use in sitting here speculating, when the problem
still remained of how to locate the girl.

He made his way back to the safe and examined some of the torn
letters; they were all in Spanish. A large part of them bore the same
postmark, "Bogova, Republic of Carlina." The sight of the safe again
recalled to him the fact that he still had in his possession the
parchment which had dropped from the interior of the idol. It was
possible that this might contain some information which would at any
rate explain the value which these two men evidently placed upon it.
He took it out of his pocket and looked at it with some curiosity. It
was very tightly rolled in a covering of what appeared to be oilskin.
He cut the threads which held it together and found a second covering
sewed with sinew of some sort. This smelled musty. Cutting this, he
found still a third covering of a finely pounded metal looking like
gold-foil. This removed revealed a roll of parchment some four inches
long and of about an inch in thickness. When unrolled Wilson saw that
there were two parchments; one a roughly drawn map, and the other a
document covered with an exceedingly fine script which he could not in
this light make out at all. Without a strong magnifying glass, not a
word was decipherable. He thrust it back in his pocket with a sense of
disappointment, when he recalled that he could take it to the Public
Library which was not far from there and secure a reading glass which
would make it all clear. He would complete his investigation in the
house and then go to the reading room where he had spent so much of
his time during the first week he was in Boston.

He picked up several fragments of the letters scattered about, in the
hope of obtaining at least some knowledge of Sorez. The fact that the
man had stopped to tear them up seemed to prove that he had made plans
to depart for good, sweeping everything from the safe and hastily
destroying what was not valuable. Wilson knew a little Spanish and saw
that most of the letters were of recent date and related to the death
of a niece. Others mentioned the unsettled condition of government
affairs in Carlina. At one time Sorez must have been very close to the
ruling party, for several of the letters were from a man who evidently
stood high in the ministry, judged by the intimacy which he displayed
with affairs of state. He spoke several times of the Expedition of the
Hills, in which Sorez had apparently pl