We climbed wearily up the thirty steps to the garden level. As I reached the surface the first object my eyes encountered was Betty, sitting on the red stone and poring over a sheet of paper.
"Hullo!" she called, looking up with all her accustomed vivacity. "Do you recognize this paper, Hugh?"
She fluttered it at him.
"Looks like my handwriting," he admitted.
"It's the copy of the Instructions you sent me, which I remailed to myself Poste Restante. I remembered it this morning when we were in Pera and called for it at the Post Office while you were packing the bags at the hotel. I thought we might need it."
"What good can it do?" asked Hugh heavily.
"There's an important point in it, which nobody has appreciated up to this time. It becomes doubly important in view of what we have just seen."
"The elided portion!" exclaimed Nikka.
"Exactly! Look!"
And she spread the paper before us. Hugh had faithfully copied his uncle's translation of the old Latin, setting down also the several lines of dots by which Lord Chesby had indicated the words which had been smudged out by moisture and handling at some past time. They appeared, you will recall, at the conclusion of the explicit directions: