“The concussion of the ax! That must have done it! The violent sound-waves--the air in commotion!”
“But, Allan, it can't be! Surely there must be something left?”
“You see?”
He pointed at the shelves. She stood and peered, with him, at the sad havoc wrought there. Then she stretched out a tentative finger and stirred a little of the detritus.
“Catastrophe!” she cried.
“Yes and no. At any rate, it may have been inevitable.”
“Inevitable?”
He nodded.
“Even if this hadn't happened, Beatrice, I'm afraid we never could have moved any of these parchments, or read them, or handled them in any way. Perhaps if we'd had all kinds of proper appliances, glass plates, transparent adhesives, and so on, and a year or two at our disposal, we might have made something out of them, but even so, it's doubtful.
“Of course, in detective stories, Hawkshaw can take the ashes right out of the grate and piece them together and pour chemicals on them and decipher the mystery of the lost rubies, and all that. But this isn't a story, you see; and what's more, Hawkshaw doesn't have to work with ashes nearly a thousand years old. Ten centuries of dry-rot--that's some problem!”