“It’s something like the skin of a water rat,” he said.
Nayland Smith stared at him fixedly.
“A water rat? Now that you come to mention it, I perceive a certain resemblance—yes. But”—he had been wearing a silk scarf about his throat and now he unwrapped it—“did you ever see a water rat that could make marks like these?”
Weymouth started to his feet with some muttered exclamation.
“What is this?” he cried. “When did it happen, and how?”
In his own terse fashion, Nayland Smith related the happenings of the night. At the conclusion of the story:
“By heaven!” whispered Weymouth, “the thing on the roof—the coughing thing that goes on all fours, seen by Burke...”
“My own idea exactly!” cried Smith...
“Fu-Manchu,” I said excitedly, “has brought some new, some dreadful creature, from Burma...”
“No, Petrie,” snapped Smith, turning upon me suddenly. “Not from Burma—from Abyssinia.”