and made a brief examination of the box. Then he asked a few questions of the curator, pointed out one of the windows to Lenora and whispered a few directions to her. She at once produced what seemed to be a foot-rule from the bag which she was carrying, and hurried into the garden.
“A little invention of my own for measuring foot-prints,” Quest explained. “Not much use here, I am afraid.”
“What do you think of the affair so far, Mr. Quest?” the Professor asked eagerly.
The criminologist shook his head.
“Incomprehensible,” he confessed. “Can you think, by-the-bye, of any other motive for the theft besides scientific jealousy?”
“There could be no other,” the Professor declared sadly, “and it is, alas! too prevalent. I have had to suffer from it all my life.”
Quest stood over the box for a moment or two and looked once more out of the window. Presently Lenora returned. She carried in her hand a small object, which she brought silently to Quest. He glanced at it in perplexity. The Professor peered over his shoulder.
“It is the little finger!” he cried—“the little finger of my ape!”
Quest held it away from him critically.
“From which hand?” he asked.
“The right hand.”
Quest examined the fastenings of the window before which he had paused during his previous examination. He turned away with a shrug of the shoulders.
“See you later, Mr. Ashleigh,” he concluded laconically. “Nothing more to be done at present.”
The Professor followed him to the door.
“Mr. Quest,” he said, his voice broken with emotion, “it is the work of my lifetime of which I am being robbed. You will use your best efforts, you will spare no expense? I am rich. Your fee you shall name yourself.”
“I shall do my best,” Quest promised, “to find the skeleton. Come, Lenora. Good morning, gentlemen!”
With his new assistant, Quest walked slowly from the museum and turned towards his home.
“Make anything of this, Lenora?” he asked her.
She smiled.
“Of course not,” she answered. “It looks as though the skeleton had been taken away through that window.”
Quest nodded.
“Marvellous!” he murmured.
“You are making fun of me,” she protested.
“Not I! But you see, my young friend, the point is this. Who in their senses would want to steal an anthropoid skeleton except a scientific man, and if a scientific man stole it out of sheer jealousy, why in thunder couldn’t he be content with just mutilating it, which would have destroyed its value just as well—What’s that?”
He stopped short. A newsboy thrust the paper at them. Quest glanced at the headlines. Lenora clutched at his arm. Together they read in great black type—
ESCAPE OF CONVICTED PRISONER!
MACDOUGAL, ON HIS WAY TO PRISON,
GRAPPLES WITH SHERIFF AND JUMPS
FROM TRAIN! STILL AT LARGE
THOUGH SEARCHED FOR BY
POSSE OF POLICE
2.
The windows of Mrs. Rheinholdt’s town house were ablaze with light. A crimson drugget stretched down the steps to the curbstone. A long row of automobiles stood waiting. Through the wide-flung doors was visible a pleasant impression of flowers and light and luxury. In the nearer of the two large reception rooms Mrs. Rheinholdt herself, a woman dark, handsome, and in the prime of life, was standing receiving her guests. By her side was her son, whose twenty-first birthday was being celebrated.
“I wonder whether that professor of yours will come,” she remarked, as the stream of incoming guests slackened for a moment. “I’d love to have him here, if it were only for a moment. Every one’s talking about him and his work in South America.”
“He hates receptions,” the boy replied, “but he promised he’d come. I never thought, when he used to drill science into us at the lectures, that he was going to be such a tremendous big pot.”
Mrs. Rheinholdt’s plump fingers toyed for a moment complacently with the diamonds which hung from her neck.
“You can never tell, in a world like this,” she murmured. “That’s why I make a point of being civil to everybody. Your laundry woman may become a multimillionaire, or your singing master a Caruso, and then, just while their month’s on, every one is crazy to meet them. It’s the Professor’s month just now.”
“Here he is, mother!” the young man exclaimed suddenly. “Good old boy! I thought he’d keep his word.”
Mrs. Rheinholdt assumed her most encouraging and condescending smile as she held out both hands to the Professor. He came towards her, stooping a little more than usual. His mouth had drooped a little and there were signs of fatigue in his face. Nevertheless, his answering smile was as delightful as ever.
“This is perfectly sweet of you, Professor,” Mrs. Rheinholdt declared. “We scarcely ventured to hope that you would break through your rule, but Philip was so looking forward to have you come. You were his favourite master at lectures, you know, and now—well, of course, you have the scientific world at your feet. Later on in the evening, Professor,” she added, watching some very important newcomers, “you will tell me all about your anthropoid ape, won’t you? Philip, look after Mr. Ashleigh. Don’t let him go far away.”
Mrs. Rheinholdt breathed a sigh of relief as she greeted her new arrivals.
“Professor Ashleigh, brother of Lord Ashleigh, you know,” she explained. “This is the first house he has been to since his return from South America. You’ve heard all about those wonderful discoveries, of course. …”
The Professor made himself universally agreeable in a mild way, and his presence created even more than the sensation which Mrs. Rheinholdt had hoped for. In her desire to show him ample honour, she seldom left his side.
“I am going to take you into my husband’s study,” she suggested, later on in the evening. “He has some specimens of beetles—”
“Beetles,” the Professor declared, with some excitement, “occupied precisely two months of my time while abroad. By all means, Mrs. Rheinholdt!”
“We shall have to go quite to the back of the house,” she explained, as she led him along the darkened passage.
The Professor smiled acquiescently. His eyes
