Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters Read Online Free Page B

out. The person who kept the log was Spencer, the chap we’re going to visit.’
    Dr Meredith stopped at the door to a private ward. ‘I take it you know what happened to this patient?’
    Liz said: ‘His friend had an accident in the caves and was killed.’
    ‘It’s rather more peculiar than that,’ said Dr Meredith. ‘Still, you’d better see for yourself.’
    Meredith opened the door and they went into a small, windowless private ward with one bed, a washbasin, and as always the faint hum of the air-conditioning. The bed was ruffled but empty.
    ‘Where’s the patient?’ Liz asked.
    Meredith had already crossed to the other side of the bed. ‘Down here,’ he said.
    The Doctor and Liz went round the bed to see where Meredith was pointing. The young man, Spencer, was squatting on the floor, crouching against the wall. Using a felt-tipped pen, he was drawing on the wall, putting the final touches to a picture of a sabre-toothed tiger. There were many other pictures drawn on the wall – buffaloes of a type extinct many thousands of years ago, mammoth elephants covered in fur, and strange birds with scales instead of feathers. In among the drawings of pre-historic animals were pictures of men-like figures, except different from men they had no visible ears and there was a third eye in the forehead. The Doctor knelt down and examined the drawings with interest, while Spencer now sat back on his haunches and grinned like a very small child pleased with his own drawings. Then the Doctor straightened up.
    ‘How long has he been like this?’ he asked.
    ‘Ever since he was brought in here,’ said Meredith. ‘At first he was violent, and tried to throttle me. Then I realised all he wanted was something to draw on the walls with. So I gave him that pen. He’s been as good as gold since then.’
    ‘Doctor,’ said Liz, ‘aren’t those drawings like the ones at Lascaux?’ Liz had once visited the famous caves at Lascaux in southwest France. Those French caves had been discovered by four schoolboys back in 1942. They were playing a hide-and-seek game, and one of them fell into a deep hole in the ground. He called to the others that he was in some sort of cave, so they scrambled down to see. To their amazement, they found themselves surrounded by drawings on the cave’s walls – drawings of animals and hunters made by some Stone Age artist tens of thousands of years ago. The French government opened up the caves so that scientists, and later tourists, could see the remarkable wall drawings.
    The Doctor nodded in agreement, then turned to Spencer and pointed at one of the strange human-like figures in amongst the animals. ‘What’s this one, old chap?’ he said in a kindly voice.
    Spencer looked where the Doctor was pointing. Then with wild eyes and a groan like a stricken animal, he leapt up from the floor and tried to grab the Doctor’s throat. As the Doctor grappled with Spencer, Dr Meredith jumped back in alarm. ‘I’ll get the guards,’ he shouted, and made to open the door. But already the Doctor had Spencer’s wrists held in a firm grip.
    ‘It’s all right, old man,’ said the Doctor. ‘Calm down. No one is going to hurt you.’
    Just as suddenly as he attacked the Doctor, Spencer slumped back on the floor, cringing in a corner. Dr Meredith tried to apologise for his patient. ‘I’m terribly sorry about that. I thought we had quietened him down over the last couple of days.’

    As they left the private ward, the Doctor turned to Dr Meredith and said, ‘Tell me about the other man, Davis, who was killed in the caves. Did you see his body afterwards?’
    ‘Naturally,’ said Dr Meredith. ‘They were late getting back from their pot-holing, so we sent in a search party in case they were in trouble. When they found Davis’s body, they sent for me immediately.’
    ‘What had killed him?’ asked the Doctor. ‘I fall of rock?’
    Dr Meredith rubbed his chin. ‘I suppose it might have been