"Mr Arnold has already told me," I replied. "He possesses no friends." And at that the doctor shrugged his shoulders and descended the stairs. Back at the bedside in the fast-fading light of the hot day of early June, I took the old man's bony hand in silent farewell. He turned his eyes upon me, gazing at me with a strange intense look, as though trying to read my very soul. He endeavoured to speak, but though I bent my ear to his mouth, I could catch no words. His thin nervous hands clenched themselves, his grey beard moved, and he struggled violently to communicate with me, but without avail. Then with his right hand, he made a sign that he wished to write. Instantly I obtained a pen and scrap of paper which I placed before him. For a long time his hand trembled, so that he could make no intelligible writing. At last, however, he managed slowly, and with infinite difficulty, to trace very unevenly the words-- "_Remember the name Harford--be friendly, but beware of him and the Hand_." He watched my face eagerly as I read. Of a sudden, the light went out of his grey countenance, the pen dropped from his thin, nerveless fingers, a scarlet spot fell upon the paper, and a deep, long-drawn sigh escaped his ashen lips. Then a great stillness fell--a great silence broken only by the low roar of the London traffic. And I knew that Melvill Arnold, the man of mystery, was dead. CHAPTER TWO. CONTAINS SEVERAL SURPRISES. For some moments I stood gazing upon the dead man's changed face, not knowing how to act. I, Lionel Kemball, had, perhaps very unwisely, accepted a strange responsibility. I had acted with complete indiscretion. On my way home from Australia, where I had been for a voyage for my health, the liner had called at Naples, and Mr Melvill Arnold had joined us. On the day after we had sailed I heard that he had had a sudden heart seizure, and was confined to his cabin, therefore--why, I can't exactly tell--I sought him out, and spent a good many hours chatting with him, and keeping him company. Perhaps it was that, having been something of an invalid myself, I knew the weary monotony of being confined to bed; I could sympathise with anybody who was ill. From the first I realised that Arnold was a man of no ordinary stamp. Possessed of a clear and quick intelligence, he was a cultured man notwithstanding his rather rough exterior, and full of a quiet sound philosophy. To me, it appeared as though he had lived abroad a good many years, and was consequently out of touch with England. Whence he had come he never told me, save to casually mention that he had been a great traveller and had "lived out in the wilds for years." The possession of the golden god seemed to point to the fact that he had come from Egypt. "London has nowadays no attraction for me," he told me one day. "I only go there merely because I am forced to do so. I finished with London long, long ago."