At eleven on the ensuing morning, a persistent knocking and a subsequent opening of the door of Bolton’s bedroom proved that he was not in the room, although the tumbled condition of the bed-clothes proved that he had taken some rest.  No one in the hotel thought anything of Bolton’s absence, since he had hinted at an early departure, although the chamber-maid considered it strange that no one had seen him leave the hotel.  The landlord obeyed Bolton’s instructions and sent the case, in charge of a trustworthy man, to Brefort across the river.  There a lorry was procured, and the case was taken to Gartley, where it arrived at three in the afternoon.  It was then that Professor Braddock, in opening the case, discovered the body of his ill-fated assistant, rigid in death, and with a red window cord tightly bound round the throat of the corpse.  At once, said the newspapers, the Professor sent for the police, and later insisted that the smartest Scotland Yard detectives should come down to elucidate the mystery.  At present both police and detectives were engaged in searching for a needle in a haystack, and so far had met with no success.

Such was the tale set forth in the local and London and provincial journals.  Widely as it was discussed, and many as were the theories offered, no one could fathom the mystery.  But all agreed that the failure of the police to find a clue was inexplicable.  It was difficult enough to understand how the assassin could have murdered Bolton and opened the packing case, and removed the mummy to replace it by the body of his victim in a house filled with at least half a dozen people; but it was yet more difficult to guess how the criminal had escaped with so noticeable an object as the mummy, bandaged with emerald-hued woollen stuff woven from the hair of Peruvian llamas.  If the culprit was one who thieved and murdered for gain, he could scarcely sell the mummy without being arrested, since all England was ringing with the news of its disappearance; if a scientist, impelled to robbery by an archaeological mania, he could not possibly keep possession of the mummy without someone learning that he possessed it.  Meanwhile the thief and his plunder had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed both.  Great was the wonder at the cleverness of the criminal, and many were the solutions offered to account for the disappearance.  One enterprising weekly paper, improving on the Limerick craze, offered a furnished house and three pounds a week for life to the fortunate person who could solve the mystery.  As yet no one had won the prize, but it was early days yet, and at least five thousand amateur detectives tried to work out the problem.