Had I not known Nikola, and if I had not remembered some very curious experiments he had performed for my special benefit two years before, I should have inclined to the belief that he was boasting. I knew him too well, however, to deem it possible that he would waste his time in such an idle fashion.
"Do you mean to say," I asked, "that you really think that in time it will be possible for us to see things which at present we have no notion of? That we shall be able to look into the world we have always been taught to consider Unknowable?"
"I do mean it," he replied. "And though you may scarcely believe it, it was for the sake of the information necessary to that end that I pestered Mr. Wetherall in Sydney, imprisoned you in Port Said, and carried the lady, who is now your wife, away to the island in the South Seas."
"This is most interesting," I said, while Glenbarth drew his chair a little closer.
"Pray tell us some of your adventures since we last saw you," he put in. "You may imagine how eager we are to hear."
Thereupon Nikola furnished us with a detailed description of all that he had been through since that momentous day when he had obtained possession of the stick that had been bequeathed to Mr. Wetherall by China Pete. He told us how, armed with this talisman, he had set out for China, where he engaged a man named Bruce, who must have been as plucky as Nikola himself, and together they started off in search of an almost unknown monastery in Thibet. He described with a wealth of exciting detail the perilous adventures they had passed through, and how near they had been to losing their lives in attempting to obtain possession of a certain curious book in which were set forth the most wonderful secrets relating to the laws of Life and Death. He told us of their hair-breadth escapes on the journey back to civilization, and showed how they were followed to England by a mysterious Chinaman, whose undoubted mission was to avenge the robbery, and to obtain possession of the book. At this moment he paused, and I found an opportunity of asking him whether he had the book in his possession now.
"Would you care to see it?" he inquired. "If so, I will show it to you."
On our answering in the affirmative he crossed to his writing-table, unlocked a drawer, and took from it a small curiously bound book, the pages of which were yellow with age, and the writing so faded that it was almost impossible to decipher it.