The Monkey God | Page 3

was directed away from him."
"Then how do you account for--that?" Carpenter asked almost roughly, pointing dramatically to the figure lying face downward on the handsome Persian rug.
Mr. Milsted lay prone as he had fallen, one arm oddly twisted beneath him, the other extended full length beyond his head, the stock of a German Army automatic grasped convulsively in his hand. His right cheek rested against the nap of the rug, and the Professor, bending down to look into his face, observed a small, round hole, about the calibre of a lead pencil, some two inches or so above the eyebrows and almost in the center of the forehead. The rim of the wound was a little discolored, as though from a bruise, and the center was slightly depressed, forming a shallow cup or; crater, while a mass of thick, clotted matter, grayish white mixed with blood, showed within the tiny, deadly circle. One or two drops of blood--no more--had trickled from the wound and lay upon the carpet.
"U'm?" Forrester rose slowly from his contemplation and pinched his narrow chin between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. "How do you account for it? That's the question." Thrusting his hand into his jacket pocket, he drew out a short-stemmed briar pipe, stuffed it to overflowing with long cut tobacco and began puffing furiously. "I don't think we'll accomplish much huddled in here," he suggested. "Suppose you join the others. The officers should be here any moment, now."
As the door closed behind the others, Professor Forrester wheeled and stepped quickly into the museum. It was a small, square room entered by a single door of heavy, iron-bound oak, and lighted by a single small, heavily barred window. About its sides were ranged the tall glass-fronted specimen cases, all strongly fastened with Yale locks, while a small, compact safe and two tall, sheet-steel cabinets stood against the wall directly beneath the window. In the center, under the ceiling electrolier, was a table of polished mahogany on which lay a handkerchief covering two small objects. The Professor lifted the cloth, disclosing a small brass inkwell and stamp box.
"Milsted certainly intended giving the guilty man every chance," he commented softly to himself. "No one coming in here could say whether the handkerchief had covered two or three things before, and the fact that the cloth was already resting on two other things would partially disguise the fact that the idol had been returned. Yes, he was pretty decent about it, poor chap."
Replacing the square linen, he stared speculatively about the room. "Now, let's see," he murmured. "The Hanuman statue couldn't have been much bigger than this inkwell or stamp box, smaller, perhaps. Anyone could have carried it easily in his pocket. H'm; very interesting."
STROLLING over to the safe, he bent forward and examined it, even testing its lock tentatively, first taking the precaution to cover the knob with his handkerchief, lest his fingerprints show on the polished metal. The lock was fastened, and he next turned his attention to the upright metal cabinets. They were nearly six feet high by eighteen inches wide and about two feet deep. One was filled with a miscellaneous assortment of papers, old letters and kindred junk, while the other was empty, even its shelves having been removed, leaving a space available for storage about as large as the interior of an upended mummy case.
Again the Professor stooped, examining the cabinet's interior carefully. "Umpf," he inquired of the empty room, "what's this?" On the smoothly painted floor of the case were four crescent-shaped ridges of sand and fine gravel, paired off in two sets of two each, their concave sides facing, and about seven inches distant from each other. Taking an envelope from his pocket the Professor carefully scooped part of the sand into it, then closed the cabinet door and returned to the library.
Approaching the window, which had blown open as the lights went out, he examined its white- enameled sill closely, collected a few grains of sand from it, and bent down to observe the wall and baseboard immediately under it.
His search was rewarded, for, so faint as to be scarcely noticeable, but perceptible to one who knew what he looked for, was a tiny, dirty-yellow stain on the white baseboard, and two more, one about two feet below and ten to eleven inches to the left of the other, against the gray wall paper.
Mentally the Professor blessed his untidy habit of using his pockets for correspondence files as he brushed specimens of these stains into two more envelopes and scribbled identifying notations on each container.
"Now," he informed himself as he knocked the ashes from his pipe into the fire, "we'll have a look around the outside of the house before the police begin to ask embarrassing