‘No, I’ve dropped the Press,’ said Merton, ‘I ask in a spirit of scientific curiosity.’
‘Well, there is the Dinornis, the Moa of New Zealand. A bird as big as the Roc in the “Arabian Nights.”’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘No, but I have seen her, the hen bird. She was sitting on eggs. No man knows her nest but myself, and old Te-iki-pa, the chief medicine-man, or Tohunga, of the Maori King. The Moa’s eyrie is in the King’s country. It is a difficult country, and a dangerous business, if the cock Moa chances to come home.’
‘Bude, is this worthy of an old friend, this blague?’
‘Do you doubt my word?’
‘If you give me your word I must believe—that you dreamed it.’
Then a strange thing happened.
Bude walked to a small case of instruments that stood on a table in the smoking-room. He unlocked it, took out a lancet, brought a Rhodian bowl from a shelf, and bared his arm.
‘Do you want proof?’