He stood, looking with a mocking smile at the crouched beast and the bound animal. The latter, quiet for a moment, growled deeply.
“The ape, trained at a certain point, to unfasten the kangaroo-skin so that Doctor Ryder can wriggle out of it, can’t help,” he remarked. “Oh, yes,” to Millman’s question, “the ape is genuine, a well trained animal. The kangaroo—shall we help him?”
He walked over, and with a quick motion pointing out the laced arrangement of eyelets under an armpit—or forepaw—he dragged the lacing apart.
Revealed, it was seen by all that Doctor Ryder actually was in the skin, crouched down as the size of the animal compelled him to be so that he could barely get his forearms into the front paws.
The head, too small to hold his own cranium, was fixed almost in one position by supports, and eye-holes were cut lower in the skin, well concealed by the way the skin of the chest was sewed and the animal hair arranged.
“He rented it from the animal trainer, who sometimes put it on, and played the part of his own animal in the act if the kangaroo became too fractious or when it was ill in our varied climate as they travelled from theatre to theatre.”
Cramped, scowling, Doctor Ryder emerged.
“Very cleverly worked out,” he growled. “Yes, it is all true. I did plan to have your laboratory staff help me steal the Eye, just the way you have it worked out. And if it had not been for Roger, almost at the beginning thinking of developing a sound-film I had neglected to put out of commission, you might not have found out.”
“Probably we never would,” Grover agreed, and as bluecoats came tramping up the stairs, with a man who went at once to his animal, and with soothing words quieted it, released and removed it, the Tibetan lama and his cohorts came in.
“But what was the sound-clue?” asked Millman, “the fire-cry on a record supposed to be unused? I got that, you know. But it meant only a prank of Roger’s to me.”