world of ours contains! And it is in my hands—mine! My God! Is it true—is it really true what this man alleges?”

He paused and again re-read the smoke-blackened, half-burned pages. For some moments he sat with his mouth open in utter astonishment. He could scarcely believe his own eyes.

“His secret—his amazing secret, one unheard of—is mine!” he gasped, glancing around the room, as though half-fearful lest he had been overheard. “I shall be a rich man—one of the richest in all Europe! Before six months is out the whole world will be at the feet of Raymond Diamond!”

Chapter Three.

Shows One of the Fragments.

“Well,” declared the Doctor, speaking to himself, “even my success in intra-laryngeal operations was not half so interesting as this!”

And again he bent to examine the half-charred fragments before him. Some were in typewriting, one was in a small fine script. One hardly legible was in German, others were in English, interspersed here and there with words which he recognised were in Hebrew character.

In that small bedroom, beneath the rather dim electric light, the deformed little man sat pouring over the folios so dry that they cracked and crumbled when touched.

Much was undecipherable; the greater part had indeed been utterly consumed, but here and there he was enabled to read consecutive sentences, and those he made out utterly staggered him.

Indeed, so full of interest, so curious, and so amazing they would have staggered anybody.

He held in his hands the dead man’s secret—a secret that on the face of it, seemed to be the strangest and at the same time the most unsuspected in all the world.

Suddenly he sat back, and, staring straight across the narrow room, exclaimed aloud:

“Why, there are men in the city this very day who’d give me ten thousand pounds for the remains of these papers! But would I sell them? No—not for ten times that amount! Who knows what this discovery may not be worth?”

He chuckled to himself. Already he felt himself a wealthy man, a man who could dictate his own terms in financial circles—a man who would be welcomed in audience by crowned heads themselves!

He sighed, and the heavy exhalation blew a quantity of 

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