All was silence save the Professor’s dry monotonous voice as he counted aloud the letters of the Hebrew text, recounted them to reassure himself, and then set down a Hebrew character as result.
Thus from after luncheon until midnight—through the time indeed that Diamond was so patiently watching the big house in Berkeley Square—the work of solving the problem went slowly on.
Gwen sat and watched her father’s Hebrew manuscript grow apace, until it covered many quarto pages. Now and then she assisted in counting the letters, verifying her father’s addition.
Then at last, just after the old-fashioned clock upon the mantelshelf had chimed twelve, the old scholar raised his grey head with a sigh, and wiping his glasses, as was his habit, said:
“Sit down, dear, and write the English translation at my dictation. I think we now have it quite complete.”
Chapter Thirty One.
Exposes the Conspiracy.
While Professor Griffin had been so busily engaged deciphering the concluding portion of the secret record, a strange scene was in progress at Sir Felix Challas’s, in Berkeley Square.