“No,” snapped the widow. “If I had I should certainly have come to look. Also Professor Braddock, who is so anxious to recover it, would not have allowed it to remain here.”
“Then the case was not here when the Professor left you to-night?”
“No! He left me at eight o'clock to go home to dinner.”
“When did he arrive here?” questioned Hope quickly.
“At seven. I am sure of the time, for I was just sitting down to my supper. He was here an hour. But he said nothing, when he entered, of any mummy being in the arbor; nor when he left me at the door and I came to say good-bye to him—did either of us see this object. To be sure,” added Mrs. Jasher meditatively, “we did not look particularly in the direction of this arbor.”
“I scarcely see how any one entering or leaving the garden could fail to see it, especially as the snow reflects the moonlight so brightly.”
Mrs. Jasher shivered, and taking the skirt of her tea-gown, flung it over her carefully attired head,
“It is very cold,” she remarked irritably. “Don't you think we had better return to the house, and talk there?”
“What!” said Archie grimly, “and leave the mummy to be carried away as mysteriously as it has been brought. No, Mrs. Jasher. That mummy represents one thousand pounds of my money.”
“I understood that the Professor bought it himself.”
“So he did, but I supplied the purchase money. Therefore I do not intend that this should be lost sight of again. Lucy, my dear, you run home again and tell your father what we have found. He had better bring