under a chest of drawers or a neglected bedstead. From the heap a pinch was taken up with forceps, spread out on the glass plate and rapidly inspected through the microscope. If it contained nothing of interest, it was cast into the waste jar and a fresh pinch taken.