Writhing half-free from his rending clutch, I drove every
straining knot of muscle in my body behind my fist that smashed like
a mallet against his jaw. There was a crack of bone, an involuntary
groan; blood spurted and the broken jaw dropped down. A bloody froth
covered the loose lips. Then for the first time those black, tearing
fingers faltered; I felt the great body that strained against mine
yield and sag. And with a wild-beast sob of gratified ferocity ebbing
from my pulped lips, my fingers at last met in his throat. Down on his back he went, with me on his breast. His failing hands
clawed at my wrists, weakly and more weakly. And I strangled him,
slowly, with no trick of jiu-jitsu or wrestling, but with sheer brute
strength, bending his head back and back between its shoulders until
the thick neck snapped like a rotten branch. In that drunkenness of battle, I did not know when he died, did not
know that it was death that had at last melted the iron thews of the
body beneath me. Reeling up numbly, I dazedly stamped on his breast and
head until the bones gave way under my heels, before I realized that
Tope Braxton was dead. Then I would have fallen and lapsed into insensibility, but for the
dizzy realization that my work was not yet ended. Groping with numb
hands I found the pistols, and reeled away through the pines, in the
direction in which my forest-bred instinct told me the cabin of Richard
Brent stood. With each step my tough recuperative powers asserted
themselves. Tope had not dragged me far. Following his jungle instincts, he had
merely hauled me off the trail into the deeper woods. A few steps
brought me to the trail, and I saw again the light of the cabin
gleaming through the pines. Braxton had not been lying then, about the
nature of that bomb. At least the soundless explosion had not destroyed
the cabin, for it stood as I had seen it last, apparently undamaged. Light poured, as before, from the shuttered windows, but from it came a
high-pitched inhuman laughter that froze the blood in my veins. It was
the same laughter that had mocked us beside the shadowed trail. _4. The Hound of Satan_


Crouching in the shadows, I circled the little clearing to reach a side
of the cabin which was without a window. In the thick darkness, with no
gleam of light to reveal me, I glided out from the trees and approached
the building. Near the wall I stumbled over something bulky and
yielding, and almost went to my knees, my heart shooting into my throat
with the fear of the noise betraying me. But the ghastly laughter still
belled horribly from inside the cabin, mingled with the whimpering of a
human voice. It was Ashley I had stumbled over, or rather his body. He lay on his
back, staring sightlessly upward, his head lolling back on the red ruin
of his neck. His throat had been torn out; from chin to collar it was a
great, gaping, ragged wound. His garments were slimy with blood. Slightly sickened, in spite of my experience with violent deaths, I
glided to the cabin wall and sought without success for a crevice
between the logs. The laughter had ceased in the cabin and that
frightful, inhuman voice was ringing out, making the nerves quiver in
the backs of my hands. With the same difficulty that I had experienced
before, I made out the words.

" ----And so they did not kill me, the black monks of Erlik. They
preferred a jest--a delicious jest, from their point of view. Merely
to kill me would be too kind; they thought it more humorous to play
with me awhile, as cats do with a mouse, and then send me back into
the world with a mark I could never erase--the brand of the hound. That's what they call it. And they did their job well, indeed. None
knows better than they how to _alter_ a man. Black magic? Bah! Those devils are the greatest scientists in the world. What little the
Western world knows about science has leaked out in little trickles
from those black mountains. "Those devils could conquer the world, if they wanted to. They know
things that no modern even dares to guess. They know more about
plastic surgery, for instance, than all the scientists of the world
put together. They understand glands, as no European or American
understands them; they know how to retard or exercise them, so as to
produce certain results--God, what results! Look at me! Look, damn you,
and go mad!" I glided about the cabin until I reached a window, and peered through a
crack in the shutter. Richard Brent lay on a divan in a room incongruously richly furnished
for that primitive setting. He was bound hand and foot; his face was
livid and scarcely human. In his starting eyes was the look of a man
who has at last come face to face with ultimate horror. Across the room
from him the girl, Gloria, was spread-eagled on a table, held helpless
with cords on her wrists and ankles. She was stark naked, her clothing
lying in scattered confusion on the floor as if they had been brutally
ripped from her. Her head was twisted about as she stared in wide-eyed
horror at the tall figure which dominated the scene. He stood with his back toward the window where I crouched, as he faced
Richard Brent. To all appearances this figure was human--the figure
of a tall, spare man in dark, close-fitting garments, with a sort of
cape hanging from his lean, wide shoulders. But at the sight a strange
trembling took hold of me, and I recognized at last the dread I had
felt since I first glimpsed that gaunt form on the shadowy trail above
the body of poor Jim Tike. There was something unnatural about the
figure, something not apparent as he stood there with his back to me,
yet an unmistakable suggestion of _abnormality_; and my feelings
were the dread and loathing that normal men naturally feel toward the
abnormal. "They made me the horror I am today, and then drove me forth," he was
yammering in his horrible mouthing voice. "But the _change_ was
not made in a day, or a month, or a year! They played with me, as
devils play with a screaming soul on the white-hot grids of hell! Time
and again I would have died, in spite of them, but I was upheld by
the thought of vengeance! Through the long black years, shot red with
torture and agony, I dreamed of the day when I would pay the debt I
owed to you, Richard Brent, you spawn of Satan's vilest gutter! "So at last the hunt began. When I reached New York I sent you
a photograph of my--my face, and a letter detailing what had
happened--and what _would_ happen. You fool, did you think you
could escape me? Do you think I would have warned you, if I were not
sure of my prey? I wanted you to suffer with the knowledge of your
doom; to live in terror, to flee and hide like a hunted wolf. You fled
and I hunted you, from coast to coast. You did temporarily give me the
slip when you came here, but it was inevitable that I should smell you
out.