name on earth? I could not rest! M. Coghlan, I demand of you--what is the meaning of this?"

Coghlan looked again at the faded brown writing on the parchment. Duval abruptly collapsed, buried his face in his hands. Ghalil carefully crushed out his cigarette. He waited.

Coghlan stood up with a certain deliberation.

"I think we can do with another drink."

He gathered up the glasses and left the room, but he did not find that his mind grew any clearer. He found himself wishing that Duval and Ghalil had never been born, to bring a puzzle like this into his life. He hadn't written that message--but nobody else could have. And it was written. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what the message referred to, or what he should do about it.

He went back into the living-room with the refilled glasses. Duval still sat with his head in his hands. Ghalil had another cigarette going, was regarding its ash with an expression of acute discomfort. Coghlan put down the drinks.

"I don't see how anyone else could have written that message," he observed, "but I don't remember writing it myself, and I've no idea what it means. Since you brought it, you must have some idea."

"No," said Ghalil. "My first question was the only sane one I can ask. Have you been traveling in the thirteenth century? I gather that you have not. I even feel that you have no plans of the sort."

"At least no plans," agreed Coghlan, with irony. "I know of nowhere I am less likely to visit."

Ghalil waved his cigarette, and the ash fell off.

"As a police officer, there is a mention of someone to be killed; possibly murdered. That makes it my affair. As a student of philosophy it is surely my affair! In both police work and in philosophy it is sometimes necessary to assume the absurd, in order to reason toward the sensible. I would like to do so now."

"By all means!" said Coghlan dryly.

"At the moment, then," said Ghalil, with a second wave of his cigarette, "you have as yet no anticipation of any attempt to murder Mr. Mannard. You have no scar upon your thumb, nor any expectation of one. And the existence of--let us say--a 'gadget' at 80 Hosain is not in your memory. Right?"

"Quite 

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