Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/44

 “No matter. I want that bag, Doctor, and I insist upon that book remaining unopened.”

“Too late!” replied Philpot, and before I could interfere he had opened the volume and was running over its pages.

I sprang forward and would have snatched it from him, but Maurice caught my arm and restrained me.

“Come, come, George! No quarrelling!” he said. “What’s done can’t be undone. Everything shall be carefully returned to the bag. Doctor, what do you make of the book?”

For the Doctor had stopped turning over the leaves and was staring at a page with a deeply puzzled expression.

“Upon my word I can’t make anything of it,” he replied, slowly. “It is a mystery, a veritable mystery. Look here.” He held up the book, open as it was, looking more serious than I had ever seen him look before.

Now there was nothing peculiar about the book so far as outward appearance was concerned. It was simply an ordinary blank book, leather bound, with limp covers,  closely written perhaps half through. It was the peculiarity of the writing which had puzzled the Doctor, and possibly  had I been better informed on such matters it might have  puzzled me.

“Well, what is odd about it?” I demanded, sulkily.

“Look and see,” repeated Philpot. “De Veber, you surely are able to comprehend.”

“I confess I don’t see what you are driving at!” answered Maurice. “Of course the language is as incomprehensible to me as it is to Wylde. Hindoo, I take it, Sanscrit or possibly Bengalee.”

“Neither one nor the other,” replied the Doctor. “No such characters as those were ever used in India.”

“What then?” I asked.

“There lies the mystery,” he answered slowly. “Those characters belong to no nation on earth.”

“Bosh! As though you were competent to decide that.”

I saw his eyes flash, and I knew that I had come near to rousing a temper which I fancy seldom showed itself.

“You are angry Wylde,” he said cooly. “It happens that I am competent to decide in this matter. I can read Sanscrit, Hindoostanee, Bengalee, Talenga, Siamese and  Persian. Beside that I was for ten years linguist of the British Bible Society and have assisted in the