"You black, treacherous scoundrel!" he said, very softly. "Do you think I am the sort of man to be thwarted by a faithless subordinate?"
He came a step nearer; his mouth still seemed to be forming words, but it was as if the human nature of the man had been so effaced as to preclude speech, and he stood chattering and gesticulating like some angry ape. Yet the resemblance roused in the doctor no sense of the ludicrous, but only a deep-seated horror at this thing which had doffed its humanity like a cloak and become part of the brute creation. He summoned all his courage to his aid--an empty effort, for he knew within himself that if this travesty of a man came but one step nearer he would, in spite of himself, simply turn tail and run from it.
But Mr. Francis came no nearer, nor did he speak again, and before the lapse of another five seconds he turned away and walked quickly down toward the corner of the square without looking back. The doctor followed him with his eye, and saw him hail a hansom at the end of Upper Grosvenor Street, get in, and drive northward. He himself stood there, his brain a tumult of bewildered conjecture, and did not see who it was rapidly approaching him till the figure was by him, and he heard his own name called.
"I got down as soon as I could stop the cab," said Geoffrey. "He has gone? Where? What has happened?"
"He knows I have betrayed him," said the doctor. "That is all. And for the moment he was no longer human. In this mood he will not stop to weigh risks or consequences. Before anything else we must find out where he is going--probably to his own flat, where we must watch him--possibly first to my house--ah! yes, for the metholycine. Thank God, that is harmless!"
There were no cabs about, so they started to walk northward in the direction Mr. Francis had taken. At the corner of Green Street they found a disengaged hansom, and drove to 32 Wimpole Street. Here the doctor got out.
"Drive on to his flat in Wigmore Street," he said to Geoffrey, "and ask the porter if he has come in. Then come back here."
"He came in a minute or two before me," he said. "He has kept his cab."
The doctor pointed to a row of bottles on a shelf in his cabinet.
"The metholycine is missing," he said. "He came here, where he is known to the servants, told the man he had instructions from me to take a certain bottle from my cases, and was allowed. I asked if he appeared in any way strange or excited. Not a bit of it; he had a smile and a joke as usual. Come on!"