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When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains — however improbable — must be the truth.

We were not the only human hunters upon the Plateau.

The cave man spied on the predators from the high jungle branches, watching them with a cold fascination. Caught too far away from his cave while in pursuit of food, he resigned himself to spending the terrible black night in the comparative security of the trees. He’d been munching on tree lizards when he first heard the uproar of the ape-men, rival hunter-scavengers, always dangerous in numbers. The cave man furtively moved to investigate from the gloom of the branches with the practiced ease of a gibbon.

He’d arrived in time to witness their unearthly deaths, almost the entire clan, slaughtered as if by a phantom killer. The ape-men had simply dropped dead. Most of them didn’t even have time to scream. Their intended prey, a burly old man and a tall, radiant-haired young woman, seemed as perplexed as the cave man himself. Then, from among the shielding high branches, he caught sight of the executioners as they skulked away into the shadows among the giant ferns.

Interestingly, the killers were only men.

Something more than instinct assured the cave man that these three new invaders would murder him, too, if given the chance. There was a feral, cruel press to their features. Even in the darkness their evil nature was obvious. He didn’t take more than an instant to decide to alter the odds of survival to his favor.

The cave man’s spear and stone-headed club expertly found their targets, and two of the villains fell dead almost without a sound. Their older leader, more experienced and mercurial, escaped wraithlike into the jungle.

A rare glint of humor brightened his deep-set hostile eyes and the cave man allowed himself a rare chuckle of amusement.

He was looking forward to tomorrow.

The hot, humid dawn couldn’t come soon enough. Hardly surprising that none of us slept.

Lord Roxton held his rifle ready in a steely vigil, while Jessica and Holmes performed a grotesque firelight autopsy on one of the dead subhumans. As for myself, I stood guard against whatever other horrors lurked in the maze of the jungle, puzzling fruitlessly over the inexplicable events of the night, and taking some small comfort in the weight of the high-powered rifle in my arms.

The first morning light had barely touched the damp mossy earth of the Plateau when I discovered Sherlock Holmes upon his hands and knees in the slime, intensely studying a boulder-heaped area about sixty yards from the massacre of the ape-men. He was there such a significant length of time, searching and researching, that Jessica and Lord Roxton anxiously sought us out.

“There were three of them, Watson,” he refrained from glancing up, still scrutinizing the ground with his lens. “All Londoners, I’ll wager, from the make of these square-toed boots. Two of them are young and very athletic, skilled mountaineers, no doubt. The other is quite a bit older and, although quite dependent on them, appears to be the leader. We really must remain at our most vigilant now.”

Lord Roxton bent to one knee, nodding appreciatively.

“I’ll be damned,” he smiled, suddenly more himself again.

Jessica also inspected the tracks. She admirably hid her aching heart.

“I’d hoped for a moment … but, no. None of these footprints are nearly large enough to belong to my father. Even so, this is an extraordinary circumstance, Mr. Holmes!”

Sherlock Holmes sprang to his feet. The keen fire of the chase burned again in his eyes, much like in the old days. I could tell he was well satisfied with himself. For me, the mystery had merely grown murkier.

“Holmes,” I was struggling to make sense of it, “do these mysterious saviours of ours have anything to do with your comment that we’d been followed since leaving London?”

We accompanied Holmes as he dashed back over the spongy terrain, to the ape-men killing ground. He minutely examined several of the great tree