Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/142

134 evidently of great age. It contained what looked like a number of shrivelled beans.

Having glanced at it curiously I returned it to him, shaking my head blankly.

“You are puzzled?” he said, with a kind of boyish triumph, which lighted up his face, which rejuvenated him and gave me a glimpse of another man. “These, sir,” he touched the shrivelled objects with a long, delicate forefinger “are seeds of the sacred lotus of Ancient Egypt. They were found in the tomb of a priest.”

“And in what way do they bear upon the enquiry to which you referred, Mr. Camber?”

“In this way,” he replied, drawing toward him a piece of newspaper upon which rested a mound of coarse shag. “I maintain that the vital principle survives within them. Now, I propose to cultivate these seeds, Mr. Knox. Do you grasp the significance, of this experiment?”

He knocked out the corn-cob upon the heel of his slipper and began to refill the hot bowl with shag from the newspaper at his elbow.

“From a physical point of view, yes,” I replied, slowly. “But I should not have supposed such an experiment to come within the scope of your own particular activities, Mr. Camber.”

“Ah,” he returned, triumphantly, at the same time stuffing tobacco into the bowl of the corn-cob, “it is for this very reason that chapter forty-two of my book must prove to be the hub of the whole, and the whole, Mr. Knox, I am egotist enough to believe, shall establish a new focus for thought, an intellectual Rome bestriding and uniting the Seven Hills of Unbelief.”

He lighted his pipe and stared at me complacently.

Whilst I had greatly revised my first estimate of