"It is. And if you will look again, you will see that it was written by a Professor of Medicine in that University. And if you will look a third time you will see from a small inscription in ink that the copy was presented with the Professor's compliments to Mr. Simon Harlowe."
Hanaud, whilst he was speaking, went to the second of the two windows which looked upon the court and putting his head out, spoke for a little while in a low voice.
"We shall not need our sentry here any more," he said as he turned back into the room. "I have sent him upon an errand."
He went back to Jim Frobisher, who was turning over a page of the treatise here and there and was never a scrap the wiser.
"Well?" he asked.
"Strophanthus Hispidus," Jim read aloud the title of the treatise. "I can't make head or tail of it."
"Let me try!" said Hanaud, and he took the book out of Frobisher's hands. "I will show you all how I spent the half-hour whilst I was waiting for you this morning."
He sat down at the writing-table, placed the treatise on the blotting-pad in front of him and laid it open at a coloured plate.
"This is the fruit of the plant Strophanthus Hispidus, when it is ripening," he said.
The plate showed two long, tapering follicles joined together at their stems and then separating like a pair of compasses set at an acute angle. The backs of these follicles were rounded, dark in colour and speckled; the inner surfaces, however, were flat, and the curious feature of them was that, from longitudinal crevices, a number of silky white feathers protruded.