I say "prowled," and I mean just that. He walked like a big forest cat, or, rather, like a gorilla, investigating a likely meal awaiting the kill. When he stood by me, I felt up and down my spine the shiver of apprehension, of sheer horror, that I had known before in his proximity. When he turned me on my back, and his powerful hands, with their smooth fingers and polished nails, explored my muscles, I could have screamed with terror. I twitched at his touch, with an involuntary exclamation of repugnance. He snarled, and his fingers pressed on a nerve of the upper arm, with a force that made me faint.
But almost at once he flung me from him, and walked across to Hugh, who met him unflinchingly.
"I take it, Monsieur Toutou," said Hugh, "that the twenty-four hours are up."
Toutou stood over him, with that peculiarly animal, bent-kneed posture of meditated attack, arms flexed forward.
"Not quite," he answered in the throaty, guttural voice that I always identified with him. "But we are tired of waiting."
He swooped and snatched Hugh into his arms, just as a gorilla might, squeezing ferociously. Hugh's face showed above his shoulder, white and beaded with perspiration. I thought the fiend intended to crush Hugh's ribs, but he ceased as suddenly as he had begun and tossed his victim down on the floor again.
"You shall come last," he growled. "First, you shall see your friends suffer."
Hugh was too weak from the handling he had just experienced and the shock of his fall to see what happened next, but I did. Toutou leaped on Nikka with one tigerish spring, lifting him to his feet and propping him against the wall. Then he prodded Nikka from head to foot, testing out muscles and joints, all the time growling in his throat. He did not hurt him, simply felt of him as though to determine the parts of his body which would be juiciest.
Nikka's face showed revulsion, but no fear.
"Do you eat men, Toutou?" he gibed.