And protruding
from its upper surface was a tiny, blood-red pebble, no bigger
than a good-sized shot.
Herold thrust the point of his spade under the stone, to lift it
up. Whereupon he gave a queer exclamation.
"Well, that's funny!" holding the stone up in front of us. "That
little thing's as heavy as--as--it's HEAVIER than lead!"
Sir Henry picked the stone off the spade. Immediately the material
crumbled in his hands, as though rotting, so that it left only the
small, red pebble intact. Sir Henry weighed this thoughtfully in
his palm, then without a word handed it around.
We all wondered at the pebble. It was most astonishingly heavy. As
I say, it was no bigger than a fair-sized shot, yet it was vastly
heavier.
Afterward we weighed it, upstairs, and found that the trifle
weighed over half a pound. Considering its very small bulk, this
worked out to be a specific gravity of 192.6 or almost ten times
as heavy as the same bulk of pure gold. And gold is heavy.
Inevitably we saw that there must be some connection between this
unprecedentedly heavy speck of material and that lighter-than-air
gem of mystery. For the time being we were careful to keep the two
apart. As for the unexplained footsteps, they were still slightly
audible, as the invisible creatures moved around the cellar.
At last we turned to go. I let the others lead the way. Thus I was
the last to approach the steps; and it was at that moment that I
felt something brush against my foot.
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