"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.
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