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 mat-ter 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 what-ever 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 apparently of rock crystal, though so begrimed and dull its nature was difficult to speak of with certainty. The bead was of no seeming value and slipped unintentionally into my waistcoat pocket as I chatted for a few minutes more with the doctor, and then, shaking hands, I said goodbye, and went back to the cab which was still waiting outside.
It was only on reaching home I noticed the hospital porters had omitted to take the dead man's carpet from the roof of the cab when they carried him in, and as the cab-man did not care about driving back to the hospital with it, and it could not well be left in the street, I somewhat reluctantly carried it indoors with me.
Once in the shine of my own lamp and a cigar in my mouth I had a closer look at that ancient piece of art work from heaven, or the other place, only knows what ancient loom.
A big, strong rug of faded Oriental colouring, it covered half the floor of my sitting-room, the substance being of a material more like camel's hair than anything else, and run-ning across, when examined closely, were some dark fibres so long and fine that surely they must have come from the tail of Solomon's favourite black stallion itself. But the strangest thing about that carpet was its pattern. It was threadbare enough to all conscience in places, yet the design still lived in solemn, age-wasted hues, and, as I dragged it to my stove-front and spread it out, it seemed to me that it was as much like a star map done by a scribe who had lately recovered from delirium tremens as anything else. In the centre appeared a round such as might be taken for the sun, while here and there, "in the field," as heralds say, were lesser orbs which from their size and position could represent smaller worlds circling about it. Between these orbs were dotted lines and arrow-heads of the oldest form pointing in all directions, while all the intervening spaces were filled up with woven characters half-way in appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit. Round the borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle of an alphabet through which none but a wizard could have forced a way in search of meaning.
Altogether, I thought as I kicked it out straight upon my floor, it was a strange and not unhandsome article of furniture--it would do nicely for the mess-room on the Carolina, and if any representatives of yonder poor old fel-low turned up tomorrow, why, I would give them a couple of dollars for it. Little did I guess how dear it would be at any price!
