"Potbelly tells me, Mr. Hammer, that you have come from Mr. Solomon. If that was true, why did you not speak of it this morning?"
"Eh?" he stammered, utterly bewildered. "Mr. Solomon? You mean John Solomon?"
"Who else would I mean?"
"Why—Miss Helmuth, I—you can search me! I haven't come from John Solomon, not that I know of. What's got into that fellow of yours, anyway? Now please don't look like that"—for she had suddenly stiffened in her chair, her eyes cold—"but I can't make head or tale of this thing, professor. That's straight!
"I didn't tell Potbelly that I wanted to see you, and I didn't send him to you with that message. I wanted him to ask you if you could read the seal engraving on this ring, for it looks like Arabic. He jumped off on his own hook and told me to come along."
There was unbelief in the brown eyes that gazed searchingly into his, but the American's whole attitude betrayed the sincerity behind his words. Slowly the girl relaxed in her chair, and held out her hand.
"Let me see the ring."
He gave it to her in silence. She bent over it a moment, then rose with lithe grace and took an enlarging glass from an open suitcase near by.
She stood by the light of the open flap, scrutinising it closely, while Hammer's eyes wandered over her slender figure and jerked back quickly to her face, almost guiltily: for Cyrus Hammer was like most highly-strung, clean, hard-living men in that he idealized women in general, and his own women friends in particular.
That, indeed, had contributed largely to his utter demoralization after the disillusion that had come upon him three years before.