"She would," said I.
"Tee--hee!" he giggled; "Wouldn"t it be funny to plant something phony on her--"
I waved my arms rather gracefully in my excitement:
"That is the germ of an idea!" I said. "If we could plant something--something--far away from here--very far away--if we could bury something--like the Cardiff Giant--"
"Hundreds and hundreds of miles away!"
"Thousands!" I insisted, enthusiastically.
"Tee-hee! In Tasmania, for example! Maybe a Tasmanian Devil might acquire her!"
"There exists a gnat," said I, "in Borneo--_Gnatus soporificus_--and when this tiny gnat stings people they never entirely wake up. It"s really rather a pleasurable catastrophe, I understand. Life becomes one endless cat-nap--one delightful siesta, with intervals for light nourishment.... She--ah--could sit very comfortably in some pleasant retreat and rock in a rocking-chair and doze quite happily through the years to come.... And from your description of her I should say that the Soldiers" Home might receive her."
"It won"t do," he said, gloomily.
"Why? Is it too much like crime?"
"Oh not at all. Only if she went to Borneo she"d be sure to take a mosquito-bar with her."
In the depressed silence which ensued Dr. Fooss suddenly made several Futurist observations through his nose with monotonous but authoritative regularity. I tried to catch his meaning and his eye. The one remained cryptic, the other shut.
Lezard sat thinking very hard. And as I fidgetted in my chair, fiddling nervously with various objects lying on my desk I chanced to pick up a letter from the pile of still unopened mail at my elbow.
Still pondering on Professor Bottomly"s proposed destruction, I turned the letter over idly and my preoccupied gaze rested on the postmark.
After a moment I leaned forward and examined it more attentively. The letter directed to me was postmarked Fort Carcajou, Cook"s Peninsula, Baffin Land; and now I recalled the handwriting, having already seen it three or four times within the last month or so.
"Lezard," I said, "that lunatic trapper from Baffin Land has written to me again. What do you suppose is the matter with him? Is he just plain crazy or does he think he can be funny with me?"
Lezard gazed at me absently. Then, all at once a gleam of savage interest lighted his somewhat solemn features.
"Read the letter to me," he said, with an evil smile which instantly animated my own latent imagination. And immediately it occurred to me that perhaps, in the humble letter from the wilds of Baffin Land, which I was now opening with eager and unsteady fingers, might lie concealed the professional undoing of Professor Jane Bottomly, and the only hope of my own ultimate and scientific salvation.
The room became hideously still as I unfolded the pencil-scrawled sheets of cheap, ruled letter paper.
Dr. Fooss opened his eyes, looked at me, made porcine sounds indicative of personal well-being, relighted his pipe, and disposed himself to listen. But just as I was about to begin, Lezard suddenly laid his forefinger across his lips conjuring us to densest silence.
For a moment or two I heard nothing except the buzzing of flies. Then I stole a startled glance at my door. It was opening slowly, almost imperceptibly.
But it did not open very far--just a crack remained. Then, listening with all our might, we heard the cautiously suppressed breathing of somebody in the hallway just outside of my door.
Lezard turned and cast at me a glance of horrified intelligence. In dumb pantomime he outlined in the air, with one hand, the large and feminine amplification of his own person, conveying to us the certainty of his suspicions concerning the unseen eavesdropper.
We nodded. We understood perfectly that _she_ was out there prepared to listen to every word we uttered.
A flicker of ferocious joy disturbed Lezard"s otherwise innocuous features; he winked horribly at Dr. Fooss and at me, and uttered a faint click with his teeth and tongue like the snap of a closing trap.
"Gentlemen," he said, in the guarded yet excited voice of a man who is confident of not being overheard, "the matter under discussion admits of only one interpretation: a discovery--perhaps the most vitally important discovery of all the centuries--is imminent.
"Secrecy is imperative; the scientific glory is to be shared by us alone, and there is enough of glory to go around.
"Mr. Chairman, I move that epoch-making letter be read aloud!"
"I second dot motion!" said Dr. Fooss, winking so violently at me that his gla.s.ses wabbled.
"Gentlemen," said I, "it has been moved and seconded that this epoch-making letter be read aloud. All those in favor will kindly say "aye.""
"Aye! Aye!" they exclaimed, fairly wriggling in their furtive joy.
"The contrary-minded will kindly emit the usual negation," I went on.... "It seems to be carried.... It _is_ carried. The chairman will proceed to the reading of the epoch-making letter."
I quietly lighted a five-cent cigar, unfolded the letter and read aloud:
"Joneses Shack,
Golden Glacier, Cook"s Peninsula, Baffin Land,
March 15, 1915.
"Professor, Dear Sir:
"I already wrote you three times no answer having been rec"d perhaps you think I"m kiddin" you"re a dam" liar I ain"t.
"Hoping to tempt you to come I will hereby tell you more"n I told you in my other letters, the terminal moraine of this here Golden Glacier finishes into a marsh, nothing to see for miles excep" frozen tussock and mud and all flat as h.e.l.l for fifty miles which is where I am trappin" it for mink and otter and now ready to go back to Fort Carcajou. i told you what I seen stickin" in under this here marsh, where anything sticks out the wolves have eat it, but most of them there ellerphants is in under the ice and mud too far for the wolves to git "em.
"i ain"t kiddin" you, there is a whole herd of furry ellerphants in the marsh like as they were stuck there and all lay down and was drownded like. Some has tusks and some hasn"t. Two ellerphants stuck out of the ice, I eat onto one, the meat was good and sweet and joosy, the d.a.m.n wolves eat it up that night, I had cut stakes and rost for three months though and am eating off it yet.
"Thinking as how ellerphants and all like that is your graft, I being a keeper in the Mouse House once in the Bronx and seein" you nosin"
around like you was full of scientific thinks, it comes to me to write you and put you next.
"If you say so I"ll wait here and help you with them ellerphants.
Livin" wages is all I ask also eleven thousand dollars for tippin" you wise. I won"t tell n.o.body till I hear from you. I"m hones" you can trus" me. Write me to Fort Carcajou if you mean bizness. So no more respectfully,
James Skaw."
When I finished reading I cautiously glanced at the door, and, finding it still on the crack, turned and smiled subtly upon Lezard and Fooss.
In their slowly spreading grins I saw they agreed with me that somebody, signing himself James Skaw, was still trying to hoax the Great Zoological Society of Bronx Park.
"Gentlemen," I said aloud, injecting innocent enthusiasm into my voice, "this secret expedition to Baffin Land which we three are about to organise is destined to be without doubt the most scientifically prolific field expedition ever organised by man.
"Imagine an entire herd of mammoths preserved in mud and ice through all these thousands of years!
"Gentlemen, no discovery ever made has even remotely approached in importance the discovery made by this simple, illiterate trapper, James Skaw."
"I thought," protested Lezard, "that _we_ are to be announced as the discoverers."