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