I
wheeled around and saw her rushing like mad out of the room. _Then I
saw the picture._'

       *       *       *       *       *

"Madness flared up in the boy's eyes again as he got to this place, and
I thought for a minute he was going to spring at me with his machete. But after a pause he partly steadied himself. "'O God--that thing! Don't ever look at it! Burn it with the hangings
around it and throw the ashes into the river! Marsh knew--and was
warning me. He knew what it was--what that woman--that leopardess, or
gorgon, or lamia, or whatever she was--actually represented. He'd tried
to hint to me ever since I met her in his Paris studio, but it couldn't
be told in words. I thought they all wronged her when they whispered
horrors about her, but this picture has caught the whole secret--the
whole monstrous background! "'God, but Frank is an artist! That thing is the greatest piece of work
any living soul has produced since Rembrandt! It's a crime to burn
it, but it would be a greater crime to let it exist--just as it would
have been an abhorrent sin to let that she-demon exist any longer. The
minute I saw it I understood what she was, and what part she played
in the frightful secret that has come down from the days of Cthulhu
and the Elder Ones--the secret that was nearly wiped out when Atlantis
sunk, but that kept half alive in hidden traditions and allegorical
myths and furtive, midnight cult-practises. She was the real thing. It
wasn't any fake. It would have been merciful if it had been a fake. It
was the old, hideous shadow that philosophers never dared mention--the
thing hinted of in the _Necronomicon_ and symbolized in the Easter
Island colossi. "'She thought we couldn't see through--that the false front would
hold till we had bartered away our immortal souls. And she was half
right--she'd have got me in the end. She was only--waiting. But
Frank--good old Frank--was too much for her. _He knew what it all
meant, and painted it._ I don't wonder she shrieked and ran off when
she saw it. It wasn't quite done, but God knows _enough was there_. "'Then I knew I'd got to kill her--kill her, and everything connected
with her. It was a taint that wholesome human blood couldn't bear. There was something else, too--but you'll never know that if you burn
the picture without looking. I staggered down to her room with this
machete that I got off the wall here, leaving Frank still knocked out. He was breathing, though, and I knew and thanked heaven that I hadn't
killed him. "'I found her in front of the mirror braiding that accursed hair. She
turned on me like a wild beast, and began spitting out her hatred of
Marsh. The fact that she'd been in love with him (and I knew she had)
only made it worse. For a minute I couldn't move, and she came within
an ace of completely hypnotizing me. Then I thought of the picture,
and the spell broke. She saw the breaking in my eyes, and must have
noticed the machete too. I never saw anything but a wild jungle
beast look as she did then. She sprang for me with claws out like a
leopard's, but I was too quick. I swung the machete, and it was all
over.' "Denis had to stop again there, and I saw the perspiration running down
his forehead through the spattered blood. But in a moment he hoarsely
resumed. "'I said it was all over--but God! some of it had only just begun! I
felt I had fought the legions of Satan, and put my foot on the back
of the thing I had annihilated. _Then I saw that blasphemous braid of
coarse black hair began to twist and squirm of itself._

"'I might have known it. It was all in the old tales. That damnable
hair had a life of its own, that couldn't be ended by killing the
creature herself. I knew I'd have to burn it, so I started to hack it
off with the machete. God, but it was devilish work! Tough--like iron
wires--but I managed to do it. And it was loathsome the way the big
braid writhed and struggled in my grasp. "'About the time I had the last strand cut or pulled off I heard the
eldritch wailing from behind the house. It's still going, off and on. I don't know what it is, but it must be something springing from this
hellish business. It half seems like something I ought to know but
can't quite place. It got my nerves the first time I heard it, and I
dropped the severed braid in my fright. Then I got a worse fright,
for in another second the braid had turned on me and began to strike
venomously with one of its ends which had knotted itself up like a
sort of grotesque head. I struck out with the machete, and it turned
away. Then, when I had my breath again, I saw that the monstrous thing
was crawling along the floor by itself like a great black snake. I
couldn't do anything for a while, but when it vanished through the door
I managed to pull myself together and stumble after it. I could follow
the broad, bloody trail, and I saw it led upstairs. It brought me
here--and may heaven curse me if I didn't see it through the doorway,
striking at poor dazed Marsh like a maddened rattler as it had struck
at me, finally coiling around him as a python would. He had begun to
come to, but that abominable serpent thing got him before he was on
his feet. I knew that all of that woman's hatred was behind it, but
I hadn't the power to pull it off. I tried, but it was too much for
me. Even the machete was no good--I couldn't swing it freely or it
would have slashed Frank to pieces. So I saw those monstrous coils
tighten--saw poor Frank crushed to death before my eyes--and all the
time that awful faint howling came from somewhere beyond the fields. [Illustration: "I saw those monstrous coils tighten--saw poor Frank
crushed to death before my eyes."] "'That's all. I pulled the velvet cloth over the picture, and I hope
it'll never be lifted. The thing must be burnt. I couldn't pry the
coils off poor, dead Frank--they clung to him like a leech, and seemed
to have lost their motion altogether. It's as if that snaky rope of
hair had a kind of perverse fondness for the man it killed--it's
clinging to him--embracing him. You'll have to burn poor Frank with
it--but for God's sake don't forget to see it in ashes! That and the
picture. They must both go. The safety of the world demands that they
go!' *       *       *       *       *

"Denis might have whispered more, but a fresh burst of distant wailing
cut us short. For the first time we knew what it was, for a westerly
veering wind brought articulate words at last. We ought to have known
long before, since sounds much like it had often come from the same
source. It was wrinkled Sophonisba, the ancient Zulu witchwoman who
had fawned on Marceline, keening from her cabin in a way which crowned
the horrors of this nightmare tragedy. We could both hear some of the
things she howled, and knew that secret and primordial bonds linked
this savage sorceress with that other inheritor of Elder secrets who
had just been extirpated.