Mr. Lynn was interested.

“No objection to our just looking inside, I suppose?”

“None whatever,” the young man declared, promptly.  “I was going to have a peep myself.  Here goes!”

He fitted the key in the lock and pushed the door open.  Mr. Lynn took one step forward and drew back hurriedly.

“Thanks!” he said.  “That’ll do!  I’ve seen all I want—­and smelt!”

Mr. Alfred Burton, fortunately or unfortunately, was possessed of less sensitive nasal organs and an indomitable curiosity.  The room was dark and stuffy, and a wave of pungent odor swept out upon them with the opening of the door.  Nevertheless, he did not immediately close it.

“One moment!” he muttered, peering inside.  “I’ll just look around and see that everything is in order.”

He crossed the threshold and passed into the room.  It was certainly a curious apartment.  The walls were hung not with paper at all, but with rugs of some Oriental material which had the effect of still further increasing the gloom.  There were neither chairs nor tables—­no furniture at all, in fact, of any account but in the furthest corner was a great pile of cushions, and on the floor by the side a plain strip of sandalwood, covered with a purple cloth, on which were several square-shaped sheets of paper, a brass inkstand, and a bundle of quill pens.  On the extreme corner of this strip of wood, which seemed to have been used as a writing desk by some one reclining upon the cushions, was the strangest article of all.  Alfred Burton stared at it with wide-open eyes.  It was a tiny plant growing out of a small-sized flower-pot, with real green leaves and a cluster of queer little brown fruit hanging down from among them.

“Jiminy!” the clerk exclaimed.  “I say, Mr. Lynn, sir!”

But Mr. Lynn had gone off to pace the dining-room once more.  Burton moved slowly forward and stooped down over the cushions.  He took up the sheets of paper which lay upon the slab of sandalwood.  They were covered with wholly indecipherable characters save for the last page only, and there, even as he stood with it in his fingers, he saw, underneath the concluding paragraph of those unintelligible hieroglyphics, a few words of faintly traced English, laboriously printed, probably a translation.  He struck a match and read them slowly out to himself: 

“It is finished.  The nineteenth generation has triumphed.  He who shall eat of the brown fruit of this tree shall see the things of Life and Death as they are.  He who shall eat—­” The translation concluded abruptly.  Mr. Alfred Burton removed his silk hat and reflectively scratched his head.

“Queer sort of joker he must have been,” he remarked to himself.  “I wonder what he was getting at?”

His eyes fell upon the little tree.  He felt the earth in the pot it was quite dry.  Yet the tree itself was fresh and green.

“Here goes for a brown bean,” he continued, and plucked one.