Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/32

 my mind that Hugh Tankerville had suffered from nerve tension and that his reason had given way under the strain.

"You don't see what this is?" he asked in reproachful amazement.

I looked again while he turned the strong light of the reading-lamp on the case, and then I realised that I had before me a piece of parchment rendered brown with age, made up of an infinity of fragments, some too minute even to see with the naked eye, and covered with those strange Egyptian hieroglyphics with which dear old Mr. Tankerville had originally rendered me familiar. Inquiringly I looked up at Hugh. "When my father first found this parchment," he said, while strong excitement seemed to choke the words as they rose in his throat, "it was little else than a handful of dust, with a few larger pieces among it, interesting enough to encourage his desire to know its contents and to whet his enthusiasm. At first, for he was then but a young man, though already considered a distinguished Egyptologist, he amused himself by placing the larger fragments together, just as a child would be amused by piecing a Chinese puzzle; but gradually the secrets that these fragments revealed were so wonderful, and yet so incomplete, that restlessly, by day and by night, with the help of the strongest magnifying glasses money could procure, he continued the task of evolving from that handful of dust a page of history which for thousands of years has remained an impenetrable mystery."

He paused a moment as his hand, which was trembling with inward fever, wandered lovingly over the glass that covered the precious parchment.

"Illness and death overtook him in the midst of a task but half accomplished, but before he died he