“H’m,” grunted the old man, after a swift glance at it. “A copy, evidently. The Hebrew words are too clumsily written. No scholar wrote them. Probably it’s a translation from German or Danish—I think you said that the man who called himself Blanc, was really a Dane—eh?”
“Yes. He told Diamond that he came from Copenhagen,” Farquhar replied.
But the old man was too deeply engrossed in the study of the neat manuscript. How he wished that the context had been preserved, for here, he recognised, was the key, or rather the commencement of the key to the whole secret. He was now anxious to get rid of Frank Farquhar, and be allowed to pursue his investigations alone. There was certainly much more in it than he had at first suspected.
With such a sensation as that contained in the half-burnt documents to launch upon the world, he would be acclaimed the most prominent scholar of the day. The whole of academic Europe would shower honours upon him.
“What does it mean about the ‘wāw’ sign?” inquired the young man. “Does that convey anything?”
“Nothing,” laughed the Professor with affected indifference. “What can one make out of such silly nonsense? It says, apparently, that in Ezekiel the ‘wāw’ sign appears with great regularity. Well, so it does in all Hebrew texts. The letter ‘a’ appears often in English doesn’t it? Well, so does the Hebrew ‘w’ or ‘v’. Therefore it’s all bunkum—that was my first impression—and I still retain it!”
Gwen looked genuinely disappointed. She had hoped that this wonderful manuscript which had fallen into her lover’s hands would turn out, as he had declared it would, to be of utmost value, both to history and also of financial value to its possessors.
But her father, recognised as one of the first authorities of the day, had decisively condemned it as a clumsy fraud.
“The reference given in the manuscript is, I see, Ezekiel xli. 23,” remarked the girl, and turning over the pages of the Bible which she still held in her hand she exclaimed: