"Yes, but by its delivery he knew that its writer was dead," I said. "Your client, perhaps, acted with some indiscretion in sending it. It at once placed Asta in peril." "He had a motive, no doubt--but it imperilled Asta. Yet if he had not sent it you would never have met the young lady, or been instrumental in exposing the clever and ingenious plot from which she has so narrowly escaped with her life," the solicitor remarked. The locksmith had been paid and retired. So we were again alone together. "The wording of this latest will is peculiar," Mr Fryer went on. "It refers to `all that may accrue from the enclosed knowledge.' What enclosed knowledge, I wonder?" And taking up the cylinder he again looked into it. "Why, there's something else here?" he exclaimed, and inserting a long steel letter-opener he succeeded in drawing forth a small roll of ancient brown papyri which, very tender and crumbling, was covered by puzzling Egyptian hieroglyphics. "This, in all probability," he exclaimed, "is what the cylinder originally contained when he discovered it in the tomb of the Great Merenptah. We must obtain a translation." "Yes," I cried eagerly. "Let us take it to the British Museum. Professor Stewart will be able to decipher it at once." So, replacing the papyri in its bronze case, we took it with us in a taxi, and half an hour later sat in the room of the professor, the same eminent Egyptologist whom I had seen on my previous visit there. The great scholar put on his spectacles very leisurely, and with great care opened the crumbled relic out before him as he sat at this table and placed a sheet of glass over it. Then for a long time he pored closely over the queer, crude drawings. At last he broke the silence as he looked up at us through his round glasses, saying-- "This, I may as well tell you, is one of the most remarkable and interesting records that have ever come out of Egypt, and, like the papyri which I deciphered for Mr Arnold, and which was found accompanying this cylinder, it is in the hieroglyphics in use during the period after Alexander the Great had delivered Egypt and it was ruled by Ptolemy and his descendants. Ptolemy the First, you will remember, perhaps, reigned from 323 to 285 B.C., and was succeeded by twelve other kings of his dynasty. The famous Cleopatra was daughter of Ptolemy the Eleventh, and in 43 B.C. became Queen of Egypt. Here we have before us, upon this piece of papyri, a most important record concerning that famous woman. This was written at Thebes by one Sanehat, or Sa-nehat, son of the sycamore, a general and a royal favourite in the year and month of Antony's death. Listen, and I will decipher one or two extracts to show you its purport," and carefully wiping his spectacles the celebrated Egyptologist readjusted them; and then, examining the half-faded lines of hieroglyphics, said--