At last he was ushered into a small, bare, dimly lighted room. From the centre of the ceiling was suspended an oil lamp, and immediately under it was a marble table. Walls and floor were composed of rough uncovered granite. The atmosphere was fetid, and tainted with the same peculiar, pungent odour noticeable outside.
"This is the room," Mlle de Nurrez said. "Prince Dajarah will be here in a minute. Have you your pistol ready?"
"Yes, see!" and Paul Nicholas pulled it out from his coat-pocket and showed it her.
"Have you any other weapons?" she asked, examining it curiously.
"Yes, a sheath-knife," Paul Nicholas replied a trifle nervously.
"Let me look at it," Mlle de Nurrez exclaimed. "I have a weakness for knives—a rather uncommon trait in a woman, isn't it?"
He handed it to her, and she fingered the blade cautiously. Then with a sudden movement she leaped away from him.
"Fool!" she cried. "Do you think I could ever love a man as fat as you? The story I told you was a lie from beginning to end. I don't remember either of my parents—my mother ran away from home when I was two, and my father died the following year. I married entirely of my own free will—married the man I loved, and he—happened to be a werwolf!"
"A werwolf!" Paul Nicholas shrieked. "God help me! I thought there were no such things!"
"Not in France, perhaps," Mlle de Nurrez said derisively; "but in Spain, in the Pyrenees, many! At certain times of the year my husband won't touch animal food, and if I didn't procure him human flesh he would die of starvation, or in sheer despair eat me. Here he is."