He took out his revolver, examined the cartridges in it and replaced it. Then he began to pull at his dropping lip.
“I think I should know the brute again,” I said. “I stunned him. He ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead of him.”
“But then we have to prove that he killed the rabbit,” said Montgomery. “I wish I’d never brought the things here.”
I should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangled rabbit in a puzzle-headed way. As it was, I went to such a distance that the rabbit’s remains were hidden.
“Come on!” I said.
Presently he woke up and came towards me. “You see,” he said, almost in a whisper, “they are all supposed to have a fixed idea against eating anything that runs on land. If some brute has by any accident tasted blood—”
We went on some way in silence. “I wonder what can have happened,” he said to himself. Then, after a pause again: “I did a foolish thing the other day. That servant of mine—I showed him how to skin and cook a rabbit. It’s odd—I saw him licking his hands—It never occurred to me.”
Then: “We must put a stop to this. I must tell Moreau.”
He could think of nothing else on our homeward journey.
Moreau took the matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and I need scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation.