Returning to his apartment in New York, he found Rhyne there.
"Well," cried the latter, as soon as he appeared, "did you solve the mystery?"
"No," replied Burke. "I did not."
Rhyne's eyes opened. "Well—what did you find?"
"Over the attic room," said Burke musingly," "we found a small, cryptlike space between the ceiling of the attic room and the roof of the house. It was encased in plaster. As we broke through the ceiling, a mass of human bones came tumbling down. The coroner pronounced them the skeletons of a woman and a girl. Both had been dead for generations.
"Through the shoulder blade of the girl's skeleton was a jagged hole. When the bones fell, the elder woman's skull rolled to my feet. I picked it up. Something rattled inside and I worked it out through the eye socket. It was a slug of lead.
"Both the woman and the girl had been murdered."
Queer Tribe of Savages
Found in Africa
One of the strangest tribes in Africa is that of the El Molo. Ruled by a blind chief, they live on an island near the east shore of Lake Rudolf in East Africa, their shelter being crude huts fashioned from palm leaves. They live entirely on fish, which they spear and eat raw, and they drink nothing except the water in the lake, which the white man considers unfit to drink. It is said they cannot live for more than an hour without water, their lips swelling and bleeding if they try to go longer. They use a language of their own, different from that of the other African tribes.
African Brides Must
Be Plump
The wild tribes of Africa consider no girl beautiful unless she is abnormally fat. Hence their young girls are fed on milk and fattening foods, and are not permitted to exercise. This forced fattening is not only a necessary preparation for marriage—it is also good business for a girl's parents. When a girl marries, the bridegroom pays her parents for her, and the amount he pays is based on the degree of plumpness of the bride whom they have fattened for him.
