“Of course not!”
“But, in the sense I mean, may have a very literal and terrible significance,” pursued Dr. Silence. “Ancient instincts that no one dreamed of, least of all their possessor, may leap forth——”
“Atavism can hardly explain a roaming animal with teeth and claws and sanguinary instincts,” interrupted Maloney with impatience.
“The term is of your own choice,” continued the doctor equably, “not mine, and it is a good example of a word that indicates a result while it conceals the process; but the explanation of this beast that haunts your island and attacks your daughter is of far deeper significance than mere atavistic tendencies, or throwing back to animal origin, which I suppose is the thought in your mind.”
“You spoke just now of lycanthropy,” said Maloney, looking bewildered and anxious to keep to plain facts evidently, “I think I have come across the word, but really—really—it can have no actual significance to-day, can it? These superstitions of mediæval times can hardly——”
He looked round at me with his jolly red face, and the expression of astonishment and dismay on it would have made me shout with laughter at any other time. Laughter, however, was never farther from my mind than at this moment when I listened to Dr. Silence as he carefully suggested to the clergyman the very explanation that had gradually been forcing itself upon my own mind.
“However mediæval ideas may have exaggerated the idea is not of much importance to us now,” he said quietly, “when we are face to face with a modern example of what, I take it, has always been a profound fact. For the moment let us leave the name of any one in particular out of the matter and consider certain possibilities.”
We all agreed with that at any rate. There was no need to speak of Sangree, or of any one else, until we knew a little more.
“The fundamental fact in this most curious case,” he went on, “is that the ‘Double’ of a man——”
“You mean the astral body? I’ve heard of that, of course,” broke in Maloney with a snort of triumph.