Затерянный мир / The Lost World - стр. 13

“Your evidence is conclusive. You have only to tell the world about it.”

“I can only tell you that I was met by incredulity, born partly of stupidity and partly of jealousy. It is not my nature, sir, to prove a fact if my word has been doubted. When men like yourself, who represent the foolish curiosity of the public, came to disturb my privacy I was unable to meet them with open arms. By nature I am fiery. I fear you may have remarked it.”

I touched my eye and was silent.

“Well, I invite you to be present at the exhibition.” Challenger handed me a card from his desk. “Mr. Percival Waldron, a naturalist of some popular repute, is to lecture at eight-thirty at the Zoological Institute’s Hall upon ’The Record of the Ages’. I have been specially invited. Maybe a few remarks may arouse the interest of the audience. We’ll see… By all means, come. It will be a comfort to me to know that I have one ally in the hall, however inefficient and ignorant of the subject. No public use is to be made of any of the material that I have given you.”

“But Mr. McArdle… my news editor… will want to know what I have done.”

“Tell him what you like. I leave it to you that nothing of all this appears in print. Very good. Then the Zoological Institute’s Hall at eight-thirty tonight.”

McArdle was at his post as usual.

“Well,” he cried, expectantly, “Don’t tell me that he attacked you.”

“We had a little difference at first.”

“What a man it is! What did you do?”

“Well, he became more reasonable and we had a chat. But I got nothing out of him… nothing for publication.”

“You got a black eye out of him, and that’s for publication. Mr. Malone, we must bring the man to his bearings. Just give me the material. I’ll show him up for the fraud he is.”

“I wouldn’t do that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is not a fraud at all.”

“You don’t mean to say you really believe this stuff about mammoths and mastodons?”

“I do believe he has got something new.”

I told him the Professor’s narrative in a few sentences.

“Well, Mr. Malone,” he said at last, “about this scientific meeting tonight. You’ll be there in any case, so you’ll just give us a pretty full report.”

That day I met Tarp Henry. He listened to my story with a sceptical smile on his face, and roared with laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.

“My dear friend, things don’t happen like that in real life. People don’t stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence. Leave that to the novelists. The man is full of tricks.”