“We’ll be out of this dreadful place in a moment now,” Billie was saying, when suddenly, there was a blood-curdling shriek. A shot rang out in the stillness, and with a strange vibrant noise that sounded like the echo of the base string of a ’cello, the leopard jumped high into the air and fell backward in the path just behind them.
Billie, with a very white face indeed, stopped the car and turned to see who had saved their lives.
The leopard was still quivering in the death-throes when they reached him, but it had been a clean shot straight through his body and it was only a moment before he lay stiff and stark before them.
“But who killed him?” sobbed Nancy, quite unnerved now that the danger was past.
“Yes, who?” they asked each other.
But there was no one in sight. Whoever had done the deed had slipped quietly away without waiting to be thanked.
“Hello,” called Edward, “come out, won’t you?” and his voice echoed through the place and came back to them like some one else’s.
“I wish we had some way to thank him,” said Billie, “but as we haven’t, let’s be moving. The sooner we get out of this wood, the better. There’s no telling what will happen next.”
“Shall we take this beast along?” asked Edward with a tone of disgust in his voice, that brought to Billie’s mind a remembrance of that evening, not long before, when he could not hide his terror of death and blood.
“No, no,” put in Elinor, who had a strong sense of justice. “His skin should belong to the one who killed him. He isn’t our trophy.”