The devil you do
nalist’s account, were wantonly cruel. He might perhaps have purchased his social peace by abandoning his investi- gations; but he apparently preferred the latter, as most men would who have once fallen under the overmastering spell of research. He was unmarried, and had indeed nothing but his own interest to consider.
I felt convinced that this must be the same man. Every- thing pointed to it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other animals— which had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure behind the house—were destined; and a curious faint odour, the halitus of some- thing familiar, an odour that had been in the background of my consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward into the forefront of my thoughts. It was the antiseptic odour of the dissecting-room. I heard the puma growling through the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as though it had been struck.
Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy; and by some odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of Montgomery’s attendant came back again before me with the sharpest definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, frothing under a freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last few days chase one another through my mind.
What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and dis- torted men?
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VIII. THE CRYING OF THE PUMA.
MONTGOMERY interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicion about one o’clock, and his grotesque at- tendant followed him with a tray bearing bread, some herbs and other eatables, a flask of whiskey, a jug of water, and three glasses and knives. I glanced askance at this strange creature, and found him watching me with his queer, rest- less eyes. Montgomery said he would lunch with me, but that Moreau was too preoccupied with some work to come.
‘Moreau!’ said I. ‘I know that name.’ ‘The devil you do!’ said he. ‘What an ass I was to mention
it to you! I might have thought. Anyhow, it will give you an inkling of our—mysteries. Whiskey?’
‘No, thanks; I’m an abstainer.’ ‘I wish I’d been. But it’s no use locking the door after the
steed is stolen. It was that infernal stuff which led to my coming here,—that, and a foggy night. I thought myself in luck at the time, when Moreau offered to get me off. It’s queer—‘
‘Montgomery,’ said I, suddenly, as the outer door closed, ‘why has your man pointed ears?’
‘Damn!’ he said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared at me for a moment, and then repeated, ‘Pointed ears?’
The Island of Doctor Moreau��
‘Little points to them,’ said I, as calmly as possible, with a catch in my breath; ‘and a fine black fur at the edges?’
He helped himself to whiskey and water with great delib- eration. ‘I was under the impression—that his hair covered his ears.’
‘I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee you sent to me on the table. And his eyes shine in the dark.’
By this time Montgomery had recovered from the sur- prise of my question. ‘I always thought,’ he said deliberately, with a certain accentuation of his flavouring of lisp, ‘that there was something the matter with his ears, from the way he covered them. What were they like?’
