Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/111

 had written in his book as to the sigil of Scoteia. And he could not find he had written anything very definite. The broken disk was spoken of as a talisman in the vague terms best suited to a discussion of talismans by a person who knew nothing much about them. True, the book told what the talisman looked like; it looked like that bit of metal he had picked up in the garden He wondered if he had thrown away that bit of metal; and, searching, discovered it in the desk drawer, where it had lain for several months.

Laid by the lamp, it shone agreeably as Kennaston puckered his protruding heavy brows over the characters with which it was inscribed. That was what the sigil looked like—or, rather, what half the sigil looked like, because Ettarre still had the other half. How could the personage have known anything about it? unless there were, indeed, really some secret and some password through which men won to place and the world's prizes? Blurred memories of Eugène Sue's nefarious Jesuits and of Balzac's redoubtable Thirteen arose in the background of his mental picturings