The Black Box Part 8

He hurried across the bare landing and into an apartment which seemed to be half museum, half library. There were skeletons leaning in unexpected corners, strange charts upon the walls, a wilderness of books and pamphlets in all manner of unexpected places, mingled with quaintly-carved curios, G.o.ds from West African temples, implements of savage warfare, b.u.t.terfly nets. It was a room which Lord Ashleigh was never able to enter without a shudder.

The Professor took up the receiver from the telephone. His "h.e.l.lo" was mild and enquiring. He had no doubt that the call was from some admiring disciple. The change in his face as he listened, however, was amazing. His lips began to twitch. An expression of horrified dismay overspread his features. His first reply was almost incoherent. He held the receiver away from him and turned towards his brother.

"George," he gasped, "the greatest tragedy in the world has happened! My ape is stolen!"

His brother looked at him blankly.

"Your ape is stolen?" he repeated.

"The skeleton of my anthropoid ape," the Professor continued, his voice growing alike in sadness and firmness. "It is the curator of the museum who is speaking. They have just opened the box. It has lain for two days in an anteroom. It is empty!"

Lord Ashleigh muttered something a little vague. The theft of a skeleton scarcely appeared to his unscientific mind to be a realisable thing. The Professor turned back to the telephone.

"Mr. Francis," he said, "I cannot talk to you. I can say nothing. I shall come to you at once. I am on the point of starting. Your news has overwhelmed me."

He laid down the receiver. He looked around him like a man in a nightmare.

"The taxicab is still waiting, sir," Craig reminded him.

"That is most fortunate," the Professor p.r.o.nounced. "I remember now that I had no change with which to pay him. I must go back. Look after my brother. And, Craig, telephone at once to Mr. Sanford Quest. Ask him to meet me at the museum in twenty minutes. Tell him that nothing must stand in the way. Do you hear?"

The man hesitated. There was protest in his face.

"Mr. Sanford Quest, sir?" he muttered, as he followed his master down the hall.

"The great criminologist," the Professor explained eagerly. "Certainly!

Why do you hesitate?"

"I was wondering, sir," Craig began.

The Professor waved his servant on one side.

"Do as you are told," he ordered. "Do as you are told, Craig. You others--you do not realise. You cannot understand what this means. Tell the taxi man to drive to the museum. I am overcome."

The taxicab man drove off, glad enough to have a return fare. In about half-an-hour's time the Professor strode up the steps of the museum and hurried into the office. There was a little crowd of officials there whom the curator at once dismissed. He rose slowly to his feet. His manner was grave but bewildered.

"Professor," he said, "we will waste no time in words. Look here."

He threw open the door of an anteroom behind his office. The apartment was unfurnished except for one or two chairs. In the middle of the uncarpeted floor was a long wooden box from which the lid had just been pried.

"Yesterday, as you know from my note," the curator proceeded, "I was away.

I gave orders that your case should be placed here and I myself should enjoy the distinction of opening it. An hour ago I commenced the task.

That is what I found."

The Professor gazed blankly at the empty box.

"Nothing left except the smell," a voice from the open doorway remarked.

They glanced around. Quest was standing there, and behind him Lenora. The Professor welcomed them eagerly.

"This is Mr. Quest, the great criminologist," he explained to the curator.

"Come in, Mr. Quest. Let me introduce you to Mr. Francis, the curator of the museum. Ask him what questions you will. Mr. Quest, you have the opportunity of earning the undying grat.i.tude of a brother scientist. If my skeleton cannot be recovered, the work of years is undone."

Quest strolled thoughtfully around the room, glancing out of each of the windows in turn. He kept close to the wall, and when he had finished he drew out a magnifying-gla.s.s from his pocket 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 a.s.sistant, 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."