"
"No! you were square enough, I guess. The sin is on my own
blessed shoulders, and I don't ask it to be shifted."
"What did you do with the copy of the manuscript?" asked Don
Pedro.
Hervey ruminated.
"I can't think," he mused. "I found a screed of Latin along with
the mummy, when I looted it from your Lima house, but it dropped
out of my mind as to what became of it. Maybe I passed it along
to the Paris man, and he sold it along with the corpse to the
Maltese gent."
"But I tell you this copy was found in Sir Frank's room,"
insisted De Gayangos. "How did it come to be there?"
Captain Hervey rose and took a turn up and down the room. When
Cockatoo came in his way he calmly kicked him aside.
"What do you think, Mr. Hope?" he asked, coming to a full stop
before Archie, while Cockatoo crept away with a very dark scowl.
"I don't know what to think," replied that young gentleman
promptly, "save that Sir Frank is my very good friend, and that I
take his word that he knows nothing of how the manuscript came to
be hidden in his bookcase."
"Huh!" said Hervey scornfully, and took another turn up and down
the room in silence. "I surmise that your friend isn't a white
man."
Hope leaped to his feet.
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