“Moss-_am_-o-dees,” Manfred corrected the mispronunciation. It almost amounted to a fad in him that to hear a place miscalled gave him a little pain. Meadows was reading a letter, turning the pages slowly. “This is from his sister: she lives at Brightlingsea, and there’s nothing in it except . . .” He read a portion of the letter aloud: “. . . thank you for the books. The children will appreciate them. It must have been like old times writing them—but I can understand how it helped pass the time. Mr. Lee came over and asked if I had heard from you. He is wonderful.” The letter was in an educated hand. “He didn’t strike me as a man who wrote books,” said Meadows, and continued his search. Presently he unfolded a dilapidated map, evidently of Angola. It was rather on the small scale, so much so that it took in a portion of the Kalahari Desert in the south, and showed in the north the undulations of the rolling Congo. “No marks of any kind,” said Meadows, carrying the chart to the window to examine it more carefully. “And that, I think, is about all—unless this is something.” “This” was wrapped in a piece of cloth, and was fastened to the bottom and the sides of the trunk by two improvised canvas straps. Meadows tried to pull it loose and whistled. “Gold,” he said. “Nothing else can weigh quite as heavily as this.” He lifted out the bundle eventually, unwrapped the covering, and gazed in amazement on the object that lay under his eyes. It was an African _bête_, a nude, squat idol, rudely shaped, the figure of a native woman. “Gold?” said Manfred incredulously, and tried to lift it with his finger and thumb. He took a firmer grip and examined the discovery closely. There was no doubt that it was gold, and fine gold. His thumb-nail made a deep scratch in the base of the statuette. He could see the marks where the knife of the inartistic sculptor had sliced and carved. Meadows knew the coast fairly well: he had made many trips to Africa and had stopped off at various ports en route. “I’ve never seen anything exactly like it before,” he said, “and it isn’t recent workmanship either. When you see this”—he pointed to a physical peculiarity of the figure—“you can bet that you’ve got something that’s been made at least a couple of hundred years, and probably before then. The natives of West and Central Africa have not worn toe-rings, for example, since the days of the Cæsars.” He weighed the idol in his hand. “Roughly ten pounds,” he said. “In other words, eight hundred pounds’ worth of gold.” He was examining the cloth in which the idol had been wrapped, and uttered an exclamation. “Look at this,” he said. Written on one corner, in indelible pencil, were the words: “Second shelf up left Gods lobby sixth.” Suddenly Manfred remembered. “Would you have this figure put on the scales right away?” he said. “I’m curious to know the exact weight.” “Why?” asked Meadows in surprise, as he rang the bell.