ed upon, dressed in shabby
sorrel-coloured clothes of antique cut, with a long grey beard upon his
chin, pent-roof eyebrows, and a wizened complexion so puckered and
tanned by exposure to Heaven only knew what weathers that it was
impossible to guess his nationality.

I lifted him up out of the puddle of black blood in which he was lying,
and his head dropped back over my arm as though it had been fixed to
his body with string alone. There was neither heart-beat nor breath in
him, and the last flicker of life faded out of that gaunt face even as
I watched. It was not altogether a pleasant situation, and the only
thing to do appeared to be to get the dead man into proper care (though
little good it could do him now!) as speedily as possible. So,
sending a chance passer-by into the main street for a cab, I placed him
into it as soon as it came, and there being nobody else to go, got in
with him myself, telling the driver at the same time to take us to the
nearest hospital.

"Is this your rug, captain?" asked a bystander just as we were driving
off.

"Not mine," I answered somewhat roughly. "You don't suppose I go about
at this time of night with Turkey carpets under my arm, do you? It
belongs to this old chap here who has just dropped out of the skies on
to his head; chuck it on top and shut the door!" And that rug, the
very mainspring of the startling things which followed, was thus
carelessly thrown on to the carriage, and off we went.

Well, to be brief, I handed in that stark old traveller from nowhere at
the hospital, and as a matter of curiosity sat in the waiting-room
while they examined him. In five minutes the house-surgeon on duty
came in to see me, and with a shake of his head said briefly--

"Gone, sir--clean gone! Broke his neck like a pipe-stem. Most
strange-looking man, and none of us can even guess at his age. Not a
friend of yours, I suppose?"

"Nothing whatever to do with me, sir. He slipped on the pavement and
fell in front of me just now, and as a matter of common charity I
brought him in here. Were there any means of identification on him?"

"None whatever," answered the doctor, taking out his notebook and, as a
matter of form, writing down my name and address and a few brief
particulars, "nothing whatever except this curious-looking bead hung
round his neck by a blackened thong of leather," and he handed me a
thing about as big as a filbert nut with a loop for suspension and
appa