We had scarcely opened the laboratory door when the ringing of the telephone told us that some one had been trying to get in touch for some time.
"It was Norton," said Kennedy, hanging up the receiver. "I imagine he wants to know what happened after we left him and went up to see Whitney."
That was, in fact, just what Norton wanted, as well as to make clear to us how he felt on the subject.
"Really, Kennedy," he remarked, "it must be fine to feel that your chair in the University is endowed rather than subsidized. You saw how Whitney acted, you say. Why, he makes me feel as if I were his hired man, instead of head of the University's expedition. I'm glad it's over. Still, if you could find that dagger and have it returned it might look better for me. You have no clue, I suppose?"
"I'm getting closer to one," replied Craig confidently, though on what he could base any optimism I could not see.
The same idea seemed to be in Norton's mind. "You think you will have something tangible soon?" he asked eagerly.
"I've had more slender threads than these to work on," reassured Kennedy. "Besides, I'm getting very little help from any of you. You yourself, Norton, at the start left me a good deal in the dark over the history of the dagger."
"I couldn't do otherwise," he defended. "You understand now, I guess, how I have always been tied, hand and foot, by the Whitney influence. You'll find that I can be of more service, now."
"Just how did you get possession of the dagger?" asked Kennedy, and there flashed over me the recollection of the story told by the Senora, as well as the letter which we had purloined.
"Just picked it up from an Indian who had an abnormal dislike to work. They said he was crazy, and I guess perhaps he was. At any rate, he later drowned himself in the lake, I have heard."