r backwards and
forwards, unconcerned at the length of the interview, apparently careless
of its issue. The Professor brooded on the terrible chagrin, the wounded
vanity of discovering himself the victim of an obviously long-contrived
hoax. At his asking for a proof, Carrel laughed.

'You are sceptical at last,' he sneered. 'I have the missing portions of
the papyrus here with me. You can have them for a song. I was afraid to
leave the roll too complete, lest I should invite detection. It would be
a pity to let them go to some other museum. Berlin is longing for a new
acquisition.'

Then he produced from his bag damning evidence of the truth of his
story--deftly confected sheets of papyrus, brown with the months it had
taken to fabricate them, and cracked with forger's inks and acids--ghastly
replicas of the former purchase. Nervously the Professor replaced the
green cardboard shade over the lamp, as though the glare affected his
eyes.

'But how do you know I have not discovered the forgery already?' he said,
craftily. Carrel started. 'And see what I am sending to the press this
evening,' he added.

Walking to the end of the table, he picked up a sheet of paper where
there was writing, and another object which Carrel could not see in the
gloom, so quickly and adroitly was the action accomplished.

'Shall I read it to you, or will you read it yourself?'

He advanced again towards the lamp, held the paper in the light, and
beckoned to Carrel, who leant over the table to see what was written.
Then Professor Lachsyrma plunged a long Greek knife into his back. A
toreador could hardly have done it more skilfully; the bull was pinned
through the heart, and expired instantaneously.

* * * * *

Now he paced the room in deep thought. For the first time he found
himself an actor in modern life, which hitherto for him meant digging
among excavations, or making romantic restoration for jaded connoisseurs,
of some faultless work of art described by Pausanias and hidden for
centuries beneath the rubbish of modern Greece. The entire absence of
horror appalled him. Even the dignity of tragedy was not there. He was
wrestling with hideous melodrama, often described to him by patrons of
Thespian art at transpontine theatres. The vulgarity--the
anachronism--made him shudder. Having till now ignored the issue of the
present, he began to be sceptical about the virtues of antiquity.
Antiquity, his only religion, his