"One moment!" he muttered, peering inside. "I'll just look around and
see that everything is in order."

He crossed the threshold and passed into the room. It was certainly a
curious apartment. The walls were hung not with paper at all, but with
rugs of some Oriental material which had the effect of still further
increasing the gloom. There were neither chairs nor tables--no
furniture at all, in fact, of any account but in the furthest corner was
a great pile of cushions, and on the floor by the side a plain strip of
sandalwood, covered with a purple cloth, on which were several
square-shaped sheets of paper, a brass inkstand, and a bundle of quill
pens. On the extreme corner of this strip of wood, which seemed to have
been used as a writing desk by some one reclining upon the cushions, was
the strangest article of all. Alfred Burton stared at it with wide-open
eyes. It was a tiny plant growing out of a small-sized flower-pot, with
real green leaves and a cluster of queer little brown fruit hanging down
from among them.

"Jiminy!" the clerk exclaimed. "I say, Mr. Lynn, sir!"

But Mr. Lynn had gone off to pace the dining-room once more. Burton
moved slowly forward and stooped down over the cushions. He took up the
sheets of paper which lay upon the slab of sandalwood. They were
covered with wholly indecipherable characters save for the last page
only, and there, even as he stood with it in his fingers, he saw,
underneath the concluding paragraph of those unintelligible
hieroglyphics, a few words of faintly traced English, laboriously
printed, probably a translation. He struck a match and read them slowly
out to himself: