194
THE SURAKARTA
leave—even with the excuse that he was afraid of another robber—would have been calling too much attention to himself perhaps. Yet what was the sandalwood doing in his room?
Max had approached the perplexing matter of the disappearance of the Surakarta exactly as he would have approached some phenomenon of nature which science had not yet classified and placed. He had begun by imagining a method by which the theft of the emerald might have been accomplished—exactly as, confronted by some biological problem, he would have constructed a theory to aid him in discovering and appreciating the facts. But he understood that this method can only be used when one stands ready to abandon his theory as soon as even
