There, in the semi-darkness between two windows, a small huddle writhed in hideous combat. Rooted to the floor, Douglas stood watching its contortions. Gradually the writhing movements diminished. But the low growl continued, and from the spot glared the fiery eyes of a cat which had made its kill.
The man started from his paralysis. Scratching a match along the wall, he held the little flare above his head and stared until his fingers twitched back, burned.
“Well—I’ll—be——” he muttered, his voice trailing into nothing.
He had looked on the ha’nt. He had seen Dalton’s Death, murderer of men,—expiring in the jaws of a tom-cat.
Snatching the gas-lamp from its nail, he got it to burning and turned its ray on the uncanny little bunch below. In the white radiance the thing stood out in horrid clarity. Though merged together, it comprised three separate parts. They were cat—rat—rattlesnake.
The cat’s teeth were clamped in the neck of the reptile. The venomous fangs of the reptile were hooked into the head of the rat. The head of the rat was nearly hidden within the distended jaws of the sinuous slayer.
This much of the story was plain at a glance: the snake had killed the rat, begun to swallow its prey, and in its turn been pounced upon by the lightning-leaping Spit. But how had rodent and reptile come here? Why had he never seen them before? Why had Spit allowed the snake to get the rat first? Why did that snake’s tail, still moving, give out no warning burr?
Douglas wasted no more time in puzzlement. Instead he began a close inspection—as close as seemed safe, in view of the fact that the savage cat struck viciously at him with hooked claws when he came too near. It was by no means impossible that some snake-venom might be on those claws, and the investigator was wary of them. Moving around with the light, he studied snake and rodent.
The rat was long, lank, and old. Its hoary hair, its big feet, the tip of one whitish whisker still visible at the edge of the serpent’s gaping mouth, all proved its age. It was so old that it would move clumsily. In a silent house its feet would thump on the floor. If it descended stairs it would bump.
Nothing very queer about the rat. But about the snake was something very queer indeed. Though it was well grown—more than a yard long, in fact—and thus should have been well equipped with the warning buttons of its species, it had none. It was a rattler without a rattle.