“It’s certainly fortunate that you did not explain to Miss Gwen the actual mode of deciphering the record,” the Doctor was remarking, “for Sir Felix and Haupt, at any rate, cannot gain the knowledge we have gained.”
“Sir Felix—who—dad?” inquired the girl, turning quickly.
“Sir Felix Challas, my dear,” was the Professor’s reply. “The Doctor has discovered that it is he who is our enemy. He poses as a great philanthropist as you well know. His portrait is in this week’s Tatler—over yonder.”
The girl crossed quickly, took up the paper, and searched the pages eagerly. Then when her gaze fell upon the picture, the journal nearly fell from her nerveless fingers.
She recognised the brutal, red-faced man who had been her inquisitor, and who would have struck her had not Mullet interfered, and stood her champion.
Beneath the portrait was a laudatory notice of the hypocrite’s noble contribution to the funds of charities of London.
“You see, Doctor,” her father went on, not noticing the girl’s blanched face and horror-struck eyes, “Erich Haupt will only be entirely misled by the statement I made to Gwen. By using the cipher in that manner, he will obtain a jumble of Hebrew letters which represent nothing. No. We need not fear Sir Felix and his anti-Semitic views in the least. We alone know the place of concealment of the sacred treasure of Israel.”
“I have already telegraphed to Farquhar at Horsford. He should be here before twelve.”
“And when he comes, we shall decide what to do,” remarked the Professor. “I think he should go out at once to Palestine. Only one of us must go to purchase the land, otherwise suspicion might be excited. And if so, then good-bye to all our chances.”
“Sir Felix, if he cannot obtain the secret, may endeavour to upset our plans out there,” remarked Gwen. “He is a man of wealth and power, dad.”