They examined the footprint with eager curiosity. Evidently the walker, or rather runner, had come fast down the hill, for the front part of the foot was driven deeply into the sand while the heel was only just showing.
“He must have been running,” said Renstoke, “and what kind of man could run over such a country as this?”
The question was natural, for the heather grew thick and deep round there and they had found walking difficult enough; running would have been out of the question for any of them.
They were puzzled by the strange footprint, but how little they guessed that it held the key to the terrible tragedy of Renstoke!
Late that night, Renstoke, Dick, and Jules sat yarning in the great old drawing-room at the Castle. The night was close and sultry, with a threat of thunder in the air, and the big French windows which opened on to the spreading lawn were flung wide.
They were discussing Erckmann.
“I didn’t like him,” said Renstoke, “though it is recognised that he possesses genius in a marked degree.”
“Oh! You’ve heard something then?” asked Dick quickly.
“Yes. The general public know nothing of him, but I hear that he has an amazing theory that it is possible, by an operation on the brain, to abolish almost entirely the ordinary characteristics of a man or an animal, and by the injection of an appropriate serum to substitute the mental, and to some extent the physical, characteristics of another species. He believes that you can, for instance, take a puppy-dog, operate on its brain, inject a serum prepared in some way from the brain of a monkey, and the puppy will grow up with the mentality and habits of a monkey and with its bodily characteristics so transformed that it can do many things—such, for instance, as climb a tree—which no dog could do. I believe he has actually succeeded in doing this!”
“How weird and extraordinary!” remarked Yvette.