At the constable’s order, the crew began to slowly but professionally roll up the tarps one at a time, exposing the death scene first.

“Where’d you get all these people, Red?”

“Oh, they’s mostly security staff from the Institute. The place is crawlin’ with ’em, so why not use ’em? The others doin’ the heavy work are mostly men from the town. Those security fellows fought like hell my bringin’ in the others, but when you see what we got you’ll understand why I didn’t feel right just leavin’ this all to the Institute boys.”

It didn’t take long to see what the old cop meant. One look at the tracks with their great stride told anyone that either this was the most elaborate hoax in criminal history or something was loose on the tiny island that couldn’t possibly be hidden.

“You made casts of the footprints?”

Red nodded. “Yeah. Wait’ll you see ’em, Gregory my boy. If that thing’s for real, I for one sure as hell don’t want to meet it.”

In spite of the sand and the disruptions and, of course, the weight of the tarp, it was clear from just looking at the things that the old boy was right. MacDonald got out his tape measure and discovered that the damned things were more than two feet long. He measured the stride, not once but at almost every point back to the cliff and found them very consistent. Whoever or whatever did this was very thorough.

Equally revealing was the impression it had made jumping from the top of the trail to the beach below. MacDonald examined it all and then stood up and shook his head. “Whatever it is, I’d put it at somewhere around fifteen feet tall and weighing maybe two or three tons. How the hell does it stand upright without a tail or some other counterbalance? There weren’t any drag marks around, were there. Red?”

“Nope. What you see, allowin’ for the necessaries, is what you got. Other than Sir Robert’s own footprints goin’ first to the beach and then to the water over there, and the footprints of the pair that found it all, there was nothin’ whatever on the beach but what you see. Of course, there’s a lot of prints now, but they was to lay the tarp and photograph the scene, and it’s pretty consistent.”