The chief held a short conversation with Carter and then went over to the desk. He came to a sudden halt by the body, and I saw the look of dismay which swept over his face. Even the doctor seemed shocked, but went about his examination at once. When he had finished, he rose to answer the eager questions of the chief. He informed us the man had been dead several hours, and that he had been stabbed. The blow had evidently reached the heart, and the scientist must have died at once. The faint cross on the forehead he could not explain, but he agreed that it had been made after death. “But,” came the heavy voice of the chief, “why should any one wish to kill Warren? There are very few people in the town that know him. Though this is his birthplace, he has been away so long that he has hardly any friends here. He never cared to bother much with people.” He paused to throw a curious look around the room. “If he was stabbed, where is the weapon?” We assured him that we had seen no signs of a weapon, though we had looked the building over. Carter said he agreed with the chief regarding Warren's acquaintance in the town. There was no doubt he was their most distinguished citizen, but he had been away so many years that few knew him. But why he had been murdered, or by whom, there was not the slightest kind of a clew. The police chief listened, his face growing very long as Carter went on. Like most police chiefs in small places, his work was the usual small town routine. Confronted with a murder, and one as mysterious as now before him, he did not know what to do. And as he gave a glance at the body on the floor, I knew that he was much perplexed. As Carter and the chief started a low conversation, Ranville and I went to the desk. No one had looked at the papers on its surface, and as we started to glance through them, we found just about what we had expected. The greater part of them were notes, and as I read a sentence or two, I could see that they dealt with Warren's two years' stay in the heart of China. Many of them had crude drawings of bones and fossils. But the handwriting was rather bad, and I did not bother to read more than a few lines. There were a number of books upon the desk, but they were mostly scientific works of reference. One red-covered volume turned out to be a popular mystery story, and beside it stood one of the adventure story magazines. A number of typewritten sheets, evidently corrected work of his secretary were near the edge of the desk, the pages filled with corrections in red ink. But there was nothing of importance, only the natural data of a scientist who was writing an account of his last expedition.