"To Alfred Dawnay!" she gasped, starting to her feet as all the colour faded from her face. "He wrote to him?" she cried. "Then--" She stopped short, and with one hand clutching her breast, she grasped the edge of the table with the other, for she swayed, and would have fallen. I saw that what I had told her revealed to her something of which she had never dreamed--something which upset all her previous calculations. "Tell me, Mr Kemball," she exclaimed at last, in a hard, strained voice, scarce above a whisper, "tell me--what did he write?" "Ah! I do not know. I was merely the bearer of the letter." "You have no idea what Arnold told that man--what he revealed to him?" "I have no knowledge of anything further than that, after Arnold's death, I opened a packet, and found the letter addressed to Dawnay." "To Dawnay! His worst enemy and his--" "Was Dawnay an enemy?" I asked. "I took him, of course, to be the dead man's friend and confidant." The woman laughed bitterly as she stood there before me with deep-knit brows, her mouth hard, and a determined look upon her cunning countenance. "Poor fool, he believed Dawnay to be his friend. Ah! what fatal folly to have written to him--to have placed trust in him. And yet, is not this my vengeance--after all these years?" She laughed hysterically. "Is this man Dawnay such a very undesirable person?" I asked quietly. "Undesirable!" she cried, with flashing eyes. "If Arnold had known but half the truth, he would never have reposed confidence in him." "But the letter may not, after all, have been one of friendship," I suggested. "It was. I can see through it now. Ah! why did I not know a week or two ago! How very differently I would then have acted," she murmured in a tone of blank despair. Her face was deadly pale and her lips were trembling. "Was Dawnay aware of Arnold's identity?" I asked. It was upon the tip of my tongue to speak of the mysterious cylinder of bronze, but I hesitated, recollecting that this woman was not a person to be trusted. "How can I tell?" she said hoarsely. "Yet, from facts that have recently come to my knowledge, I now realise how Arnold must have foolishly disclosed the secret to his worst enemy." "What secret?" I demanded anxiously. But she was distrustful and evasive. "An amazing secret which, it is said, if revealed to the public, would cause the whole world to stand aghast," replied the woman, in a low, hollow voice. Strange! Arnold, I recollected, had himself referred to the precious contents of that ancient cylinder in almost exactly the same terms! What could that secret be? CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE SIGN OF THE HAND. The problem grew daily more intricate. Try how I would, I could obtain no knowledge of the identity of the man known to me as Melvill Arnold. His name might be Edgcumbe, as it seemed from the letter I found in his possession, yet in the learned circles of Egyptologists he was unknown.