Lesty coughed loudly; but, as I turned my head to look at him, his face was quite expressionless. Halesowen seemed stricken dumb by surprise; whilst, for my own part, as I watched the foreigner staring about the disordered room, and noted the growing look of bewilderment creeping over his pallid countenance, I was compelled to admit to myself that here was either a consummate actor or a man of whom we hastily had formed a most unwarrantable opinion. “But, my friend--my good Halesowen,” he exclaimed, with widely opened eyes and extended palms, “what is it that I see? You are as disordered as myself!” Halesowen nodded. “The burglar gave me a call, too!” he said, grimly. “My dear sir!” gasped Zeda, seizing the speaker’s arm, “tell me quickly--you have lost nothing?” Halesowen glanced at him rather hard. “No,” he answered. “Ah! what a relief! I feared,” rumbled the doctor. “But perhaps you wonder for what it is they came?” “I can guess!” “You need no longer to guess; I will tell you. It is for your fragment of the sacred vase, and to me they come for mine!” We were even more astonished by this assertion than we had been by the doctor’s first. “_Your_ fragment!” said Halesowen, slowly, with his eyes fixed on Zeda; “to what fragment do you refer?” “To that which, together with your potsherd, makes up the complete vase! But you doubt?” he suggested, shrugging his shoulders. “Wait but a moment and I will prove!” He moved from the room; his gait had a mincing awkwardness, quite indescribable; and we heard his retreating, heavy footsteps as he passed downstairs. Then we stood and gaped at one another. “His confounded ingenuity,” rapped Halesowen, “has completely tied my hands.” Being interrupted, at this moment, by the re-entrance of the gentleman in question, further discussion of the subject was precluded. Zeda carried a small iron box which he placed carefully upon the table and unlocked. A second box of polished ebony was revealed within, and this, being unlocked in turn, was proved to contain, reposing in a nest of blue velvet, a fragment of antique pottery. Taking the fragment in his hand, the doctor begged that the potsherd be produced. Halesowen, after a momentary hesitation, retired from the room, to return almost immediately with the broken vase in its wooden frame. Doctor Zeda, placing the portion which he held in his hand against that in the frame, but not so closely as to bring the parts in contact, turned to us with a triumphant smile. “They correspond, gentlemen, to a smallest fraction!” he declared; which, indeed, was perfectly true. “And now,” continued Zeda, evidently gratified by the surprise which we could not conceal, “I will relate to you a story. I do not ask that you shall credit it; I only say that I have given up my life to such studies, and that I am willing, as matters have so arrived, that you shall join me to prove false or true what I think of the potsherd of Anubis.”