Although I saw no reason to agree with him, I approached the rectangular patch to examine it more closely, and in so doing rested my hand appraisingly on the marble surface. To my utter amazement, a portion of the wall gave way, swinging inward as if on noiseless hinges! But if Rawson had had visions of secret corridors and darkened chambers, he was to be disappointed. The displaced rectangle revealed not a mysterious passageway, but a little closet or vault possibly three feet deep--a vault filled to the brim with treasure! At least, it was filled with what I regarded as treasure, for within it were piled scores of books! Hastily I reached for the nearest volume--a heavy tome bound in what I took to be a sort of artificial leather. The title filled me with rejoicing: it was a “Lexicon of the More Commonly Used Words.” Aided by the bewildered Rawson, I at once examined the entire collection. Although he could decipher not a word, Rawson feigned the profoundest interest; and, indeed, he may well have been interested, for, as I read and translated the titles, I was making discovery after extraordinary discovery. Not that any of the books were those works of sheer information which I most desired, but that they all embodied significant hints and clues. Some, like the inscriptions I had observed among the colonnades, seemed to refer to some great disaster, as in the case of one entitled, “Artistic Progress Since the Destruction”; another, which was called “Speculations Concerning the Supermarine World,” fortified my impression of being in some inexplicably buried land; while several were treatises on such difficult subjects as “Intra-Atomic Engineering,” “Marine Valves and Their Construction,” and “The Creation of Artificial Sunlight.” But the book that caused me the greatest surprise--a book that struck me as at once a priceless find and an insoluble mystery--was the well-thumbed yellowing little volume at the very bottom of the heap. Even today, when all that passed in those enigmatic realms is an old and oft-repeated story, I have difficulty in repressing my astonishment at that discovery. Imagine the bewilderment of one who, having voyaged to another world, suddenly receives news of familiar things, and at the same time learns unsuspected facts about the familiar! Imagine this, and you will have only a vague notion of the amazement I felt when, turning the pages of the book in that unknown cavernland, I recognized the name of--Homer! And not only did I recognize the name of Homer, but I found it affixed to a work not previously catalogued among the productions of the great Attic bard! “Telegonus” was the title--and instantly I recalled that there had been a legend among post-Homeric writers of one Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circe, who had been sent by his enchantress mother in search of his father, and had slain his sire without realizing his identity.