“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?”
“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 deliberation. “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 surprise 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?”
I was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was a pretence. Still, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him a liar. “Pointed,” I said; “rather small and furry,—distinctly furry. But the whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set eyes on.”
A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind us. Its depth and volume testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery wince.