Chapter II

Halesowen’s nerves evidently had been shaken by the inexplicable incident. As the three of us strode across the corner of the Common, he informed us that the new tenant of the adjoining flat had moved in. “I have been away all day,” he said; “but the stuff was bundled in some time during the afternoon.”

We proceeded upstairs and into the cosy room which had been the scene of the remarkable occurrence related. As it was growing dark, Halesowen turned on the electric light, and, indicating a chair by the writing table, explained that it was there he had been seated at the time.

“Did you have the windows open?” asked Lesty.

“Yes,” was the reply. “I left the chairs and the awning out, too, as it was a fine night; in fact, you can see that they still remain practically as you left them.”

“When you returned, and saw, or thought you saw, the hand and arm--you would have to pass around to this side of the table in order to reach the lamp?”

“Yes.”

Apparently Lesty was about to make some observation, when an interruption occurred in the form of a ringing on the door bell, followed by a discreet fandango on the knocker.

“Who the deuce have we here!” muttered Halesowen. “I saw no one go in below.”

As our host passed through the lighted room and into the hall, my friend and I both leant forward in our chairs, the better to hear what should pass; nor were we kept long in suspense, for, as we heard the outer door opened, an odd, rumbling voice came, with a queer accent:

“Ah, my dear Mr. Halesowen, it is indeed an intrusion of me! But when I find how we are neighbours I cannot resist to make the call and renew a so pleasant acquaintance!”

“Doctor Zeda!” we heard Halesowen exclaim, with little cordiality.

“Ever your devoted servant!” replied the courteous foreigner.

I glanced at Lesty, and we rose together and stepped through the open window in time to see a truly remarkable personage enter.

This was a large-framed man, with snow-white hair cut close to his skull, French fashion. He had a high and very wrinkled brow and wore gold-rimmed pince-nez. Jet-black and heavy eyebrows were his, and his waxed moustache, his neat imperial, were likewise of the hue of coal. His complexion was pallid; and in his well-cut frock coat, with a loose black tie overhanging his vest, he made a striking picture, standing bowing profoundly in the doorway.

Halesowen rapidly muttered the usual formalities; in fact, I remember mentally contrasting our friend’s unceremonious manners with the courtly deportment of Doctor Zeda.

The latter explained that he had taken the adjacent flat, only learning, that evening, whom he had for a neighbour, and, despite the lateness of the hour, he said, he could not resist the desire to see Halesowen, of whose company in Egypt he retained such pleasant memories. Allowing for his effusiveness, there was nothing one could take exception to in his behaviour, and I rather wondered at the brusque responses of our usually polite host.

When, after a brief chat, the foreign gentleman rose to take his leave, he extended an invitation to all of us to lunch with him on the following day. “My place is in somewhat disorder,” he said, smiling, “but you are Bohemian, like myself, and will not care!”

Though I half expected that Halesowen would decline, he did not do so; I, therefore, also accepted, as did Lesty. Whereupon, Zeda departed.

Halesowen, returning to the chair which he had vacated to usher out his visitor, lighted a cigarette, regarded it for a moment, meditatively, and then frankly expressed his doubts.

“He’s been watching me!” he said; “and when he saw the next flat vacant he jumped at the chance.”

“My dear chap,” I retorted, “he must be very keen on securing your potsherd if he is prepared to take and furnish a flat next door to you simply with a view to keeping an eye on it!”

“You have no idea how anxious he is,” he assured me. “If you had seen his face, in Cairo, when I flatly declined to sell, you would be better able to understand.”

“Why not sell, then?”

“I’m dashed if I do!” said Halesowen, stubbornly.

On the following day we lunched with Doctor Zeda and were surprised at the orderly state of his establishment. Everything, from floor to ceiling, was in its proper place.

“It hasn’t taken you long to get things straight,” commented Lesty.

“Ah, no,” replied the other. “These big firms, they do it all in a day if you insist--and I insist, see?”

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, for he proved an excellent host, and I think even Lesty grew less suspicious of him. During the weeks that followed, the doctor came several times to our rooms, and we frequently met at Halesowen’s. The latter, who boldly had submitted photographs and drawings of the sherd to the British Museum, experienced no repetition of the mysterious phenomenon already described. Then, about seven o’clock one morning, when the mists hung low over the Common in promise of a hot day, a boy came for Lesty and myself with news of a fresh development. He was a lad who did odd jobs for Halesowen, and he brought word of an attempted burglary, together with a request that we should go over without delay.

Our curiosity keenly aroused, we were soon with our friend, and found him seated in the familiar room, before a large cabinet, with double glass doors, which, as was clearly evident, had been hastily ransacked. Other cases in which he kept various curios were also opened, and the place was in general disorder.

“What’s gone?” asked Lesty, quickly.

“Nothing!” was the answer. “The potsherd is in the safe, and the safe is in my bedroom--or perhaps something might have gone!”

“You lock it up at night, then? I thought you kept it in the cabinet.”

“Only during the day. It goes in the safe, with one or two other trifles, at night; but _everybody_ doesn’t know that!”

We looked at one another, silently; but the name that was on all our lips remained unspoken--for we were startled by a loud knocking and ringing at the door. Carter opening it, into the room ran Doctor Zeda!

“Oh, my dear friends!” he cried, in his hoarse, rumbling voice, “there has been to my flat a midnight robber! He has turned completely upside-down all my collections!”

Lesty coughed loudly; but, as I turned my head to look at him, his face was quite expressionless. Halesowen seemed stricken dumb by surprise; whilst, for my own part, as I watched the foreigner staring about the disordered room, and noted the growing look of bewilderment creeping over his pallid countenance, I was compelled to admit to myself that here was either a consummate actor or a man of whom we hastily had formed a most unwarrantable opinion.

“But, my friend--my good Halesowen,” he exclaimed, with widely opened eyes and extended palms, “what is it that I see? You are as disordered as myself!”

Halesowen nodded. “The burglar gave me a call, too!” he said, grimly.

“My dear sir!” gasped Zeda, seizing the speaker’s arm, “tell me quickly--you have lost nothing?”

Halesowen glanced at him rather hard. “No,” he answered.

“Ah! what a relief! I feared,” rumbled the doctor. “But perhaps you wonder for what it is they came?”

“I can guess!”

“You need no longer to guess; I will tell you. It is for your fragment of the sacred vase, and to me they come for mine!”

We were even more astonished by this assertion than we had been by the doctor’s first. “_Your_ fragment!” said Halesowen, slowly, with his eyes fixed on Zeda; “to what fragment do you refer?”

“To that which, together with your potsherd, makes up the complete vase! But you doubt?” he suggested, shrugging his shoulders. “Wait but a moment and I will prove!”

He moved from the room; his gait had a mincing awkwardness, quite indescribable; and we heard his retreating, heavy footsteps as he passed downstairs. Then we stood and gaped at one another. “His confounded ingenuity,” rapped Halesowen, “has completely tied my hands.”

Being interrupted, at this moment, by the re-entrance of the gentleman in question, further discussion of the subject was precluded. Zeda carried a small iron box which he placed carefully upon the table and unlocked. A second box of polished ebony was revealed within, and this, being unlocked in turn, was proved to contain, reposing in a nest of blue velvet, a fragment of antique pottery. Taking the fragment in his hand, the doctor begged that the potsherd be produced.

Halesowen, after a momentary hesitation, retired from the room, to return almost immediately with the broken vase in its wooden frame. Doctor Zeda, placing the portion which he held in his hand against that in the frame, but not so closely as to bring the parts in contact, turned to us with a triumphant smile. “They correspond, gentlemen, to a smallest fraction!” he declared; which, indeed, was perfectly true.

“And now,” continued Zeda, evidently gratified by the surprise which we could not conceal, “I will relate to you a story. I do not ask that you shall credit it; I only say that I have given up my life to such studies, and that I am willing, as matters have so arrived, that you shall join me to prove false or true what I think of the potsherd of Anubis.”

“Good!” said Lesty, and settled himself to listen, an example that was followed by Halesowen and myself. Zeda paused for a moment, evidently to collect his ideas, a pause upon which my stolid friend placed a dubious interpretation, for he cleared his throat, significantly.