at Sidney, had arranged.

"What a beastly thing to do!" interrupted Random, disgusted. "It is not
as if she wanted to help Braddock. I think less of Mrs. Jasher than ever
I did. She might have remembered that there is honor amongst thieves."

"Well, she is dead, poor soul!" said Hope with a sigh. "God knows that
if she sinned, she has paid cruelly for her sin," after which remark, as
Sir Frank was silent, he resumed his reading.

Braddock was furious when he learned of his assistant's projected
trickery, and he determined to circumvent him. He agreed to marry Mrs.
Jasher, as, if he had not done so, she could have warned Sidney and he
could have escaped with both the mummy and the jewels by conniving with
Hervey. The Professor could not risk that, as, remembering Hervey
as Gustav Vasa, he was aware how clever and reckless he was. Whether
Braddock ever intended to marry the widow in the end it is hard to
say, but he certainly pretended to consent to the engagement, which was
mainly brought about by Lucy. Then came the details of the murder so far
as Mrs. Jasher knew.

One evening--in fact on the evening when the crime was committed--the
woman was walking in her garden late. In the moonlight she saw Braddock
and Cockatoo go down along the cinderpath to the jetty near the Fort.
Wondering what they were doing, she waited up, and heard and saw
them--for it was still moonlight--come back long after midnight. The
next day she heard of the murder, and guessed that the Professor and his
slave--for Cockatoo was little else--had rowed up to Pierside in a boat
and there had strangled Sidney and stolen the mummy. She saw Braddock
and accused him. The Professor had then opened the case, and had
pretended astonishment when discovering the corpse of the man whom
Cockatoo had strangled, as he knew perfectly well.

Braddock at first denied having been to Pierside, but Mrs. Jasher
insisted that she would tell the police, so he was forced to make a
clean breast of it to the woman.

"Now for it," said Random, settling himself to hear details of the
crime, for he had often wondered how it had been executed.

"Braddock," read Archie from the confession, for Mrs. Jasher did not
trouble herself with a polite prefix--"Braddock explained that when he
received a letter from Sidney stating that he would have to remain
with the mummy for a night in Pierside, he guessed that his treacherous
assistant intended to effect the robbery. It seems tha