locomotion were
inconsiderable trifles. Science had made bewildering strides in many
directions during recent decades, but this thing seemed to belong to
the domain of miracle rather than to scientific achievement.

"And do you really ask us to believe," Sir Wilfrid was saying, "that
you have discovered a means for instructing animals in the art of human
speech, and that dear old Tobermory has proved your first successful
pupil?"

"It is a problem at which I have worked for the last seventeen years,"
said Mr. Appin, "but only during the last eight or nine months have I
been rewarded with glimmerings of success. Of course I have
experimented with thousands of animals, but latterly only with cats,
those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so
marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly
developed feral instincts. Here and there among cats one comes across
an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of
human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobermory a week ago
I saw at once that I was in contact with a 'Beyond-cat' of
extraordinary intelligence. I had gone far along the road to success
in recent experiments; with Tobermory, as you call him, I have reached
the goal."

Mr. Appin concluded his remarkable statement in a voice which he strove
to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said "Rats," though
Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked
those rodents of disbelief.

"And do you mean to say," asked Miss Resker, after a slight pause,
"that you have taught Tobermory to say and understand easy sentences of
one syllable?"

"My dear Miss Resker," said the wonderworker patiently, "one teaches
little children and savages and backward adults in that piecemeal
fashion; when one has once solved the problem of making a beginning
with an animal of highly developed intelligence one has no need for
those halting methods. Tobermory can speak our language with perfect
correctness."

This time Clovis very distinctly said, "Beyond-rats!" Sir Wilfrid was
more polite, but equally sceptical.

"Hadn't we better have the cat in and judge for ourselves?" suggested
Lady Blemley.

Sir Wilfrid went in search of the animal, and the company settled
themselves down to the languid expectation of witnessing some more or
less adroit drawing-room ventriloquism.

In a minute Sir Wilfrid was back in the room, his face white beneath