"Well--I hardly know," he answered hesitatingly. "Where's the girl?"

"In Charlie's rooms. I've had a devil of a scene with her. She's obdurate."

"A day's confinement there will break her spirit, no doubt," remarked Sir Felix. "Especially if she believes she'll lose her lover."

"I don't know," he answered dubiously. "She's got a mind of her own, I can tell you. She's a regular little spit-fire."

The red-faced man laughed.

"Well, Jim," he said. "You ought to know how to manage women, surely.

Did my scheme work well?"

"Excellently. She got your `wire,' and went to Earl's Court at once. I followed and after a little persuasion she fell into the trap. While she was unconscious, I took the latch-key, and at half-past two let myself and old Erich into the house in Pembridge Gardens."

"Well--did he find anything?"

"Yes. Griffin has taken photographic copies of the burnt papers, before giving them back into Farquhar's hands, and from his copies of various early ma.n.u.scripts of Ezekiel and Deuteronomy it's quite plain that he is making a very careful and complete study."

"It seems, then, that Griffin's intention, is to discover the cipher for himself, and leave the ugly little Doctor out in the cold," Sir Felix remarked with a snap. "But, Jim, this business is ours and n.o.body else's. We must crush anybody and everybody, who attempts in any way to decipher that secret record. When the Dane brought it to me at the Ritz, in Paris, I laughed at the idea. Treasure-hunting was never in my line. But," he added with a smile, "I took care to have a complete copy of his precious doc.u.ment made before I gave it back to him the next morning, and it is now in the safe over yonder. Like to see it?"

Jim Jannaway, the man who had on the previous night represented himself to be "Captain Wetherton," the friend of Frank Farquhar, expressed eagerness to see it. Therefore the financier rose, and with the gold master-key upon his watch-chain, opened the heavy steel door, and handed his visitor a typed doc.u.ment bound in a dark green cover--a complete copy of the ma.n.u.script which Doctor Diamond had partly burned in that obscure hotel at the Gare du Nord.

The context of the half intelligible sentences was there--the context which Professor Griffin was longing to obtain. And moreover, as the man turned over the pages, reading swiftly, he came across a geometrical figure--a plan marked with numbers and corresponding explanations.

"Who made the discovery?" asked Jim Jannaway, late of His Majesty's Army and now gambler, card-sharper, and swell-mobsman.

"The devil only knows," laughed Sir Felix. "He says he did himself.

The fellow was hard up and I gave him a hundred francs, but I believed the whole thing to be a huge hoax, until I consulted old Erich and he began to puzzle his brains. Then I saw that there might be something in it. My only fear is that Griffin and his friends may get ahead of us.

But you've done well, Jim. You always do."

"I do the dirty work of the firm," laughed the man addressed, removing his cigar from his lips, "and devilish dirty work it is at times."

"Well, you can't complain of the pay. Isn't it better to live as you are, a gentleman of means, than as I found you five years ago, a `crook'

who might be arrested at any moment?"

"I don't complain at all, my dear fellow. Only--"

"Only what?"

"Well, I really don't see your object in enticing the girl to Charlie's rooms. It might be awkward for us."

Sir Felix laughed, snapping his fingers.

"What? Are you growing afraid?" he asked.

"Not at all, only I can't see your object."

"The object is simply to compromise her," he said grimly. "She's a confounded pretty girl. I saw her at the theatre with her aunt a week ago, and she was at Lady Ena's wedding the other day, with her lover, Frank Farquhar. Of that man we must be wary. With his confounded newspapers, he has power," he added.

"That's the very reason why I fear we are treading on dangerous ground."

"Bosh! leave all to me. The girl is in Charlie's rooms, there let her stay for the present," answered the man whom the world believed to be a pillar of the church, and a devout philanthropist.

Jim Jannaway saw that this man whom he served--the man who held him in his toils--had some mysterious evil design upon the unfortunate girl.

He could not, however, discern exactly what it was. He had ordered him to keep her in that upstairs room, "and break her spirit," as he put it.

The midnight search of the Professor's study had revealed that he was in active pursuit of the truth. That meant Sir Felix taking steps to checkmate his efforts. Ever since the first moment it had been known by a chance visit to the hotel while Jules Blanc was lying there dead, that the fragments of the strange doc.u.ment had fallen into Doctor Diamond's hands, private inquiry agents, employed by Sir Felix, had been silently watching the movements of the deformed Doctor, Frank Farquhar, and his friend, the Professor. All had been reported to the red-faced man sitting there at his ease--the man who controlled financial interests worth millions.

Sir Felix had been convinced by the foreign expert he had consulted that there really was something in the theory of the unknown discovery, and he intended that none should learn the truth except himself. He had Jim Jannaway, the unscrupulous, at his elbow, ready to do any dirty work, or make any risky move which he ordered. In a day Jim could, if he wished, summon up half a dozen of the most dangerous characters in London, pals of his, to a.s.sist him, for be it said he always paid well--with Sir Felix's money, of course.

Against such a combination as Challas and Bowen, though Mr Thomas J.

Bowen lived in New York and was seldom in London, no private person could stand. The great firm, with their agents all over the world, gathered confidential information from everywhere, and could plot to crush any one who attempted to carry through a business that was against their interests.

Hence any attempt on the part of Doctor Diamond, or Professor Griffin, to solve the problem in face of the opposition of Sir Felix, was foredoomed to failure, if not to disaster. But alas! both men were in ignorance of the fact that a complete copy of the dead man's doc.u.ment was in the possession of the man whose hatred of the Jews, his enemies in business, was notorious; and who would therefore go to any length in order to secure, for his own satisfaction, the sacred relics and vessels of Solomon's Temple--providing they still existed.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

OWEN LEARNS THE TRUTH.

When the Professor seated himself at the breakfast-table and the news of Miss Gwen's absence was broken to him by Laura, the parlour-maid, he started up in surprise.

"Miss Gwen went out late last night instead of going to bed, sir, and took the latch-key," the girl was compelled to admit.

The old man pursed his thin lips. His daughter was not in the habit of going out on midnight escapades.

"Late last night Miss Gwen received a telegram, sir," the girl added.

"It seemed to excite her very much; she dressed at once, and went out."

The Professor rose from the table without eating, and went to the study to think.

Upon the blotting-pad lay a sheet of ruled ma.n.u.script paper. He stared at it in horror as though he saw an apparition, for there upon the paper, scrawled boldly in blue chalk, were the mystic figures:

255.19.7

They danced before his eyes, as he stood staring at them. How came they there, in his own study? What could they mean?

He looked around bewildered. Nothing was out of place--nothing disturbed. Those puzzling figures had been written there by some unseen hand.

During his wakeful hours that long night he had applied Hebrew letters of those numerical values to the array of figures. But the result was chaotic. It was some mystic sign. But what, he could not determine.

He had found them on that sc.r.a.p of paper cast aside at the Bodleian Library, and now again they appeared in the privacy of his own study, to puzzle and confound him.

Through the next hour he waited, from moment to moment, in the expectation of a telegram from Gwen explaining her absence and a.s.suring him of her safety. But, alas! none came. Therefore, he put on his boots and overcoat and went round to the police-station, where the inspector on duty received him most courteously, and took a minute description of the missing young lady, a statement which, half an hour later, had been received over the telegraph at every police-station throughout the Metropolitan area.

He had taken the precaution to place one of Gwen's photographs in his pocket, and this he handed to the inspector.

"Well do our very best, Professor, of course," the officer a.s.sured him.

"But young ladies are often very erratic, you know. We have hundreds of girls reported missing, but they usually turn up again the next day, or a couple of days later. Their absence is nearly always voluntary, and usually attributable to the one cause, love!"