section devoted to Egyptology. Kennedy paused. Standing there,
upright against the wall, was a mummy case. To me, even now, the
thing had a creepy look. Craig pushed aside the stone lid
irreverently and gazed keenly into the uncanny depths of the stone
sarcophagus. An instant later he was down on his hands and knees,
carefully examining the interior by means of a pocket lens.

"I think I have made a start," he remarked, rising to his feet and
facing us with an air of satisfaction.

We said nothing, and he pointed to some almost undiscernible marks
in a thin layer of dust that had collected in the sarcophagus.

"If I'm not mistaken," he went on, "your thief got into the Museum
during the daytime, and, when no one was looking, hid here. He
must have stayed until the place was locked up at night. Then he
could rob at his leisure, only taking care to confine his
operations to the time between the rather infrequent rounds of the
night watchman."

Kennedy bent down again. "Look," he indicated. "There are the
marks of shoes in the dust, shoes with nails in the heels, of
course. I shall have to compare the marks that I have found here
with those I have collected, following out the method of the
immortal Bertillon. Every make of shoes has its own peculiarities,
both in the number and the arrangement of the nails. Offhand,
however, I should say that these shoes were American-made--though
that, of course, does not necessarily mean that an American wore
them. I may even be able to determine which of a number of
individual pairs of shoes made the marks. I cannot tell that yet,