As I walked there I recalled the quaint decipher of those ancient hieroglyphics.
Yes, the incident was the most weird and inexplicable that had ever happened to me. The whole problem indeed defied solution.
I had not attempted to open the cylinder, nor to seek knowledge of what was contained therein. It still reposed in the safe in the library at Upton End, together with that old newspaper, the threatening letter, and the translation of the papyri.
We wandered along the quay, Asta appearing unusually pale and pensive.
“I wonder you did not recount your strange experience to your father,” I exclaimed presently.
“It happened in the house of a friend, and not at home. Therefore I resolved to say nothing. Indeed I had grown to believe that, after all, it must have been mere imagination—until you described what happened to you last night. That has caused me to; think—it has convinced me that what I saw was material and real.”
“It’s a mystery, Miss Seymour,” I said; “one which we must both endeavour to elucidate. Let us say nothing—not even to your father. We will keep our own counsel and watch.”
When we returned to the hotel we found Shaw awaiting us. Asta, being fatigued, retired to her room, and afterwards he and I strolled down to one of those big cafés in the Place Bellecour. A string band was playing a waltz, and hundreds of people were sitting out upon the pavement drinking their bock or mazagran.
Darkness had fallen, and with it the air became fresher—welcome indeed after those long hours on the white, dusty road of the Bourgogne. My host, in the ease of straw hat and grey flannel suit, still wore his dark glasses, and as we sat together at one of the tin tables near the kerb a man and a woman at the adjacent table rose and left, so that we were comparatively alone and in the shadow.
After we had been chatting merrily—for he seemed in the best of spirits and full of admiration of the way in which the French roads were kept—he removed his spectacles and wiped them.