“And—oh, yes—there was another—a man, a little man, as I recall, with shaggy hair. He looked like a Russian to me. I remember, because he came to the door, peered around hastily, and went away. I thought he might have got into the wrong part of the building and went to direct him right—but before I could get out into the hall, he was gone. I remember, too, that, as I turned, the woman had followed me and soon was asking other questions—which, I will admit—I was glad to answer.”
“Was Northrop in his room while these people were here?”
“Yes; he had locked the door so that none of the students or visitors could disturb him.”
“Evidently the woman was diverting your attention while the man entered Northrop’s room by the window,” ruminated Craig, as we stood for a moment in the outside doorway.
He had already telephoned to our old friend Doctor Leslie, the coroner, to take charge of the case, and now was ready to leave. The news had spread, and the janitor of the building was waiting to lock the campus door to keep back the crowd of students and others.
Our next duty was the painful one of breaking the news to Mrs. Northrop. I shall pass it over. Perhaps no one could have done it more gently than Kennedy. She did not cry. She was simply dazed. Fortunately her mother was with her, had been, in fact, ever since Northrop had gone on the expedition.
“Why should anyone want to steal tablets of old Mixtec inscriptions?” I asked thoughtfully, as we walked sadly over the campus in the direction of the chemistry building. “Have they a sufficient value, even on appreciative Fifth Avenue, to warrant murder?”
“Well,” he remarked, “it does seem incomprehensible. Yet people do just such things. The psychologists tell us that there is a veritable mania for possessing such curios. However, it is possible that there may be some deeper significance in this case,” he added, his face puckered in thought.
Who was the mysterious Mexican woman, who the shaggy Russian? I asked myself. Clearly, at least, if she existed at all, she was one of the millions not of Spanish but of Indian descent in the country south of us. As I reasoned it out, it seemed to me as if she must have been an accomplice. She could not have got into Northrop’s room either before or after Doctor Bernardo left. Then, too, the toe-and shoe-prints were not hers. But, I figured, she certainly had a part in the plot.
While I was engaged in the vain effort to unravel the tragic affair by pure reason, Kennedy was at work with practical science.