Chick gasped. Of all that assemblage--Rhamdas, guards, the occupants
of the two thrones--he himself was the most astounded. Was the great
professor in actual fact the true Jarados? If not, how explain this
miracle? But if he were, how to explain the duality, the identity?
Surely, it could not be sheer chance!
Fortunately for Chick, it was dark. All eyes were fixed on the trim
figure which occupied the space of the clover-leaf on the rear wall.
Except for Chick's strangled gasp, there was only the hushed silence of
reverence, deep and impressive.
Then another dot appeared. From its position, Watson took it to come
from another leaf of the clover; another light approaching out of the
void and cutting through the blackness exactly as the first had come.
It grew and spread until it had filled the whole leaf; then, again
the bursting of the flare, the diminishing of the light, and its
disappearance in a thin rim at the edge. And this time there was
revealed--
A handsome brown-haired DOG.
Watson of course, could not understand. The silence held; he could feel
the Rhamda Geos at his side, and hear him murmur something which, in
itself, was quite unintelligible:
“The four-footed one! The call to humility, sacrifice, and
unselfishness! The four-footed one!”
That was all. It was a shaggy shepherd dog, with a pointed nose and one
ear cocked up and the other down, very wisely inquisitive. Chick had
seen similar dogs many times, but he could not account for this one;
certainly not in such a place. What had it to do with the Jarados?
Still the darkness. It gave him a chance to think. He wondered, rapidly,
how he could link up such a creature with his description of the
Jarados. What could be the purpose of a canine in occult philosophy? Or,
was the whole thing, after all, mere blundering chance?
This is what bothered Chick. He did not know how to adjust himself;
life, place, sequence, were all out of order. Until he could gather
exact data, he must trust to intuition as before.
The two pictures vanished simultaneously. Down came the black waves from
the windows, gradually, and in a moment the room was once more flooded
with that mellow radiance. The Rhamda Geos stepped forward as a murmur
of awed approval arose from the assembly. There was no applause. One
does not applaud the miraculous. The Geos took his hand.
“It is proven!” he declared. Then, to the Rhamdas: “Is there any
question, my brothers?”
But no word came from the floor. Seemingly superstition had triumphed
over all else. The men of learning turned none but reverent faces toward
Watson.
He forebore to glance at the Bar Senestro. Despite the triumph he
was apprehensive of the princes's keen genius. An agnostic is seldom
converted by what could be explained away as mere coincidence. Moreover,
as it ultimately appeared, the Bar now had more than one reason for
antagonising the man who claimed to be the professor's prospective
son-in-law.
“Is there any question?” repeated Rhamda Geos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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