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.