3. Dr. James Rustler, Columbia University.
4. Howard Fry, M.A., Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge.
5. Professor Potter, F.R.S., University of St. Andrews.
6. Professor Wilkinson, University of Harvard.
7. Jones Harvey, F.G.S., London, England.
‘In Heaven’s name,’ asked the earl, ‘what means this mystification? Miss McCabe, Melissa, do not trifle with me. Is this part of the great American Joke? You are playing it pretty low down on me, Melissa!’ he ended, the phrase being one of those with which she had made him familiar.
She laughed hysterically: ‘It’s honest Injun,’ she said, and in the briefest terms she told him (what he knew very well) the conditions on which her future depended.
‘They are a respectable crowd, I don’t deny it,’ she went on, ‘but, oh, how dull! That Mr. Jenkins, I saw him at your Commemoration. He gave us luncheon, and showed us dry old bones of beasts and savage notions at the Museum. I druther have been on the creek,’ by which name she intended the classical river Isis.
‘Dr. Hiram P. Dodge is one of our rising scientists, a boss of the Smithsonian Institute. Well, Washington is a finer location than Oxford! Dr. Rustler is a crank; he thinks he can find a tall talk mummy that speaks an unknown tongue.’
‘A Toltec mummy? Ah,’ said Bude, ‘I know where to find one of them.’