“What has that inscription to do with the matter in hand?” he demanded impatiently.

“I leave you to judge,” said the Tracer.  A dull tint of excitement flushed his lean cheeks; he twisted his gray mustache and bent over the unrolled scroll which was now held flat by weights at the four corners.

“Can you understand any of these symbols, Mr. Burke?” he asked.

“No.”

“Curious,” mused the Tracer.  “Do you know it was fortunate that you put this bit of papyrus in the pocket of your shooting coat—­so fortunate that, in a way, it approaches the miraculous?”

“What do you mean?  Is there anything in that scroll bearing on this matter?”

“Yes.”

“And you can read it?  Are you versed in such learning, Mr. Keen?”

“I am an Egyptologist—­among other details,” said the Tracer calmly.

The young man gazed at him, astonished.  The Tracer of Lost Persons picked up a pencil, laid a sheet of paper on the table beside the papyrus, and slowly began to copy the first symbol: 

[Illustration:  Glyph]

CHAPTER XIX

“The ancient Egyptian word for the personal pronoun ‘I’ was anuk,” said the Tracer placidly.  “The phonetic for a was the hieroglyph

[Illustration:  Glyph]

a reed; for n the water symbol

[Illustration:  Glyph]

for u the symbols

[Illustration:  Glyph]

for k

[Illustration:  Glyph]

Therefore this hieroglyphic inscription begins with the personal pronoun

[Illustration:  Glyph]

or I.  That is very easy, of course.

“Now, the most ancient of Egyptian inscriptions read vertically in columns; there are only two columns in this papyrus, so we’ll try it vertically and pass downward to the next symbol, which is inclosed in a sort of frame or cartouch.  That immediately signifies that royalty is mentioned; therefore, we have already translated as much as ’I, the king (or queen).’  Do you see?”

“Yes,” said Burke, staring.

“Very well.  Now this symbol, number two,

[Illustration:  Glyph]

spells out the word ‘Meris,’ in this way:  M (pronounced me) is phonetically symbolized by the characters

[Illustration:  Glyph]

r by

[Illustration:  Glyph]

(a mouth) and the comma

[Illustration:  Glyph]

and the hieroglyph

[Illustration:  Glyph]

i by two reeds

[Illustration:  Glyph]

and two oblique strokes,

[Illustration:  Glyph]

and s by

[Illustration:  Glyph]

This gives us Meris, the name of that deposed and fugitive king of Egypt who, after a last raid on the summer palace of Mer-Shen, usurping ruler of Egypt, was followed and tracked to Sais, where, with an arrow through his back, he crawled to El Teb and finally died there of his wound.  All this Egyptologists are perfectly familiar with in the translations of the boastful tablets and inscriptions erected near Sais by Mer-Shen, the three hundred and twelfth sovereign after Queen Nitocris.”