Kennedy evidently had some ideas and plans, for no sooner had he completed arrangements with Dr. Lith so that we could get into the museum that night to watch, than he excused himself.  Scarcely around the corner on the next business street he hurried into a telephone booth.

“I called up First Deputy O’Connor,” he explained as he left the booth a quarter of an hour later.  “You know it is the duty of two of O’Connor’s men to visit all the pawn-shops of the city at least once a week, looking over recent pledges and comparing them with descriptions of stolen articles.  I gave him a list from that catalogue of Dr. Lith’s and I think that if any of the emeralds, for instance, have been pawned his men will be on the alert and will find it out.”

We had a leisurely dinner at a near-by hotel, during most of which time Kennedy gazed vacantly at his food.  Only once did he mention the case, and that was almost as if he were thinking aloud.

“Nowadays,” he remarked, “criminals are exceptionally well informed.  They used to steal only money and jewels; to-day it is famous pictures and antiques also.  They know something about the value of antique bronze and marble.  In fact, the spread of a taste for art has taught the enterprising burglar that such things are worth money, and he, in turn, has educated up the receivers of stolen goods to pay a reasonable percentage of the value of his artistic plunder.  The success of the European art thief is enlightening the American thief.  That’s why I think we’ll find some of this stuff in the hands of the professional fences.”

It was still early in the evening when we returned to the museum and let ourselves in with the key that Dr. Lith had loaned Kennedy.  He had been anxious to join us in the watch, but Craig had diplomatically declined, a circumstance that puzzled me and set me thinking that perhaps he suspected the curator himself.

We posted ourselves in an angle where we could not possibly be seen even if the full force of the electrolier were switched on.  Hour after hour we waited.  But nothing happened.  There were strange and weird noises in plenty, not calculated to reassure one, but Craig was always ready with an explanation.

It was in the forenoon of the day after our long and unfruitful vigil in the art-gallery that Dr. Lith himself appeared at our apartment in a great state of perturbation.

“Miss White has disappeared,” he gasped, in answer to Craig’s hurried question.  “When I opened the museum, she was not there as she is usually.  Instead, I found this note.”

He laid the following hastily written message on the table: 

Do not try to follow me.  It is the green curse that has
pursued me from Paris.  I cannot escape it, but I may prevent
it from affecting others.

Lucillewhite.

That was all.  We looked at each other at a loss to understand the enigmatic wording—­“the green curse.”