gone from the cabinet, its place being supplied by a placard,
larger, in a different handwriting, and startlingly more specific:

"DANGER! IF FOUND DESTROY AT ONCE.
Do Not Touch With Bare Hands."

There was nothing else. Gingerly, Average Jones detached the sign.
The cabinet proved to be empty. He pushed a rock into it, lifted it
on the end of a stick and dropped it overboard. One after another
eight little fishes glinted up through the water, turned their white
bellies to the sunlight and bobbed, motionless. The investigator
hastily threw away the label and cast his gloves after it. But on
his return to the city he was able to give a reproduction of the
writing to Professor Gehren which convinced that anxious scholar
that Harvey Craig had been alive and able to write not long before
the time when the houseboat was set adrift.





CHAPTER V

THE MERCY SIGN--TWO


Some days after the recovery of the houseboat, Average Jones sat at
breakfast, according to his custom, in the cafe of the Hotel
Palatia. Several matters were troubling his normally serene mind.
First of these was the loss of the trail which should have led to