“And yet you can buy books—­unless—­unless you stole it!” Curtis said, eyeing with suspicion the volume Hamar had thrown on the table.

“Buy it!  Not much!” Hamar cried quickly.  “It’s one I’ve had all my life.  Belonged to my grandfather.  I took it with me to-night to see what I could raise on it.”

“And no one would have it?  I should guess not,” Kelson said, drawing it towards him.  “Why it’s got a new label inside—­S.  Leipman!  I know him.  He’s slick even for a Jew.  This looks as if it belonged to your grandfather, Leon.  If I’m not real mistaken you bought the book to-night.  There’s something in it you thought you could make capital of.  Trust you for that.  Now I wonder what it was!”

“You’re welcome to see!” Hamar sneered.  “Perhaps you’d like some water!”

“Water!  Why water?”

“Well, instead of tea or whisky to help digest the book.  Besides, it’s the only thing I have to offer you.”

“Look here, Leon,” Curtis interrupted; “what’s the good of behaving like this?  We are all in the same boat—­starving—­desperate.  So let us lay our heads together and see if we can’t think of something—­some way out of it.”

“A Burglary Company Limited, for instance!” Hamar sneered.  “No!  I’m not having any.  I’ve neither tools nor experience.  The San Francisco police handle one roughly, so I’m told, and hard labour isn’t to my liking.”

“There are other things besides burglary!” Curtis said in tones of annoyance.  “We might work a fake.”

“If I work anything of that sort,” Hamar said hastily, “I work alone.  Think of something else.”

“I tell you Matt and I are pretty well desperate,” Curtis cried, “and if we don’t think of something soon, we shan’t be able to think at all.  We’ve tried our level best to get work—­we’ve answered every likely and unlikely advertisement in the papers—­and all to no purpose.  So if Providence won’t help us we must help ourselves.  Robbery, burglary, fakes, anything short of murder—­it’s all the same to us now—­we’re tired of starving—­dead sick of it.  We would do anything, sell our very souls for a meal.  My God!  I never imagined how terrible it is to feel so hungry.  You appear to be interested, Matt.  What is it?”

“Why, look here, you fellows!” Kelson said slowly.  “This book is all about a place called Atlantis that is said to have existed in the Atlantic Ocean between America and Ireland, and to have been deluged by an earthquake owing to the wickedness of its inhabitants.  They practised sorcery.”

“Practised foolery,” Hamar said.  “It’s tosh—­all tosh!  Wickedness is only a matter of climate—­and there’s no such thing as sorcery.”

“So I thought,” Kelson replied; “but I’m not so sure now.  The author of this book writes darned sensibly, and is apparently at no loss for corroborative testimony.  He was a professor too.  See!  Thomas Henry Maitland, at one time Professor of English at the University of Basle in Switzerland.  There’s an asterisk against his name and a footnote in very old-fashioned handwriting—­the ‘s’s’ are all ‘f’s,’ and half the letters capitals.  Listen—­