The Mystery Megapack

and unrelieved darkness had prevented the other from finding the statuette which the Professor had come upon accidentally.
    “Hum,” Forrester remarked as he shut off his flashlight and rose, “this is interesting; mighty interesting. Would be worth while trying to find any tracks?”
    Two minutes’ attempt convinced him it would not. Sheltered from the full fury of the storm by the house, the snow where the monkey’s statue had been lost retained the ridges made by the questing fingers which missed what the Professor found; but three feet distant the drifting flakes and lashing sleet obliterated Forrester’s own tracks almost as soon as he made them. To seek any person who had passed that way, even a few minutes before, was as bootless an undertaking as attempting to trace a ship across the Atlantic by her wake. “No go,” he admitted, after wrestling with the gale for ten yards or so; “better get in and thaw out.”
    “Find anything?” demanded young Carpenter as the Professor relieved himself of cap and ulster and held his hands to the hall fire, flexing and stretching his fingers to restore circulation.
    “Umpf,” responded the Professor, bending closer to the blaze and disdaining a glance at his questioner.
    “Nut!” muttered Carpenter to the young woman beside him. “Darndest nut I ever saw, racing around in this storm looking for God-knows-what. Reckon the old fool expects to find out why Milsted shot himself?”
    If the Professor heard Mr. Carpenter’s uncomplimentary remarks he gave no sign of resentment. Turning from the fire as soon as the younger man had withdrawn, he hurried to the library, and with only the corpse of his late host for company, fell to comparing the bits of earth he had salvaged from the steel cabinet, the window sill and the library walls and baseboard.
    “Hello, Professor Forrester; what are you doing here?” queried a sharp-featured young man as he entered the library and put a portmanteau down on the table. “Lookin’ for traces of the Pyramid-builders?”
    Forrester regarded the newcomer sharply through the lenses of his neat, rimless pince-nez. “I don’t believe I—” he began, but the other interrupted with a laugh.
    “Of course, you don’t,” he agreed. “I didn’t expect you would. I’m Nesbit—Lambert Nesbit, B. S., in ’20, and M.D., in ’24. Never had any of your classes, but used to see you on the campus and on the platform at commencements.”
    “Oh!” the Professor responded. “And you’re—”
    “Yep, I’m the coroner. Practice wasn’t goin’ any too good when I got out, for I just missed the flu epidemic and folks wouldn’t get sick to accommodate me, so I busted into politics and got myself elected to this job. They tell me outside you’ve been keepin’ the nest warm for me.”
    “I’ve made a few—er—observations,” Forrester admitted. “Have you questioned anybody?”
    “I’ll say I have,” the coroner retorted with a twinkle in his eye. “Got two state troopers to ride herd on ’em, and put ’em through their paces in great shape. Gosh, they’re one scared crowd! Everybody agrees Milsted shot himself, but if I asked any one of ’em, ‘Why did you kill him?’ I’ll bet a dollar he’d break down and confess.
    “Well”—he turned to the body with a brisk, professional air—“I wonder why the old coot did kill himself?”
    With the deftness of long practice, covering the repugnance he felt for his task with a running fire of cynical comment, the young physician examined the remains, noted the position of the wound, the pistol in the dead hand and the posture of the body.
    “Plain as a pike-staff,” he announced, rising and dusting his trousers knees. “Never saw an opener case of suicide in my life, but, as Bobbie Burns would say,
    “‘One thing must still be greatly dark,
    The reason why he did it.’”
    “I shouldn’t be too cock-sure it’s suicide if I were you,” Professor Forrester replied.
    “Eh? The devil you say!” Dr. Nesbit shot him a quick glance. “Why not?”
    “Look at that wound again.”
    “Thanks; I’ve already had a fine, grandstand view of it. Right through the frontal bone, slick and clean as a whistle.”
    “But did you see any powder brand around it?” Forrester insisted. “Remember, in the nature of things, Milsted couldn’t have held that gun more than a foot from his head, and at that distance, even with smokeless powder, there would have been some burning