“The writing is funny, too,” she went on, with charming disregard for the meaning of words.
“It is pricked in with a needle and Indian ink,” he explained. “That is an indelible method,” he continued hurriedly, seeing that she was striving to recall something that the phrase reminded her of, and here was a real danger of the suggestive word which had so nearly escaped his lips being brought to her recollection. “You see, I have been able to identify the gentleman who served the artist as model,” and he tapped the gourd lightly. “Therefore, I am sure that this comes from a land where pen and ink were unknown in the days when some unhappy Christian fashioned such a quaint contrivance to carry his screed.”
“Some unhappy Christian!” she repeated. “You mean that some European probably fell into the hands of West African savages years and years ago, and took this means of safeguarding a secret?”
“Who can tell?” he answered, picking up the calabash and gazing steadfastly at the malignant visage thus brought again into the full glare of the sun. “This fellow can almost speak. If only he could——”
“Oh, don’t,” wailed the girl. “My very heart stops beating when I see that dreadful face. Please put it away. If you will not throw it overboard, or smash it to atoms, at least hide it.”
“Sorry,” he said gruffly, fitting the loose lid into its place. He disliked hysterical women, and, greatly to his surprise, Evelyn Dane seemed to be rather disposed to yield to hysteria.
“The more I examine this thing the more I am bewildered,” he went on, endeavoring to cover his harshness by an assumption of indifference. “Where in the world did this varnish come from? It has all the gloss and smooth texture and absence of color that one finds on a genuine Cremona violin. The man who mixed it must have known the recipe lost when Antonio Stradivarius died. Are you good at dates?”
The suddenness of the question perplexed her.
“Do you mean the sort of dates that one acquired painfully at school?” she asked. “If so, I can give you the year of the Battle of Hastings or the signing of Magna Charta.”
“The period of a great artist’s career is infinitely more important,” he broke in. “Stradivarius was at the height of his fame about 1700. Now, if this is the varnish he and Amati and Guarnerius used, we have a shadowy clue to guide us in our inquiry.”