, 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--