IV 



It is night. I am now alone, sitting at the long 

 work-bench that runs the length of my laboratory. 

 The room is in half-darkness, except for a brilliant 

 spot of light cast upon the bench by the shaded 

 bulb at my elbow. A faint mist hovers within the 

 luminous cone — the last remaining traces of to- 

 bacco smoke from a pipe long since gone out. The 

 laboratory has been cleared of the organic litter of 

 the morning; not a trace of the once-seeming 

 shamble now shows, unless it may be in the notes 

 and the drawings I made of it, and the Thing here 

 just before me, the corpse standing stark on my 

 bench. 



As I had suspected, when I turned to the her- 

 ring-like fishes, the result was negative at best; 

 nothing of note was found in their bellies. In fact, 

 they were nearly empty when meeting their end; 

 indicating that they were pressed by hunger and 

 were searching the bottom for food. With regard 

 to the flounder, however, my larger hopes were 

 realized far fuller even than I had dared to antici- 

 pate. When the flat-fish was seized, it was in the 



[29] 



