“You mean that even if the Thing had been breathing in your face it is doubtful if you would have known it?”
“Yes.”
“Did this breathing sound or feel like the breathing of a man?”
“No; the Thing’s breath was quick and jerky and as cold as ice.”
“Cold?” cried Peret, leaping to his feet.
He had been sitting back in his chair in an attitude of dejection, staring at a blank space on the wall. He had, with one ear, however, been drinking in every word of the conversation, and now he rose from his chair with such suddenness that he all but upset the little finger-print expert standing in front of him.
“Yes, cold,” repeated Deweese, the perspiration dripping from his brow, “cold and clammy.”
“Dame!” cried the Frenchman, breathing on his hand as if to test the temperature of his breath. “Think well, my friend, of what you are saying. The breath of living things is warm. Perhaps it was not the breathing of a monster that you heard. It may have been—.” He hesitated, and then, at a loss, stopped.
“There was no mistaking the—the thing I felt on my face,” rejoined the artist grimly. “Except for the fact that it was cold and spasmodic it was like the breathing of a man.”
“Like the breathing of a man choking on a piece of ice?” suggested the coroner.