He looked up. A grin came over his face at the sight of me. "Would you like to see what Sam is so upset about?" Without waiting for an answer, he rose and moved to the back wall. New drapes had been hung there. With an expression on his face that said Earth's last secret was about to be revealed, he pulled the drapes aside. I don't know what I was expecting, but I guess my jaw dropped. Behind the drapes was a painting, of a girl. Her features were even and regular, her eyes looked upward, and her face had a slightly oriental cast. What held my gaze was the haunting quality of her smile. Leonardo Da Vinci had gotten something of this same haunting quality in the Mona Lisa. The girl in this painting smiled out at the world as if she knew everything that had ever been, or ever would be--and was laughing at the efforts of mere mortals to fathom her secret. "I see it's getting you too," Tom said. "It's a good job," I said. "But what is there about it to upset Herker?" "The price I paid for it." "What was that?" "One hundred thousand dollars!" * * * * * I rocked back on my heels and whistled softly. At that moment, I was of the opinion that maybe Herker had something when he said Tom had gone nuts. "Did you ever hear of the Dead Sea Scrolls?" Tom asked. "Um. Yes. Manuscripts a couple of thousand years old that have been discovered near the Dead Sea in the last few years." I felt pleased that I knew the answer to his question. "But what do they have to do with this, if anything?" "This painting came from a sealed jar hidden inside a cave in the same region," Tom answered. "It was sold to a dealer in Egypt. I learned about it from a friend." "So far so good," I said. "You sound like Sam," he answered. "Honest, Luke, I'm not nuts." A strained expression crossed his face. "At least I don't think I am." "To me, whatever you say is right," I said, loyally. "But what's the pitch on this painting? Why is it worth so much money?" "Because there is a secret hidden in it," he answered. "And I'm trying to re-discover it." "Ah?" I said. "Luke, you mustn't think that science came into existence this generation," he said. "There were men ahead of us who were just as interested in solving Nature's secrets as we are. Some of them came close to doing it. I think the man who painted this girl was one of them. I think he hid his knowledge in this painting, hid it because he did not dare reveal it. It is my hope that if I can discover his secret and perhaps add it to the knowledge of modern science, I can come up with something that may be as startling as the atom bomb, only in a different way." He frowned and a far-away look crept into his eyes. I knew he was dreaming of the future as he saw it, a better, healthier, happier world. He was just the man to make that dream come true!