“I could see nothing unusual.”
“Try the next page,” said he with a smile.
It was a full-page sketch of a landscape in colour… the kind of painting which an open-air artist takes as a guide to a future more elaborate effort. I could see high hills covered with light-green trees. Above the hills there were dark red cliffs. They looked like an unbroken wall. Near the cliffs there was a pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree. Behind it all, a blue tropical sky.
“Well?” he asked.
“It is no doubt a curious formation,” said I, “but I am not geologist enough to say that it is wonderful.”
“Wonderful!” he repeated. “It is unique. It is incredible. No one on earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility. Now the next.”
I turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise. There was a full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker. The head was like that of a bird, the body that of a large lizard. The tail was covered with sharp spikes. In front of this creature there was a small man, or dwarf, who stood looking at it.
“Well, what do you think of that?” cried the Professor, rubbing his hands with triumph.
“It is monstrous… grotesque.”
“But what made him draw such an animal?”
“Gin, I think.”
“Oh, that’s the best explanation you can give, is it?”
“Well, sir, what is yours?”
“The creature exists. That is actually sketched from the life.”
I should have laughed only that I remembered our Catharine-wheel down the passage.
“No doubt,” said I, “no doubt… But this tiny human figure puzzles me. If it were an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy race in America, but it is a European.”
“Look here!” he cried, “You see that plant behind the animal; I suppose you thought it was a flower? Well, it is a huge palm. He sketched himself to give a scale of heights.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Then you think the beast was so huge…”
I had turned over the leaves but there was nothing more in the book.
“…a single sketch by a wandering American artist. You can’t, as a man of science, defend such a position as that.”
For answer the Professor took a book down from a shelf.
“There is an illustration here which would interest you. Ah, yes, here it is! It is said: ’… Jurassic Dinosaur Stegosaurus. The leg is twice as tall as a full-grown man.’ Well, what do you think of that?”
He handed me the open book. I looked at the picture. In this animal of a dead world there was certainly a very great resemblance to the sketch of the unknown artist.
“Surely it might be a coincidence…”
“Very good,” said the Professor, “I will now ask you to look at this bone.” He handed over the one which he had already described as part of the dead man’s possessions. It was about six inches long, and thicker than my thumb.
“To what known creature does that bone belong?” asked the Professor.
I examined it.
“It might be a very thick human collar-bone,” I said.
“The human collar-bone is curved. This is straight.”
“Then I don’t know what it is.”
He took a little bone the size of a bean out of a pill-box.
“This human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold in your hand. That will give you some idea of the size of the creature. What do you say to that?”
“Maybe an elephant…”
“Don’t! Don’t talk of elephants in South America! It belongs to a very large, a very strong animal which exists upon the face of the earth. You are still unconvinced?”
