hleigh?" Quest enquired.

The Professor rose to his feet and brushed the dust from his knees.

"I shall be glad of a rest," he said simply. "You see what I am doing? I
am trying to reconstruct from memory--and a little imagination,
perhaps--the important part of my missing skeleton. It's a wonderful
problem which those bones might have solved, if I had been able to place
them fairly before the scientists of the world. Do you understand much
about the human frame, Mr. Quest?"

Quest shook his head promptly.

"Still life doesn't interest me," he declared. "Bones are bones, after
all, you know. I don't even care who my grandfather was, much less who my
grandfather a million times removed might have been. Let's step into the
study for a moment, Professor, if you don't mind," he went on. "Lenora
here is a little sensitive to smell, and a spray of lavender water on some
of your bones wouldn't do them any harm."

The Professor ambled amiably towards the door.

"I never notice it myself," he said. "Very likely that is because I see
beyond these withered fragments into the prehistoric worlds whence they
came. I sit here alone sometimes, and the curtain rolls up, and I find
myself back in one of those far corners of South America, or even in a
certain spot in East Africa, and I can almost fancy that time rolls back
like an unwinding reel and there are no secrets into which I may not look.
And then the moment passes and I remember that this dry-as-dust world is
shrieking always for proofs--this extraordinary conglomeration of human
animals in weird attire, with monstrous tastes and extraordinary habits,
who make up what they call the civilized world. Civilized!"

They reached the study and Quest produced his cigar case.

"Can't imagine any world that existed before tobacco," he remarked
cheerfully. "Help yourself, Professor. It does me good to see you human
enough to enjoy a cigar!"

The Professor smiled.

"I never remember to buy any for myself," he said, "but one of yours is
always a treat. Miss Lenora, I am glad to see, is completely recovered."

"I am quite well, thank you, Mr. Ashleigh," Lenora replied. "I am even
forgetting that I ever had nerves. I have been in the courthouse all the
morning, and I even looked curiously at your garage as we drove up."

"Very good--very good, my dear!" the Professor murmured. "At the
courthouse, eh? Were those charming friends of yours from Bethel being
tried, Quest?"

Quest n