Here the manuscript abruptly ended.

Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette.  His face, as far as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the apartment, was expressionless.  But when I had finished he turned fully round on me, and said: 

‘You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?’

‘Has it a meaning?’

Zaleski smiled.

’Can you doubt it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush’s note, the nuance of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight enough, inductive and deductive cunning enough, not only a meaning, but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance.  Undoubtedly, in a human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once that this meaning is entirely transparent to me.  Pity only that you did not read the diary to me before.’

‘Why?’

’Because we might, between us, have prevented a crime, and saved a life.  The last entry in the diary was made on the 15th of July.  What day is this?’

‘This is the 20th.’

’Then I would wager a thousand to one that we are too late.  There is still, however, the one chance left.  The time is now seven o’clock:  seven of the evening, I think, not of the morning; the houses of business in London are therefore closed.  But why not send my man, Ham, with a letter by train to the private address of the person from whom you obtained the diary, telling him to hasten immediately to Sir Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to leave his side for a moment?  Ham would reach this person before midnight, and understanding that the matter was one of life and death, he would assuredly do your bidding.’

As I was writing the note suggested by Zaleski, I turned and asked him: 

’From whom shall I say that the danger is to be expected—­from the Indian?’

‘From Ul-Jabal, yes; but by no means Indian—­Persian.’

Profoundly impressed by this knowledge of detail derived from sources which had brought me no intelligence, I handed the note to the negro, telling him how to proceed, and instructing him before starting from the station to search all the procurable papers of the last few days, and to return in case he found in any of them a notice of the death of Sir Jocelin Saul.  Then I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski.

‘As I have told you,’ he said, ’I am fully convinced that our messenger has gone on a bootless errand.  I believe you will find that what has really occurred is this:  either yesterday, or the day before, Sir Jocelin was found by his servant—­I imagine he had a servant, though no mention is made of any—­lying on the marble floor of his chamber, dead.  Near him, probably by his side, will be found a gem—­an oval stone, white