The Monkey God | Page 4

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 questions."
THE wind was howling like a thousand banshees with ulcerated teeth,
lashing the tall, somber cedars, which lined the Milsted driveway, till
they bent almost double before its force, and hurling sheets of mingled
snow and sleet against the house walls and window panes. The entire
north wall of the Milsted mansion was encrusted with storm-castings as
the Professor, muffled to the eyes in his motoring coat and with his fur
cap pulled well over his ears, forced his way through the tempest to the
spot beneath the library window.
"No chance of finding anything here," he admitted reluctantly as he
threw the beam of his electric torch against the ice-covered clapboards.
"Any traces are as dead as the dodo. You couldn't track an elephant
through this storm. I might as well get back to --ah?" He broke his
soliloquy short with a sharp, interrogative exclamation as his foot came
in contact with some tiny object imbedded in the half-frozen snow.
Dropping to his knees, he played his electric light over the glacial mass
at his feet, dug his fingers through the sleet-crust and exhumed a tiny,
glistening object about an inch and a half in length and surprisingly
heavy for its size. No need to speculate on the nature of his discovery.

The little golden statue, representing a squatting monkey, and
exquisitely executed in gold, the face ornamented with rubies, told him
at a glance what it was. Hanuman, the Monkey God, was found.
The flashlight's ray disclosed something else. About the spot where the
Professor had stumbled over the jewel somebody else had been clawing
furiously, for the half-obliterated marks of frantic fingers were plainly
visible in the snow. Only desperate haste, biting cold and unrelieved
darkness had prevented the other from finding the statuette which the
Professor had come upon accidentally.
"Hum," Forrester remarked as he shut off his flashlight and rose, "this
is interesting; mighty interesting. Would be worth while trying to find
any tracks?"
Two minutes' attempt convinced him it would not. Sheltered from the
full fury of the storm by the house, the snow where the monkey's statue
had been lost retained the ridges made by the questing fingers which
missed what the Professor found; but three feet distant the drifting
flakes and lashing sleet obliterated Forrester's own tracks almost as
soon as he made them. To seek any person who had passed that way,
even a few minutes before, was as bootless an undertaking as
attempting to trace a ship across the Atlantic by her wake. "No go," he
admitted, after wrestling with the gale for ten yards or so; "better get in
and thaw out."
"Find anything?" demanded young Carpenter as the Professor relieved
himself of cap and ulster and held his hands to the hall fire, flexing and
stretching his fingers to restore circulation.
"Umpf," responded the Professor, bending closer to the blaze and
disdaining a glance at his questioner.
"Nut!" muttered Carpenter to the young woman beside him. "Darndest
nut I ever saw, racing around in this storm looking for
God-knows-what. Reckon the old fool expects to find out why Milsted
shot himself?"

If the Professor heard Mr. Carpenter's uncomplimentary remarks he
gave no sign of resentment. Turning from the fire as soon as the
younger man had withdrawn, he hurried to the library, and with only
the corpse of his late host for company, fell to comparing the bits of
earth he had salvaged from the steel cabinet, the window sill and the
library walls and baseboard.
"HELLO, Professor Forrester; what are you doing here?" queried a
sharp-featured young man as he entered the library and put a
portmanteau down on the table. "Lookin' for traces of the
Pyramid-builders?"
Forrester regarded the newcomer sharply through the lenses of his neat,
rimless pince-nez. "I don't believe I--" he began, but the other
interrupted with a laugh.
"Of course, you don't," he agreed. "I didn't expect you would. I'm
Nesbit--Lambert Nesbit, B. S., in '20, and M. D., in '24. Never had any
of your classes, but used to see you on the campus and on the platform
at commencements."
"Oh!" the Professor responded. "And you're--"
"Yep, I'm the coroner. Practice wasn't goin' any too good when I got
out, for I just missed the flu epidemic and folks wouldn't get sick to
accommodate me, so I busted into politics and got myself elected to
this job. They tell me outside you've been keepin' the nest warm for
me."
"I've made a few--er--observations," Forrester admitted. "Have you
questioned anybody?"
"I'll say I