He opened the wallet and took out a flat object wrapped in folds of soft cloth, which he unrolled. “I don’t think you’ve ever seen things like that in any museum,” he said as he laid the object down. We both bent over it and simultaneously exclaimed. It was a little portrait of a girl, painted on what seemed to be a sort of matt-stone or very hard plaster. The colours were fresh and vivid, and the art was of a high standard. But the face held us more then than the fashion of its depicting. It was a girl looking slightly downward, as though at something she was holding in her hands. Masses of heavy brown hair with a glint of gold, eyes of deepest blue with a violet tinge screened with long lashes, under finely pencilled dark-brown eyebrows, and a skin of rose and ivory with faint blue transparent shadows down the graceful curve where the neck entered the filmy garment that swathed the outlined shoulders. “I’d cross a good many deserts to meet a girl like that at the far side,” said Forsyth, as he laid down the picture. “Do you mean to say that that was in the wallet?” “It was,” said Wrexham; “but you’ve not seen all there is to see.” He turned over the picture, and pointed to some words written on the back, in unmistakable Greek, a clear-cut delicate writing, in vivid black. “Tell me what that means, either of you?” We bent over it again. Some of the letters differed slightly from the usual type of classic Greek, but the meaning was quite clear, though the word-endings were unusual. The long Canadian was the first to speak. “It’s Greek of a semi-classical type, I should say. I’ve seen stuff not unlike it before, though there are unusual points about it. It runs: ‘God keep my brother safe where’er he go. Euphrosine.’ You agree with that, Lake?” “Absolutely. It’s perfectly easy to read, though the terminations are neither modern nor quite classical.” I turned to Wrexham. “Read us the riddle, John. I think you’ve found the ‘three times,’ the ‘moral cert,’ though God knows what it all means.” CHAPTER IV THE GREAT DECISION Wrexham refilled his pipe and settled back in his chair once more. Then he went on: “I’ll give you first of all my reading of the things I’ve just told you, and you can tell me whether you think I’m on the right lines. “In the first place, what do we know for certain? That somewhere in the west corner of the Gobi Desert, a large unknown bit of country, a man of apparently white race has been found. Also, a hundred years ago, my great-great-uncle says he found these unknown mountains, an old gate, and a dead white man.