"It can survive a great many things besides
climbing out of a chimney. A man can grow gray in great campaigns,
and still have the soul of a schoolboy. A man can return with a
great reputation from India and be put in charge of a great public
treasure, and still have the soul of a schoolboy, waiting to be
awakened by an accident. And it is ten times more so when to the
schoolboy you add the skeptic, who is generally a sort of stunted
schoolboy. You said just now that things might be done by religious
mania. Have you ever heard of irreligious mania? I assure you it
exists very violently, especially in men who like showing up
magicians in India. But here the skeptic had the temptation of
showing up a much more tremendous sham nearer home."

A light came into Harold March's eyes as he suddenly saw, as if afar
off, the wider implication of the suggestion. But Twyford was still
wrestling with one problem at a time.

"Do you really mean," he said, "that Colonel Morris took the relic?"

"He was the only person who could use the magnet," replied Fisher.
"In fact, your obliging nephew left him a number of things he could
use. He had a ball of string, and an instrument for making a hole in
the wooden floor--I made a little play with that hole in the floor
in my trance, by the way; with the lights left on below, it shone
like a new shilling." Twyford suddenly bounded on his chair. "But in
that case," he cried, in a new and altered voice, "why then of
course-- You said a piece of steel--?"

"I said there were two pieces of steel," said Fisher. "The bent
piece of steel was the boy's magnet. The other was the relic in the
glass case."

"But that is silver," answered the archaeologist, in a voice now
almost unrecognizable.

"Oh," replied Fisher, soothingly, "I dare say it was painted with
silver a little."

There was a heavy silence, and at last Harold March said, "But where
is the real relic?"

"Where it has been for five years," replied Horne Fisher, "in the
possession of a mad millionaire named Vandam, in Nebraska. There was
a playful little photograph about him in a society paper the other
day, mentioning his delusion, and saying he was always being taken
in about relics."

Harold March frowned at the tablecloth; then, after an interval, he
said: "I think I understand your notion of how the thing was
actually done; according to that, Morris just made a hole and fished
it up with a magnet at the end of a string. Such a