a try with it, a day or so ago. Jim spoke to me from Fifth Avenue."

"We've got it tuned to a shade now," Quest declared. "Equipped with this
simple little device, you can speak to me from anywhere up to ten or a
dozen miles. What are you working on this morning, Laura?"

"Same old stunt," the girl replied. "I have been reading up the records of
the savants of New York. From what I can make out about them, it doesn't
seem to me that there's one amongst the whole bunch likely to have pluck
enough to tamper with the Professor's skeleton."

Quest frowned a little gloomily. He rose to his feet and moved restlessly
about the room.

"Say, girls," he confessed, "this is the first time in my life I have been
in a fix like this. Two cases on hand and nothing doing with either of
them. Criminologist, indeed! I guess I'd better go over to England and
take a job at Scotland Yard. That's about what I'm fit for. Whose box is
this?"

Quest had paused suddenly in front of an oak sideboard which stood against
the wall. Occupying a position upon it of some prominence was a small
black box, whose presence there seemed to him unfamiliar. Laura came over
to his side and looked at it also in puzzled fashion.

"Never saw it before in my life," she answered. "Say, kid, is this yours?"
she added, turning to Lenora.

Lenora shook her head. She, too, examined it a little wonderingly.