The Gold of the Gods

“There’s something weird and mysterious about the robbery, Kennedy. They took the very thing I treasure most of all, an ancient Peruvian dagger.” Professor Allan Norton was very much excited as he dropped into Craig’s laboratory early that forenoon. Norton, I may say, was one of the younger members of the faculty, like Craig. Already, however, he had made for himself a place as one of the foremost of South American explorers and archaeologists. “How they got into the South American section of the museum, though, I don’t understand,” he hurried on. “But, once in, that they should take the most valuable relic I brought back with me on this last expedition, I think certainly shows it was a robbery with a deep-laid, premeditated purpose.” “Nothing else is gone?” Craig asked. “Nothing,” the professor replied. “That’s the strangest part of it...to me. It was a peculiar dagger, too,” he continued reminiscently. “I say that it was valuable, for on the blade were engraved some curious Inca characters. I wasn’t able to take the time to decipher them, down there, for the age of the metal made them almost illegible. But now that I have all my stuff unpacked and arranged after my trip, I was just about to try...when along comes a thief and robs me. We can’t have the University Museum broken into that way, you know, Kennedy.” “I should say not,” Craig readily assented. “I’d like to look the place over.” “Just what I wanted,” Norton exclaimed, heartily delighted, and leading the way.