He
placed this on a corner of the breakfast table before Weymouth.
"Ever seen anything like that?" he inquired.
The Inspector examined the gruesome relic with obvious curiosity,
turning it over with the tip of his little finger and manifesting
considerable repugnance in touching it at all. Smith and I watched him
in silence, and, finally, placing the tray again upon the table, he
looked up in a puzzled way.
"It's something like the skin of a water-rat," he said.
Nayland Smith stared at him fixedly.
"A water-rat? Now that you come to mention it, I perceive a certain
resemblance--yes. But"--he had been wearing a silk scarf about his
throat and now he unwrapped it--"did you ever see a water-rat that
could make marks like these?"
Weymouth started to his feet with some muttered exclamation.
"What is this?" he cried. "When did it happen, and how?"
In his own terse fashion, Nayland Smith related the happenings of the
night. At the conclusion of the story:
"By heaven!" whispered Weymouth, "the thing on the roof--the coughing
thing that goes on all fours, seen by Burke...."
"My own idea exactly!" cried Smith.
"Fu-Manchu," I said excitedly, "has brought some new, some dreadful
creature, from Burma...."
"No, Petrie," snapped Smith, turning upon me suddenly. "Not from
Burma--from Abyssinia."
* * * * *
That day was destined to be an eventful one; a day never to be
forgotten by any of us concerned in those happenings which I have to
record.
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