The Monkey God | Page 8

keep poor old Milsted above ground indefinitely, waiting to swear in the jury. Tell you what I'll do, if you say. I'll impanel a jury, swear 'em in over the body, and then continue the inquest subject to call. I can get away with that, all right. What were you going to suggest?"
"Take that bullet you found in the brain down to Roach's sporting goods store and have one of their arms experts look at it. I noticed an English air-pistol on display in their window the other day, and it strikes me an air-gun might be the explanation to the whole affair. If the murder had been committed with one of those weapons we'd have about the same amount of mystery we have here, for the thing would probably shoot with practically no sound and would make no flash. These guns are comparatively new in this country, but I daresay they're fairly well known in the British possessions."
"You think the murderer was an Englishman, then?"
"Not exactly that, but I've got what you'd probably call a 'hunch,' Nesbit."
"Good enough. We'll play it through. I'll see what Roach's man has to say and report later. We can hold the inquest up a week or so if necessary, while we gumshoe around for more dope."
"I don't think we'll need wait that long," the Professor told him, as he hung up the 'phone and resumed marking a pile of examination papers.
"MISSIE like buy ve'y pretty fancy work?" a round-faced young man with somnolent eyes, clad in a threadbare overcoat and rather decrepit fez, demanded the following afternoon, when Rosalie answered the ringing of the front doorbell.
"No, I--" the Professor's pretty ward began, then checked her refusal, half spoken, as her large, topaz eyes suddenly narrowed the tiniest fraction of an inch. "Come in," she invited. "I won't promise to buy anything; but I'll look."
"Missie like my t'ings ve'y much," the peddler announced confidently, as he followed her down the hall and into the living-room. "See--" he opened an imitation alligator-hide suitcase and displayed the usual stock in trade of the itinerant Armenian huckster-- "ve'y pretty, ve'y cheap, Missie. I t'ink you like buy some, mebbe so."
Attracted by the voices, Professor Forrester put down his book and strolled into the living- room, leaving the study door open behind him.
"Shopping again?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
Rosalie had spent almost a year in occidental freedom since the Professor rescued her from the entourage of a certain villainous half-caste from Singapore, and the avidity with which she conformed to the Western custom of permitting women to buy their own finery had caused the Professor more than a little amusement.
"Yes, Uncle Harvey," she returned, throwing him a radiant smile. "This gentleman says he's from Armenia, and he has some of the loveliest things."
Forrester looked with astonishment from the girl to the mass of miscellaneous horrors spread on the floor. Even a layman could see these alleged Madeira and Normandy scarfs and Egyptian table covers were of the home-brewed variety, the sort which are stamped out, thousands at a time, by machinery in New Jersey, and foisted on a credulous public by smooth-spoken knaves from the Levant.
The Professor, who knew the home industries of every people in the world as well as he understood their dialects, could recognize the counterfeits with one eye closed, and Rosalie, who had spent ten years of her life in the heart of the East should certainly have been the last one to be deceived by such crude forgeries. Yet there she stood, apparently enraptured, and begged the vendor to display more of his atrocities.
"This ve'y ni-ce piece work," that worthy commended, throwing a cotton cloth thickly encrusted with machine embroidery over his right arm so that it swathed him from shoulder to wrist. "This made 'specially for ladies who like ni-ce t'ings."
His stock patter swept rapidly on, detailing the manifold perfections of the luncheon cloth, but his sleepy eyes traveled round the room, glanced through the open door of the study, and rested on a tiny brass paper weight which stood on the Professor's desk. The knick-knack was an inexpensive piece of Japanese work, executed in polished brass, and represented a diminutive monkey in the act of holding his paws before his mouth--one of the familiar "speak no evil" symbols to be found in every curio store. Just then it glittered in a ray of the afternoon sun as though it were burnished gold instead of hammered brass. The young man's eyes shone with a sudden fierce light of jubilation as they encountered the toy, and he moved a step nearer the study door.
"Ye-es, this ve'y ni-ce cover for ni-ce lady's table--" he drawled, fumbling in the side pocket of his overcoat beneath the cotton cloth which still draped his