It shone in the shadowy grass, smeared with sea fire as if one
of the submarine monsters had crawled into the twilight garden; but
it had the head of a dead man.
"It's only luminous paint," said Burke. "Old Fisher's been having a
joke with that phosphorescent stuff of his."
"Seems to be meant for old Puggy"' observed Sir Howard. "Hits him
off very well."
With that they all laughed, except Jenkins. When they had all done,
he made a noise like the first effort of an animal to laugh, and
Horne Fisher suddenly strode across to him and said:
"Mr. Jenkins, I must speak to you at once in private."
It was by the little watercourse in the moors, on the slope under
the hanging rock, that March met his new friend Fisher, by
appointment, shortly after the ugly and almost grotesque scene that
had broken up the group in the garden.
"It was a monkey-trick of mine," observed Fisher, gloomily, "putting
phosphorus on the target; but the only chance to make him jump was
to give him the horrors suddenly. And when he saw the face he'd shot
at shining on the target he practiced on, all lit up with an
infernal light, he did jump. Quite enough for my own intellectual
satisfaction."
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand even now," said March, "exactly
what he did or why he did it.
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