“Well, I did some pretty quick thinking. The coincidence between this fellow and what old John Wrexham wrote was too marked not simply to stick out. I felt sure then that the old man wrote cold, sober truth. Now for many reasons I didn’t want my men to see this body. They might start thinking too much and making up yarns that would queer my pitch if I managed to start an expedition. I can tell you, the sight of this man made me absolutely resolved to set out across the desert as soon as I could fix up a show that would give some chance of success. “So I straightened him out and left him, but, before doing this, I cut the straps of his wallet and pushed it and the short knife into the big haversack I was carrying. “Then I went back to the top of the sand-dune and got out my mapping stuff--not that I had any intention of doing much: I was too busy wondering about it all and trying to evolve theories, but I didn’t want my men to notice anything unusual. I expect, if they looked up at me at all, they thought I was carrying on in the usual way with my map spread out all businesslike. “That night, when the men had dossed down, I sat up studying the contents of the wallet, and the next day made up my mind to come back to India as fast as I could travel and set about finding one of you two and going north again.” “‘Once is nothing, twice is coincidence,’” quoted Forsyth. “You’ve got hold of the queerest kind of story, but as yet I see no light, save that it seems to substantiate your ancient uncle’s yarn. But why in hell you should find a man in practically the same circumstances as he did one hundred years ago has me cold. If I didn’t know you, I should say you were pulling our legs.” “Then you can just imagine how much I wondered that night and many after. The coincidence was too absurdly striking, too close to be real, it seemed; and yet there it was, hard, undeniable fact. But before I go on I’ll show you what I call ‘three times,’ the ‘moral cert.’” He reached over for the box on the table, opened it, and pulled out just such a leather wallet as he had described, and then a short knife of unusual shape, which he laid beside it under the light. “Ever seen a knife like that?” he asked. I shook my head. It was unusual in shape, short, rather broad-bladed with curved hand-guard, obviously a stabbing dagger, but of what nationality I could not say. But what held my eye more than its shape was the faint filigree of silvery metal lines hammered or welded into the bluish steel of the blade. They seemed to form letters of a kind, though not easily decipherable. Forsyth picked it up and examined it. “I have, but”--he looked at us both--“they were in a museum, and labelled ‘Scandinavian--old,’ and they didn’t have this filigree stuff.” “I thought you’d say something like that,” said Wrexham. “I looked up a book on old weapons as soon as I got back to India. Now for exhibit No. 2, as the policeman calls it.”