Police!!! | Page 7

under her breath. "To prove what they said they brought for my inspection a skull. And then two more skulls like the first one.
"Every skull had been painted with Spanish red; the coarse black hair still stuck to the scalps. And, behind, just over where the pituitary gland is situated, was a hollow, bony orbit--unmistakably the socket of a third eye!"
"W-where are those skulls?" demanded Kemper, in a voice not entirely under control.
"They wouldn't part with one of them. I tried every possible persuasion. On my own responsibility, and even before I communicated with Mr. Smith--" turning toward me, "--I offered them twenty thousand dollars for a single skull, staking my word of honour that the Bronx Museum would pay that sum.
"It was useless. Not only do the Seminoles refuse to part with one of those skulls, but I have also learned that I am the first person with a white skin who has ever even heard of their existence--so profoundly have these red men of the Everglades guarded their secret through centuries."
After a silence Kemper, rather pale, remarked:
"This is a most astonishing business, Miss Grey."
"What do you think about it?" I demanded. "Is it not worth while for us to explore Black Bayou?"
He nodded in a dazed sort of way, but his gaze remained riveted on the girl. Presently he said:
"Why does Miss Grey go?"
She turned in surprise:
"Why am I going? But it is my discovery--my contribution to science, isn't it?"
"Certainly!" we exclaimed warmly and in unison. And Kemper added: "I was only thinking of the dangers and hardships. Smith and I could do the actual work--"
"Oh!" she cried in quick protest, "I wouldn't miss one moment of the excitement, one pain, one pang! I love it! It would simply break my heart not to share every chance, hazard, danger of this expedition--every atom of hope, excitement, despair, uncertainty--and the ultimate success--the unsurpassable thrill of exultation in the final instant of triumph!"
She sprang to her feet in a flash of uncontrollable enthusiasm, and stood there, aglow with courage and resolution, making a highly agreeable picture in her apron and cuffs, the sea wind fluttering the bright tendrils of her hair under her dainty cap.
We got to our feet much impressed; and now absolutely convinced that there did exist, somewhere, descendants of prehistoric men in whom the third eye--placed in the back of the head for purposes of defensive observation--had not become obsolete and reduced to the traces which we know only as the pituitary body or pituitary gland.
Kemper and I were, of course, aware that in the insect world the ocelli served the same purpose that the degenerate pituitary body once served in the occiput of man.
As we three walked slowly back to the campfire, where our evening meal was now ready, Evelyn Grey, who walked between us, told us what she knew about the hunting of these three-eyed men by the Seminoles--how intense was the hatred of the Indians for these people, how murderously they behaved toward any one of them whom they could track down and catch.
"Tiger-tail told me," she went on, "that in all probability the strange race was nearing extinction, but that all had not yet been exterminated because now and then, when hunting along Black Bayou, traces of living three-eyed men were still found by him and his people.
"No later than last week Tiger-tail himself had startled one of these strange denizens of Black Bayou from a meal of fish; and had heard him leap through the bushes and plunge into the water. It appears that centuries of persecution have made these three-eyed men partly amphibious--that is, capable of filling their lungs with air and remaining under water almost as long as a turtle."
"That's impossible!" said Kemper bluntly.
"I thought so myself," she said with a smile, "until Tiger-tail told me a little more about them. He says that they can breathe through the pores of their skins; that their bodies are covered with a thick, silky hair, and that when they dive they carry down with them enough air to form a sort of skin over them, so that under water their bodies appear to be silver-plated."
"Good Lord!" faltered Kemper. "That is a little too much!"
"Yet," said I, "that is exactly what air-breathing water beetles do. The globules of air, clinging to the body-hairs, appear to silver-plate them; and they can remain below indefinitely, breathing through spiracles. Doubtless the skin pores of these men have taken on the character of spiracles."
"You know," he said in a curious, flat voice, which sounded like the tones of a partly stupified man, "this whole business is so grotesque--apparently so wildly absurd--that it's having a sort of nightmare effect on me." And, dropping his voice to a whisper close to my ear: "Good heavens!" he said. "Can you