be repeated."

"I am afraid," murmured Gatton dryly, "it will have to be."

The Eurasian fully opened his glittering black eyes, and fixing them
upon the speaker:

"It will not be repeated," he said harshly. "If I am misunderstood,
inform me."

His peremptory manner in the circumstances was extraordinary--uncanny.
As I had perceived in the first hour of our meeting, Dr. Damar Greefe
was a man possessing tremendous force of character and a pride of
intellect which clearly rendered him indifferent even of retribution.

"This point being settled," he continued, "be good enough, Inspector
Gatton, and"--he turned his eyes in my direction--"Mr. Addison, to
give me your undivided attention."

His manner was that of a lecturer--of a lecturer who takes it for
granted that his discourse is above the heads of his audience; but
when I say that the statement now made by this strange and terrible
man held Gatton and me spellbound I say no more than the truth.
Wearily, and more often than not having his eyes closed, Dr. Damar
Greefe commenced to unfold a story of nameless horrors--and save that
his harsh voice grew ever weaker and weaker, he displayed not the
slightest trace of emotion throughout his appalling revelations.

"I am informing you," he said, "of these facts concerning my inquiries
in the realm of teratology and the subjoined province of animism
because I know that my life-work upon this subject can never now be
completed. It having been necessary for me to destroy my papers and
those specimens which, at hideous cost, I had accumulated during
twenty years of travel through some of the most barbaric as well as
the most civilized parts of the world, this present brief verbal
account of the most important inquiry of all shall alone survive me.
You are privileged. Therefore listen:

"Two important facts contributed to my choice of a special study: the
social ostracism which very early in my professional career I found to
be my lot; and the fact that in myself I afforded a living example of
the _hybrid_. It has been said and not untruly that the Eurasian hates
his father and scorns his mother. Certainly, this unnatural passion is
reciprocated by the parent stock; for the Eurasian is barely
acknowledged by his dark brethren and hardly tolerated by the white.

"In spite of my qualifications--I am a Doctor of Medicine, a Master of
Arts, and hold other degrees of Leipzig, the Sorbonne, and
elsewhere--I recognized very e