"Think, Dick! Something is wrong somewhere. You know that two people did not discover X at the same time. The answer is that somebody stole your idea, but the idea is worthless without the X. You say that the stuff is extremely rare—where did they get it?"
"That's right, Mart. I never thought of that. The stuff is extremely rare. I am supposed to know something about rare metals, and I never heard of it before—there isn't even a gap in the Periodic System in which it belongs. I would bet a hat that we have every milligram known to the world at present."
"Well, then," said the practical Crane. "We had better see whether or not we have all we started with."
Asking Shiro to bring the large bottle from the vault, he opened the living-room safe and brought forth the small vial. The large bottle was still nearly full, the seal upon it unbroken. The vial was apparently exactly as Seaton had left it after he had made his bars.
"Our stuff seems to be all there," said Crane. "It looks as though someone else has discovered it also."
"I don't believe it," said Seaton, their positions now reversed. "It's altogether too rare."
He scanned both bottles narrowly.
"I can tell by taking the densities," he added, and ran up to the laboratory, returning with a Westphal balance in his hand. After testing both solutions he said slowly:
"Well, the mystery is solved. The large bottle has a specific gravity of 1.80, as it had when I prepared it; that in the vial reads only 1.41. Somebody has burglarized this safe and taken almost half of the solution, filling the vial up with colored water. The stuff is so strong that I probably never would have noticed the difference."
"But who could it have been?"