“Ach!  You laugh at me—­you jest—­you mock—­you sneer.  But I know what I propose.  Do you know what will be found in that Tomb of the Kings of Judah when we discover it?”

“Bones.  Dry bones.  A few gold ornaments perhaps.  A stale smell certainly.”

“The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel!  Think of it!  A parchment roll—­perhaps two or three rolls—­not too big to go into a valise—­worth more than all the other ancient manuscripts in the world all put together!  Himmel!  What a find that would be!  What a record!  What a refutation of all the historians and the fools who set themselves up for authorities nowadays!  What a price it would bring!  What would your Metropolitan Museum in New York not pay for it!  What would the Jews not pay for it!  They would raise millions among them and pay any price we cared to ask!  The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel—­ only think!”

“But why the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel in the tomb of the Kings of Judah?” Grim asked, more by way of keeping up the conversation, I think, than because he could not guess the answer.  He is an omnivorous reader, and there is not much recorded of the Near East that he does not know.

“Don’t you know your history?  You know, of course, that after King Solomon died the Jews divided into two kingdoms.  The latter-day Jews speak of themselves as Israelites, but they are nothing of the kind; they are Judah-ites.  The tribe of Judah remained in Jerusalem, forming one small kingdom; their descendants are the Jews of today.  Part of the tribe of Benjamin stayed with them.  The other seceding ten tribes called themselves the kingdom of Israel.”

“Everybody knows that,” said Grim.  “What of it?”

“Well, the Assyrians came down and conquered the kingdom of Israel—­marched all the Israelites away into captivity—­and they vanished out of history.  From that day to this their Book of Chronicles, so often referred to in the Old Testament, has never been seen nor heard of.”

“Of course not,” said Grim.  “The King of Assyria used it to wipe his razor on when he was through shaving every morning.”

“Ach!  You joke again; but I tell you I am not joking.  Such people as those Hebrews are naturally secretive and so proud that they wrote down for posterity all the doings of their puny kings, would never have let their records fall into the hands of the Assyrians.  They themselves were marched away in slave-gangs, but they left their Book behind them, safely hidden.  Be sure of it!  Ten years ago I found a manuscript in the place they now call Nablus, which in those days was Schechem.  Schechem was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, just as Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, or the Jews.  I sold that manuscript for a good price after I had photographed it.  The idiots to whom I sold it—­historians they call themselves!—­value it only as a relic of antiquity.  I made a digest of it—­analyzed it—­studied it—­compared it with other authentic facts in my possession—­and came to the definite conclusion that I hold the clue to the whereabouts of that lost Book of Chronicles.”