“See,” he cried excitedly to McDale. “This is unquestionably the print of a smaller specimen than ours; a young pteranodon, doubtless, or perhaps a lesser sub-species.”
Pretending an absorbed interest, the reporter drew out the simple-hearted professor, who, showing rock after rock in explanation, elaborated his theory. McDale, hurrying upstairs to make his notes—he had been afraid to “pull a pencil” on the scientist, lest he check the enthusiastic flow of ideas—ran into Eldon Smith.
“Get anything?” asked Smith, in the brief formula of the newspaper world.
“Sunday stuff, and a corker!” said McDale. “You wouldn’t want it; but it’s hot stuff for us, with a scare-devil double-page drawing of the Pteranodaceus Dingbattius, and Professor Ravenden’s photograph as large as we can get it.”
“Pretty tough on the professor,” said Eldon Smith. “He’s rather a square old party.”
“Oh, I’m not going to fake him,” protested the other. “And of course I won’t guy him. That would put a crimp in the story.”
“You know what his reputation will be in the scientific world, after he’s been made to stand for a wild-eyed nightmare like this,” said the other.
“Oh, he’ll be down and out,” agreed the dealer in sensations. “But that ain’t my business. And the cream of it is that he believes in this gilly-loo bird, as if he’d seen it.”
Eldon Smith jumped to the window and throwing it up with a bang, leaned out into the darkness. “Did you hear that?” he cried.
McDale was beside him instantly. They stood, rigid, intent, as a faint, woeful, high-pitched scream of abject terror quivered in the still air.