Hardly had the door closed behind me when Mrs. Challenger rushed out of the dining room.
She was furious.
The little woman planted herself in front of her husband like an angry hen trying to stop a bulldog.
She had clearly seen me leave, but she hadn’t noticed that I had come back.
“You brute, George!” she shouted. “You’ve hurt that poor young man!”
Challenger pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
“Here he is. Perfectly safe behind me.”
She looked confused.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.”
“I assure you, madam, I’m quite all right.”
“He has a mark on his face! Look what you’ve done to him, George. You’re such a brute! Every week it’s the same thing—some scandal, some fight, someone laughing at you or hating you. I’ve had enough. This has to stop.”
“Dirty linen,” Challenger muttered.
“It’s hardly a secret!” she cried. “Do you honestly think the whole street—and half of London—doesn’t know what you’re like? Where is your dignity, George? You should have been a respected professor at a great university, with hundreds of students looking up to you. Where is your dignity?”
Challenger raised his eyebrows.
“And where is yours, my dear?”
“You push me too far. You’ve become nothing more than a common street fighter.”
“Be reasonable, Jessie.”
“A loud, violent bully!”
“That settles it. Penance stool!”
Before I could understand what he meant, Challenger bent down, picked up his wife, and placed her on a tall black marble pedestal in the corner of the hall.
It was at least seven feet high and so narrow that she could barely keep her balance.
She sat there stiffly, her feet hanging in the air, her face red with anger and fear.
I had never seen anything so ridiculous.
“Put me down!” she cried.
“Say please.”
“You brute! George, put me down this instant!”
“Come into the study, Mr. Malone.”
I stared at Mrs. Challenger.
“Really, sir—”
“Mr. Malone is pleading for you, Jessie. Say ‘please,’ and I’ll let you down.”
“Oh, you brute! Please! Please!”
Challenger lifted her down as casually as if she were a little bird.
“You really must control yourself, dear. Mr. Malone is a journalist. He’ll probably have the whole story in his newspaper tomorrow. He might even sell an extra dozen copies to our neighbors.”
He grinned.
“Perhaps the headline will be ‘Strange Story of High Society.’ You certainly felt rather high on that pedestal, didn’t you?”
Mrs. Challenger glared at him.
“And perhaps they’ll add a subtitle: ‘A Glimpse into a Most Unusual Household.’”
He turned toward me.
“Mr. Malone is a scavenger, of course. A journalist feeding on other people’s troubles. Porcus ex grege diaboli—a pig from the devil’s herd. That’s you, Malone, isn’t it?”
“You really are unbearable!” I snapped.
He threw back his head and roared with laughter.
“Soon you and my wife will form an alliance against me.”
He puffed out his enormous chest.
Then, just as suddenly, his voice became calm and dignified.
“But enough of this silly family quarrel, Mr. Malone. I asked you to come back for a much more serious reason.”
He put a huge hand on each of his wife’s shoulders.
“Go on, little woman. Don’t upset yourself. Everything you’ve said is true. I would probably be a better man if I followed your advice.”
He smiled.
“But then I wouldn’t quite be George Edward Challenger.”
“There are plenty of better men in the world, my dear. But there is only one G. E. C. You’ll have to make the best of him.”
With that, he gave her a loud kiss.
I found this even more embarrassing than his earlier violence.
“Now, Mr. Malone,” he said, suddenly formal again. “This way, if you please.”
We returned to the room we had left in such chaos about ten minutes earlier.
Challenger carefully closed the door behind us, pointed me toward an armchair, and pushed a cigar box under my nose.
“Real San Juan Colorado,” he said. “People as excitable as you are better off with a little narcotic.”
He watched me.
“Heavens! Don’t bite it. Cut it—and show some respect while you’re doing it.”
I cut the cigar.
“Now sit back and listen carefully. If you think of something to say, keep it to yourself until I give you a suitable opportunity.”
He settled himself in his chair.
“First, let us discuss why I allowed you to return after I had quite rightly thrown you out.”
He pushed his beard forward and stared at me as though daring me to disagree.
“The reason was your answer to that policeman. I detected in it a little evidence of common sense and good feeling—qualities I rarely associate with your profession.”
He paused.
“You admitted that the trouble had been partly your fault. That showed a certain ability to stand outside yourself and judge a situation objectively.”
He looked almost pleased.
“Until then, your entire profession had existed below the level of my intellectual attention. Your words suddenly lifted you above that level.”
He waved toward the small Japanese ashtray on the table.
“You may put your cigar ash there.”
He continued speaking in the grand style of a professor giving a lecture.
Then he suddenly turned his chair sideways.
All I could see was his tangled hair and one large red ear as he rummaged through the papers on his desk.
After a moment, he turned back with a battered little sketchbook in his hand.
“I am going to tell you about South America,” he said.
“No comments, please.”
He held up a finger.
“First, you must understand one thing. Nothing I tell you today is to be published or repeated publicly unless I give you my express permission.”
He stared at me.
“And, in all probability, I will never give you that permission. Is that clear?”
“It seems rather harsh,” I said. “Surely a careful account—”
He immediately put the sketchbook back on the table.
“That ends our conversation. I wish you a very good morning.”
“No, no!” I protested. “I accept your conditions.”
I sighed.
“I don’t seem to have much choice.”
“None at all,” he said.
“Very well. I give you my word.”
“Your word of honor?”
“Yes. My word of honor.”
He studied me suspiciously.
“After all, what do I know about your honor?”
I lost my temper.
“Upon my word, sir, you take extraordinary liberties! I’ve never been insulted like this in my life.”
Instead of being offended, he seemed fascinated.
“Round head,” he muttered. “Brachycephalic. Gray eyes. Black hair. Slightly Negroid features. Celtic, I presume?”
“I am Irish, sir.”
“Irish Irish?”
“Yes.”
“That explains it, of course.”
He settled back.
“Now, you have promised not to betray my confidence. I should tell you that what I am about to reveal will not be the whole story. But I am prepared to give you a few important details.”
He leaned forward.
“You may know that two years ago I traveled to South America.”
He smiled proudly.
“It was a journey that will one day be regarded as a landmark in scientific history.”
“My purpose was to test certain conclusions reached by Wallace and Bates. Their observations could only be properly confirmed by examining the same regions under similar conditions.”
He paused.
“Even without what happened afterward, the expedition would have been important.”
His eyes narrowed.
“But something happened there that opened an entirely new field of investigation.”
“You probably know—or perhaps, given the miserable state of modern education, you don’t know—that large parts of the Amazon region remain almost completely unexplored.”
“There are countless tributaries entering the Amazon, many of them still missing from accurate maps.”
“My purpose was to travel into one of these remote areas and study its animal life.”
He tapped the desk.
“My observations eventually supplied material for several chapters of what I consider the great work on zoology that will justify my life.”
He continued.
“On my way back, I spent a night in a small Indian village where one of these unknown tributaries meets the main river.”
“I will not tell you its name or exact location.”
“The people were Cucama Indians. Pleasant enough, but intellectually rather backward.”
He shrugged.
“I had treated several of them for illnesses during my journey upstream, and they had developed a high opinion of me.”
“So I was not surprised when they were waiting for me eagerly on my return.”
“They made me understand that someone urgently needed medical attention.”
“I followed their chief to one of the huts.”
His voice became quieter.
“But by the time I entered, the man was already dead.”
“I was surprised to discover that he wasn’t an Indian at all.”
“He was white—extremely white. His hair was almost completely blond, and he had some of the features of an albino.”
“The poor fellow was dressed in rags. He was extremely thin and looked as though he had suffered for months.”
“From what I could understand from the Indians, he was a complete stranger who had somehow stumbled out of the forest and reached their village in the final stages of exhaustion.”
“Beside his body was a small knapsack.”
“I searched through it.”
Challenger’s eyes suddenly became intense.
“There was a name written inside.”
“Maple White. Lake Avenue, Detroit, Michigan.”
He spoke the name with unusual respect.
“That is a name to which I shall always be willing to raise my hat.”
He smiled.
“When the final history of this discovery is written, Maple White’s name will stand beside my own.”
“The contents of his bag told me that he had been an artist and a poet.”
“There were scraps of poetry.”
He grimaced.
“I know very little about poetry, but even I could see that his verses were not particularly good.”
“There were also some ordinary paintings of river scenes, a box of paints, colored chalks, brushes, the curved bone you see on my desk, a book about moths and butterflies, a cheap revolver, and a few bullets.”
“That was almost everything.”
“He had either lost the rest of his equipment or had never possessed much in the first place.”
“Quite a strange American wanderer.”
Challenger paused.
“I was about to leave when I noticed something sticking out of his torn jacket.”
He lifted the battered sketchbook.
“It was this.”
“The book was already in terrible condition when I found it.”
He handled it almost reverently.
“I can assure you that I have treated it with the same respect I would give to a first edition of Shakespeare.”
He held it toward me.
“Now I want you to examine it carefully, page by page.”
He lit another cigar and leaned back.
His eyes watched my face closely, waiting to see what effect the evidence would have.
I opened the sketchbook expecting something extraordinary.
The first page was a disappointment.
It showed a fat man wearing a sailor’s pea coat.
Underneath was written: “Jimmy Colver on the Mail-boat.”
The next several pages contained little drawings of Indians and scenes from their daily lives.
Then I found a picture of a cheerful, overweight priest in a wide-brimmed hat sitting opposite a very thin European.
The caption read: “Lunch with Fra Cristofero at Rosario.”
There were several drawings of women and babies.
After that came a long series of animal sketches.
One showed a manatee resting on a sandbank.
Another showed turtles and their eggs.
Another showed a black agouti beneath a palm tree.
The final drawings were of long-snouted reptiles that looked extremely unpleasant.
I could not see anything extraordinary.
“Surely these are just crocodiles?” I asked.
“Alligators!” Challenger thundered. “Alligators! There are hardly any true crocodiles in South America.”
He began explaining the difference.
I stopped him.
“I mean that I can’t see anything unusual about them.”
I pointed to the drawings.
“Nothing here seems to justify all the excitement.”
He smiled.
“Turn the page.”
I did.
It showed a landscape painted roughly in color.
There was green vegetation in the foreground, rising toward a line of enormous dark-red cliffs.
The cliffs stretched across the entire background like a giant wall.
Their surfaces were strangely ridged, almost like the basalt formations I had seen before.
Near one end stood an isolated pyramid-shaped rock with a huge tree growing on top.
A narrow gap separated it from the main cliff.
Behind everything was a clear blue tropical sky.
A thin line of vegetation ran along the top of the cliffs.
“Well?” Challenger asked.
“It certainly looks unusual.”
I studied it.
“But I’m not a geologist. I can’t say whether it’s actually extraordinary.”
“Extraordinary?” he repeated.
His voice rose.
“It’s unique. It’s unbelievable. No one on earth has ever imagined anything like it.”
He leaned toward me.
“Now turn the next page.”
I did.
I immediately exclaimed.
The drawing showed the strangest creature I had ever seen.
It looked like something from a nightmare.
Its head resembled a giant bird’s head.
Its body was like an enormous swollen lizard.
Its long tail was covered with spikes pointing upward.
A tall, jagged ridge ran along its back.
Standing beside the monster was a tiny human figure.
Challenger rubbed his hands together.
“Well? What do you think?”
“It’s hideous.”
“Grotesque.”
He grinned.
“But why would the man draw such an animal?”
“Perhaps he’d been drinking bad gin.”
Challenger’s smile disappeared.
“Is that the best explanation you can offer?”
“Well, what explanation do you have?”
“The obvious one.”
He pointed at the drawing.
“The creature actually exists.”
“That drawing was made from life.”
I might have laughed, but I remembered what had happened to me in the hallway.
So I held my tongue.
“Of course,” I said politely.
I tried to humor him.
“I confess, though, that the little man interests me.”
I pointed to the figure.
“If he were an Indian, perhaps we could suppose he belonged to some unknown pygmy tribe. But he looks European. He’s wearing a sun hat.”
Challenger made a sound like an angry buffalo.
“You are approaching the absolute limit of stupidity.”
He shook his head.
“Cerebral paralysis! Mental inertia! You are teaching me new limits of human ignorance!”
I couldn’t help smiling.
There was no point getting angry with him.
If I became angry every time Challenger insulted me, I would never stop being angry.
“I only meant that the man looked unusually small,” I said.
Challenger leaned forward.
“You see that plant behind the creature?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose you thought it was a small flower?”
He jabbed his finger at the drawing.
“It’s a vegetable ivory palm. Those trees can reach fifty or sixty feet.”
He pointed at the little man.
“Do you understand now why the artist included him?”
“He couldn’t have stood beside that monster and survived long enough to draw it.”
“He added himself to show the scale.”
He held up his hand.
“Assume the man was over five feet tall. The tree behind him is ten times his height.”
He smiled triumphantly.
“That gives you a reasonable idea of the creature’s size.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.
“You mean the animal was really that enormous?”
I stared at the picture.
“Charing Cross Station would barely be large enough to use as a kennel for such a beast!”
Challenger nodded calmly.
“Allowing for artistic exaggeration, it was certainly a very large specimen.”
“But surely you can’t throw away everything humanity has learned about nature because of one drawing.”
I turned through the remaining pages.
There was nothing else.
“One drawing by a wandering American artist proves very little.”
“He might have been hallucinating from fever.”
“He might have taken drugs.”
“He might simply have invented the creature.”
“As a scientist, you can’t seriously defend such a conclusion.”
Challenger reached up and pulled a book from the shelf.
“This is a very good work by my distinguished friend Ray Lankester.”
He opened it.
“Look at this illustration.”
He found the page and handed it to me.
“This shows what scientists believe the Jurassic dinosaur Stegosaurus looked like.”
He pointed to the animal.
“Notice the hind leg. It alone is twice the height of a full-grown man.”
I looked at the picture.
Then I looked back at Maple White’s drawing.
I was startled.
The resemblance between the two creatures was undeniable.
“That is certainly remarkable,” I admitted.
“But you still won’t accept it as proof?”
“Not quite.”
I studied the picture again.
“It could be coincidence.”
“Or perhaps the American had seen a reconstruction like this somewhere and remembered it unconsciously.”
“If he was sick or delirious, such an image might have returned to his mind.”
“Very good,” Challenger said.
He sounded almost pleased.
“We can leave it there for the moment.”
“Now look at this bone.”
He handed me the curved bone he had mentioned earlier.
It was about six inches long and thicker than my thumb.
There was still a little dried cartilage attached to one end.
“What animal does that belong to?” he asked.
I examined it carefully.
I searched my memory for anything I had learned about anatomy.
“It might be a very thick human collarbone.”
Challenger dismissed the idea with a wave.
“The human collarbone is curved. This is straight.”
He pointed to the surface.
“And see this groove. A large tendon must have passed over it. A human collarbone doesn’t have such a structure.”
“Then I admit I don’t know what it is.”
“You needn’t be embarrassed.”
He smiled.
“I doubt the entire staff of the South Kensington Museum could identify it.”
He opened a small pill box and removed another bone.
It was tiny, about the size of a bean.
“Now look at this.”
He placed the small bone beside the larger one.
“This is a human bone.”
He pointed to the larger specimen.
“This is its equivalent in the unknown animal.”
He looked at me.
“That should give you some idea of the creature’s size.”
He tapped the cartilage.
“And this is not a fossil. The cartilage proves that the specimen is recent.”
“What do you say now?”
“Could it belong to an elephant?”
He recoiled as though I had struck him.
“Don’t mention elephants.”
“In South America, of all places!”
“Even in this age of public education, I shouldn’t have to explain such elementary matters.”
“All right,” I said. “Some other large South American animal. A tapir, perhaps?”
He stared at me.
“Young man, I know my profession.”
“This is not the bone of a tapir, nor of any other animal known to zoology.”
He leaned closer.
“It belongs to a very large, powerful, and probably extremely dangerous creature.”
“A creature that exists somewhere on this earth, but which science has not yet discovered.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You are still unconvinced?”
“I am certainly interested.”
“Good.”
His expression softened.
“Then perhaps there is still some hope for you.”
He settled back.
“I believe there is some reason buried inside that head of yours. We shall patiently try to uncover it.”
“Now we will leave the dead American and return to my own story.”
“You can imagine that I could not simply leave South America without investigating further.”
“The direction from which Maple White had come gave me a clue.”
“Even the local legends pointed in the same direction.”
“I discovered that stories about a strange and dangerous land were common among the tribes living along the river.”
“Have you ever heard of Curupuri?”
“Never.”
“Curupuri is supposed to be the spirit of the forest.”
“A terrible, evil thing that everyone avoids.”
“No one can tell you exactly what it looks like.”
“But the name itself is enough to frighten people throughout the Amazon.”
“The interesting thing was that all the tribes agreed about where Curupuri lived.”
Challenger’s eyes became serious.
“They pointed in exactly the same direction from which Maple White had come.”
“There was clearly something dangerous in that direction.”
“And I intended to find out what it was.”
“What did you do?”
By then I had stopped making jokes.
This huge, difficult man had somehow captured my full attention.
“I had great difficulty persuading the Indians to help me.”
“They were deeply afraid of that region.”
“Eventually, with gifts, persuasion, and, I admit, a few threats, I persuaded two men to guide me.”
“After many adventures—which I won’t bore you with—and after traveling a distance I will not reveal, we reached a region that had never been properly described or explored.”
“Except by my unfortunate predecessor.”
Challenger picked up another photograph.
“Look at this.”
It was a small photograph, roughly half a plate in size.
“The poor quality is not my fault.”
“When we were coming back down the river, our boat overturned.”
“The case containing the undeveloped film was smashed.”
“Almost every photograph was destroyed.”
He sighed.
“It was an irreparable loss.”
“This is one of the few that survived in a usable form.”
He looked at me sharply.
“Some people accused me of faking the photographs.”
“I have no patience for such nonsense.”
The photograph was indeed extremely poor.
The image was gray and blurred.
But as I studied it, the scene slowly became clear.
It showed an enormous line of cliffs stretching across the distance.
They were so high that they looked almost like a gigantic waterfall frozen in place.
A broad, forest-covered plain stretched across the foreground.
“I believe this is the same place as the landscape in the sketch,” I said.
“It is the same place.”
Challenger smiled.
“I found traces of Maple White’s camp nearby.”
He handed me another photograph.
“This one was taken closer.”
It was still badly damaged, but I could clearly see the isolated rock tower rising from the cliffs.
The great tree was still visible on its summit.
“I have no doubt,” I said.
“Good.”
He nodded.
“We have made progress.”
“Now look at the top of that rock.”
I examined it.
“Do you see anything?”
“An enormous tree.”
“And on the tree?”
I looked harder.
“A large bird.”
“It has a large beak. Perhaps a pelican.”
Challenger handed me a magnifying glass.
“Look again.”
I studied the image through the lens.
“Yes. There is definitely something standing on the tree.”
“It looks like a large bird.”
“I still think it might be a pelican.”
“I cannot congratulate you on your eyesight.”
“It was not a pelican.”
“It wasn’t even a bird.”
I looked at him.
“You mean you know what it was?”
“I do.”
He smiled.
“I shot that particular specimen.”
“That was the only absolute proof I managed to bring back with me.”
“You still have it?”
“I did.”
His face darkened.
“Unfortunately, it was lost in the same accident that destroyed the photographs.”
“I tried to hold on to it as the boat disappeared into the rapids.”
“I managed to keep one part of its wing.”
“I was unconscious when I finally reached the shore, but somehow the remains of the specimen were still with me.”
He opened a drawer.
“I now present that miserable fragment to you.”
He took out what appeared to be part of an enormous bat’s wing.
It was at least two feet long.
A curved bone ran along it, with a thin membrane hanging beneath.
“A gigantic bat?” I suggested.
“Absolutely not.”
He sounded offended.
“You live in a supposedly educated age, yet you know almost nothing about basic zoology.”
“A bird’s wing is actually a modified forearm.”
“A bat’s wing, however, is formed from three greatly elongated fingers with membrane stretched between them.”
He pointed at the specimen.
“This is not a forearm.”
“And as you can see, there is a single membrane attached to a single bone.”
“So it cannot be a bird’s wing.”
“It cannot be a bat’s wing either.”
He looked at me triumphantly.
“So what is it?”
My knowledge had reached its limit.
“I don’t know.”
“Excellent.”
He opened the same scientific book again.
“Here is a reconstruction of a dimorphodon, also called a pterodactyl.”
“It was a flying reptile from the Jurassic period.”
He pointed to the diagram showing its wing structure.
“Now compare that with the specimen in your hand.”
I did.
I stared at the two images.
There was no denying it.
The similarity was extraordinary.
For the first time, I was completely convinced.
The sketch.
The photographs.
Maple White’s story.
The strange bone.
And now this actual piece of a wing.
Taken together, the evidence was overwhelming.
“I believe you,” I said warmly.
“You were right.”
Challenger leaned back, his eyes half closed, clearly enjoying the moment.
“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever heard of!” I exclaimed.
My journalist’s excitement had suddenly taken over.
“This is colossal.”
“You’ve discovered an entire lost world.”
“You’re a Columbus of science.”
“I’m terribly sorry that I doubted you.”
“It was all so unbelievable that I couldn’t accept it at first.”
“But I understand evidence when I see it.”
“This ought to convince anyone.”
Challenger gave a satisfied little purr.
“And what did you do next, Professor?”
“It was the wet season, Mr. Malone.”
“My supplies were running out.”
“I explored part of the enormous cliff, but I couldn’t find any way to reach the top.”
“The isolated rock tower was easier to climb.”
“I’m something of a climber, so I managed to get about halfway up.”
“From there, I could see much more of the plateau above the cliffs.”
“It was enormous.”
“I could see no end to the green-covered cliffs in either direction.”
“Below us was a vast swampy jungle filled with snakes, insects, and deadly fevers.”
“It forms a natural barrier around the entire region.”
“Did you see any other signs of life?”
“No.”
“Not directly.”
“But during the week we camped beneath the cliffs, we heard some very strange sounds coming from above.”
“And what about the creature Maple White drew?”
“How do you explain that?”
“The simplest explanation is that he somehow reached the top and saw it there.”
“So we know that a route to the plateau exists.”
“We also know that it must be extremely difficult.”
“Otherwise those creatures would have descended from the plateau and spread into the surrounding country.”
“That seems obvious enough.”
“But how could creatures like that have survived there?”
“I don’t think the answer is particularly difficult.”
Challenger leaned forward.
“There is only one reasonable explanation.”
“South America is largely a continent of ancient granite.”
“But in this one remote area, at some point in the distant past, there must have been an enormous volcanic upheaval.”
“These cliffs are basaltic, which supports that theory.”
“Imagine an area perhaps as large as Sussex being lifted upward all at once.”
“Everything living there would have been carried up with it.”
“Then the area became surrounded by almost vertical cliffs so hard that ordinary erosion could not break them down.”
“The result would be extraordinary.”
“Normal competition between species would be disrupted.”
“The natural pressures that usually cause animals to disappear would no longer operate in the same way.”
“Creatures that should have vanished millions of years ago could survive there.”
“You’ll notice that both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus belong to the Jurassic period.”
“That means they are extremely ancient forms of life.”
“Those strange geographical conditions could have preserved them.”
“But if your evidence is this strong, why not simply show it to the scientific authorities?”
Challenger laughed bitterly.
“That was exactly what I thought when I returned.”
“But it didn’t work.”
“I was met with disbelief everywhere.”
“Some doubted me because they were simply stupid.”
“Others doubted me because they were jealous.”
He drew himself up proudly.
“It is not my nature to beg anyone to believe me.”
“Once my word had been questioned, I refused to keep producing evidence to satisfy them.”
“I stopped talking about the whole matter.”
“I came to hate the subject.”
“Then journalists like you started appearing at my home, disturbing my privacy.”
“And I am not good at responding calmly to such people.”
He gave me a meaningful look.
“I have a fiery temperament.”
“When provoked, I can become rather violent.”
I said nothing.
I was still nursing my injured eye.
“My wife has repeatedly told me that I must control myself.”
“I suppose she is right.”
“But I suspect any honorable man would feel much the same way under similar circumstances.”
He suddenly smiled.
“Tonight, however, I intend to demonstrate something interesting.”
“The power of self-control.”
He picked up a card from his desk and handed it to me.
“You see, Mr. Percival Waldron, a popular naturalist, is giving a lecture tonight at eight-thirty.”
“The title is ‘The Record of the Ages.’”
“The lecture is being held at the Zoological Institute’s Hall.”
“I have been invited to sit on the platform and propose the vote of thanks.”
His eyes gleamed.
“I intend to use the opportunity to mention a few things.”
“Nothing dramatic.”
“Nothing argumentative.”
“Just a few carefully chosen remarks that may make the audience curious enough to investigate the subject further.”
“I shall control myself completely.”
“I want to see whether restraint produces better results than anger.”
“And I can come?”
“Of course.”
His enormous face suddenly broke into a broad, friendly smile.
His cheeks puffed out like two red apples beneath his half-closed eyes and thick black beard.
“By all means, come.”
“It will be comforting to have at least one ally in the audience.”
“Even if that ally is ignorant of the subject and not especially intelligent.”
I ignored the insult.
“I expect the hall will be crowded.”
“Waldron is a complete charlatan, but he has a large popular following.”
He stood up.
“Now, Mr. Malone, I’ve already given you more of my time than I intended.”
“One individual must not be allowed to interfere with work meant for the whole world.”
“I shall be pleased to see you at the lecture tonight.”
He paused.
“And remember our agreement.”
“Nothing I have shown or told you is to appear publicly.”
“But what am I supposed to tell my editor?” I asked.
“Mr. McArdle will want to know what I’ve been doing.”
“Tell him whatever you like.”
Challenger smiled.
“You might mention that if he sends another reporter here to bother me, I shall pay him a visit with a riding whip.”
“But I leave it to your judgment to make sure none of this appears in print.”
He opened the door.
“Very good.”
“Zoological Institute’s Hall.”
“Eight-thirty tonight.”
That was my last impression of Professor Challenger as I left the house:
A huge man with red cheeks, a thick blue-black beard, and fierce, impatient eyes.