and the finding of the half-sheet of parchment whetted his appetite to discover more. He walked about the room, whittling shavings right and left, he sat down and kept on whittling, he stood up again, and since by now the willow-stick had been whittled down to almost nothing, he threw what was left in the fireplace. That done, he went to a bookcase and took down from the shelf on top the old notebook that Tuckerman had found in his uncle’s bedroom. He shook his head in deep thought. “I don’t understand why that piece of parchment wasn’t discovered before. Probably it didn’t tell them any more than it’s told us so far.”