They found that he had, as Chatry had said, taken a human being, obviously of low mental development—possibly an asylum patient—and practically, by some devilish discovery, converted it into a human ape, endowed with the blood-lust of the tiger. But whether the fearful creature was capable of receiving and acting upon instructions, or whether Erckmann simply let it loose to follow its terrible instincts until the “homing” instinct brought it back they never learned.
Of Lockie, the police decided to make a clean sweep. The animals were shot and the half-dozen evil-looking foreign servants were paid off and sent to their homes, mostly in the wilder parts of Transylvania. They one and all refused to say a word. Whatever they were, they were at least faithful to their dead master.
Then, in the magnificent chemical laboratory with which the house was equipped, Dick, who found himself Renstoke’s sole executor, easily arranged an “accident.” Fire broke out, there was no help for miles around and in a couple of hours the ill-omened house was a heap of ashes. The Spectre of Lockie had been finally laid.
Chapter Seven.
The Peril of the Préfet.
It was a mystery of the City of Paris which engaged the trio—a secret that has never been told, though many enterprising newspapers have tried to fathom it. Here it is related for the first time.
On a gloomy mid-December morning the sensation-loving Parisians awoke to a new and eminently agreeable thrill. It was only last year and the occasion will be well remembered.
There had been trouble enough in the City of Light, which for once at any rate belied its name. A series of strikes had half-paralysed the capital. Coal and light were almost unobtainable; the public lamps remained unlit; at night the City of Pleasure was plunged in profound gloom. There were misery and wretchedness in the haunts of squalor and poverty which flanked the wealthier districts where, at a price, all things agreeable were as usual obtainable.