to me, you know, I'm only asking from curiosity; and I don't expect you
to give a date. But is it a matter of days or weeks? I can see it isn't
one of months."

"I should think, Challoner," I said huskily, "it may be four or five
weeks--at the outside."

"Ha!" he said brightly, "that will suit me nicely. I've finished my job
and rounded up my affairs generally, so that I am ready whenever it
happens. But light your pipe and come and have a look at the museum."

Now, as I knew (or believed I knew) by heart every specimen in the
collection, this suggestion struck me as exceedingly odd; but reflecting
that his brain might well have suffered some disturbance from the
general engorgement, I followed him without remark. Slowly we passed
down the corridor that led to the "museum wing," walked through the
ill-smelling laboratories (for Challoner prepared the bones of the lower
animals himself, though, for obvious reasons, he acquired the human
skeletons from dealers) and entered the long room where the main
collection was kept.

Here we halted, and while Challoner recovered his breath, I looked round
on the familiar scene. The inevitable whale's skeleton--a small sperm
whale--hung from the ceiling, on massive iron supports. The side of the
room nearest the door was occupied by a long glass case filled with
skeletons of animals, all diseased, deformed or abnormal. On the
floor-space under the whale stood the skeletons of a camel and an
aurochs. The camel was affected with rickets and the aurochs had
multiple exostoses or bony tumors. At one end of the room was a large
case of skulls, all deformed or asymmetrical; at the other stood a long