“But he does not possess the information which we possess. Professor Holmboe’s secret is now ours—and ours alone!” he declared triumphantly.
“Could we not get Mr Mullet to assist us, dad?” suggested the girl puzzled to distraction as to how she should act. She was divided between her love and her duty.
“No. He will only help us in his own way,” responded Doctor Diamond.
The girl walked back to the long window which led out upon the balcony—the window which Jim Jannaway had been prepared to use as an emergency exit—and stood with her hands clasped behind her back, while the two men further discussed what they believed to be a most satisfactory situation.
The land on both sides of the mount must be purchased in secret, they agreed, and not a word must leak out regarding the discovery until actual operations had commenced. Then the Professor was to launch his startling statement upon the world in the form of an article in the Contemporary. After the purchase of the land, the Professor, the Doctor, and an engineer were to go out to Jerusalem and make secret investigation. The surveyor, whom Griffin proposed to send out with Farquhar to make secret survey upon the measurements contained in the cipher, was a young man in business at Richmond, a friend of his, to whom he proposed to give a small interest in the syndicate.
“We are agreed, I suppose, Doctor, that at all hazards the most sacred relics and the archives of the Kingdom of Israel which are no doubt preserved there, shall be restored to the Jews?” Griffin said.
“Most certainly,” was Diamond’s reply. “This man Challas intends, it seems, to revenge himself upon the Jews by desecrating the treasure.”
“But, dad!” cried the girl, “surely he would never be allowed to desecrate sacred relics!”
“If he discovered them upon land he had purchased he might very easily destroy them before he could be prevented,” her father pointed out. “There lies the great danger. Fortunately, however, he will be unable to do that. Farquhar must go out to Jerusalem at the earliest possible moment. And I’ll get young Pettit, the surveyor, up from Richmond this afternoon.”
Gwen’s face was blanched, she stood rooted there, still staring down into the street, inexpressibly gloomy that winter’s morning. Lights were in the rooms of some of the houses opposite, while outside Notting Hill Gate Station, at the end of the road, the big electric globes were shedding their brilliance, as they did each night.