Part 36 (2/2)

”Not at all, my dear Doctor,” responded the other. ”If a man is in hiding, it isn't likely that he's going to give away his place of concealment, is it?”

”But he trusts me--trusts me implicitly,” declared Diamond.

”That may be so. But he doesn't trust other persons into whose hands his letter might possibly fall. The police have a nasty habit of watching the correspondence of the friend of the man wanted, you know.”

”Perhaps you're right, Mr Farquhar,” said the Doctor, with a heavy expression upon his broad brow. ”The more I study the problem of the treasure of Israel, the more bewildered I become,” he went on. ”Now as regards the original of the Old Testament, it is not all written in Hebrew, I find. Certain parts are in Aramaic, often erroneously called Chaldee. [From Daniel, ii, 4, to vii, 28; Ezra iv, 8, to vi, 18; vii, 11 to 26; and Jeremiah x and xi.] Again, we have a difficulty to face which even Professor Griffin had never yet mentioned to me. It is this.

On the very lowest estimate, the Old Testament must represent a literary activity of fully a thousand years, and therefore it is but reasonable to suppose that the language of the earlier works would be considerably different from that of the later; while, on other grounds, the possible existence of local dialects might be expected to show itself in diversity of diction among the various books. But, curiously enough--though I am handicapped by not being acquainted with the Hebrew tongue--all the authorities I have consulted agree that neither of those surmises find much verification in our extant Hebrew text.”

”I've always understood that,” Frank remarked. ”Yes. I've been reading deeply, Mr Farquhar. Curiously enough the most ancient doc.u.ments and the youngest are remarkably similar in the general cast of their language, and certainly show nothing corresponding in the difference between Homer and Plato, or Chaucer and Shakespeare. Though we know that the Ephraimites could not give the proper (Gileadite) sound of the letter _s.h.i.+n_ in _s.h.i.+bboleth_, [Judges, xii 8] yet all attempts to distinguish dialects in our extant books have failed.”

”I think,” said Farquhar, ”that such remarkable uniformity, while testifying to the comparative stability of the language, is in part to be explained by the hypothesis of a continuous process of revision and perhaps modernising of the doc.u.ments, which may have gone on until well into our era.”

”Exactly,” remarked the Doctor, ”yet in spite of this levelling tendency there appear to remain certain diversities, particularly in the vocabulary, which have not been eliminated, and these serve to distinguish two great periods in the history of the language, sometimes called the gold and silver ages, respectively, roughly separated by the return from the exile. To the former belong, without doubt, the older strata in the Hexateuch, and the greater prophets; to the latter, almost as indubitably, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes and Daniel, all of which use a considerable mixture of Aramaic of Persian words. Then, the great question for us is whether the ancient text of Ezekiel preserved in St Petersburg is an original, or a modernised version. If the latter, much of the cipher, perhaps all, must have been destroyed!”

”I quite follow your argument, my dear Diamond,” Farquhar replied, ”but has not Holmboe established to his own satisfaction that the cipher still exists in the ma.n.u.script in question? He has, therefore, proved it to be an exact copy of the original--if not the original itself.”

”Experts all agree that it cannot be the original,” declared the Doctor.

”It is quite true that Holmboe alleges that the cipher exists, and gives quotations from it. Yet now that I have been reading deeply I have become a trifle sceptical. I'm anxious for Griffin to discover the key number, and prove it for himself. Personally, I entertain some doubt about the present text of Ezekiel being the actual text of the prophet.”

”That can only be proved by the test of the cipher,” was Farquhar's reply. ”If you accept any part of the dead man's declaration, you must surely accept the whole.”

”I have all along accepted the whole--just as Griffin accepts it.”

”Then why entertain any doubt in this direction? The Professor has never mentioned it, which shows us that there is no need why we should query it.”

”Yes, but may not the fact of the text having been modernised be the reason of Griffin's non-success in discovering the key number?”

”Holmboe discovered it,” remarked the other, ”therefore, I see no reason why Griffin--with Holmboe's statement before him and in addition that sc.r.a.p of ma.n.u.script which evidently relates to the key--should not be equally successful.”

”Ah!” sighed the ugly little man whose fidgety movements showed his increasing anxiety, ”if we could but know what the old German was doing--or in what direction he is working.”

”He's not back at his own home. I received a telegram from our Leipzig correspondent only yesterday. His whereabouts is just as mysterious as that of your friend Mullet. By the way--would he never tell you who were the princ.i.p.als in this opposition to us?”

”No, he has always steadily refused.”

”Some shady characters, perhaps--men whom he is compelled to s.h.i.+eld, eh?”

”I think so,” answered the Doctor. ”I wanted him to stand in with us, but he's a strange fellow, for though he promised to help me, he refused to partic.i.p.ate in any part of the profit.”

”Has some compunction in betraying his friends, evidently,” laughed Frank. ”I'm very anxious to meet him. He promised to call on Griffin, but has never done so.”

”He's been put on his guard, and cleared out, that's my candid opinion.

`Red Mullet' is a splendid fellow, but a very slippery customer, as the police know too well. He's probably half-way across the world by this time. He's a very rapid traveller. I've sometimes had letters from him from a dozen different cities in as many days.”

”To move rapidly is always inc.u.mbent upon the adventurer, if he is to be successful in eluding awkward inquiry. He never writes to the child, I suppose?” Frank asked, as Aggie at that moment pa.s.sed the window.

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