verting his eyes. "I
guess I'm a bad lot all through. But a friend of mine wanted the corpse,
and offered me a heap of dollars to see the business through."

"Do you mean to say that some one asked you to steal it?"

"No," put in Braddock unexpectedly, "for I was the friend."

"You!" Don Pedro swung round in great astonishment, but the Professor
faced him with all the consciousness of innocence.

"Yes," he remarked quietly, "as I told you, I was in Peru thirty years
ago. I was then hunting for specimens of Inca mummies. Vasa--this man
now called Hervey--told me that he could obtain a splendid specimen of
a mummy, and I arranged to give him one hundred pounds to procure what
I wanted. But I swear to you, De Gayangos," continued the little man
earnestly, "that I did not know he proposed to steal the mummy from
you."

"You knew it was the green mummy?" asked Don Pedro sharply.

"No, I only knew that it was a mummy."

"Did Vasa get it for you?"

"I guess not," said the gentleman who confessed to that name. "The
Professor went to Cuzco and got into trouble--"

"I was carried off to the mountains by some Indians," interpolated the
Professor, "and only escaped after a year's captivity. I did not mind
that, as it gave me the opportunity of studying a decaying civilization.
But when I returned a free man to Lima, I found that Vasa had left the
country with the mummy."

"That's so," assented Hervey, waving his hand. "I got a berth as second
mate on a wind-jammer sailing to Europe, and as the country wasn't
healthy for me since I'd looted the green mummy, I took it abroad and
yanked it to Paris, where I sold it for a couple of hundred pounds. With
that, I changed my name and had a high old time. I never heard of the
blamed thing again until the Professor here turned up with Mr. Bolton
at Pierside, asking me to bring it in The Diver from Malta. It was what
you'd call a coincidence, I reckon," added Hervey lazily; "but I did cry
small when I heard the Professor here had paid nine hundred for a thing
I'd let slip for two hundred. Had I known of those infernal emeralds,
I'd have ripped open the case on board and would have recouped myself.
But I knew nothing, and Bolton never told me."

"How could he," asked Braddock quietly, "when he did not know that any
jewels were buried with the dead? I did not know either. And I have
explained why I wanted the mummy. But it never struck me until I hear
what you say now, that this mu