He was hoping-without much confidence-for a little more from the afternoon’s topic, "Forensic Anthropology." At least he knew what it meant. Well, perhaps not precisely, but he could pronounce it, and that was an improvement. He settled back in his chair, his lunch of omelette aux champignons and coffee sitting well inside him, and studied the speaker, who was arranging a few index cards at the head table while the conference chairman droned on with his remarks. Joly glanced again at the program notes:

Dr. Gideon P. Oliver, Professor of Anthropology, University of Washington-Port Angeles. Dr. Oliver has an outstanding reputation in the fields of biological anthropology and human evolution, having authored the distinguished text A Structuro-Functional Approach to Pleistocene Hominid Phylogeny, now in its third edition. He is almost equally well known to the international police community as "The Skeleton Detective" for his remarkable achievements in the forensic analysis of human skeletal remains.

Well, he certainly didn’t look like Joly’s idea of a scientist- cum -skeleton detective. Gideon Oliver was no gaunt and dessicated elderly man steeped in the dank aura of the morgue-or more appropriately the shallow grave in the open field. (Professor Wuorinen of the blowflies would have done perfectly.) He was, surprisingly, a big, wide-shouldered man with a broken nose and an easy smile, who looked more like a good-natured prizefighter than a professor. Joly had noticed him during the milling-about of the registration period, talking familiarly with the equally large Hawaiian FBI man-who didn’t look much like the inspector’s idea of an FBI special agent, for that matter. Ah, well, the world was changing.