I sprang from bed, and, heedless of my wife’s semi-nude condition, I flung open the door. She shrank back, but I seized her by the wrist, beside myself with nervous terror.
And then—there on her wrist—I saw! I looked closely to be sure. Then instantly all was clear to me. I was in doubt no longer. I knew!
“Look!” I shrieked. “Here on her wrist! Toi Wah’s collar!” I do not know why I said it, or scarcely what I did say, but I knew it to be true!
“Toi Wah’s collar!” I repeated. “She can’t take it off! She is changing into a cat! Look at her eyes! Look at her hair! Soon she will be Toi Wah again with the collar about her neck, and then—”
And then I saw my wife disconcerted for the first time. I felt the arm I had seized, tremble in my frenzied grip.
“Why, Robert!” she stammered. “I—I found this on the attic floor yesterday. And—and—thinking it a curious old Chinese relic, I put it on my wrist. It’s a bracelet, not a collar!”
“Take it off then!” I shouted. “Take it off! You can’t! You can’t, until you become Toi Wah again, and then it will be about your neck. Read what it says! It is in your accursed tongue!
“But you shall never live to madden me again with fear, to make my life a hell of peering eyes and padding feet, and then to suck my breath at last! I killed you once, I can do it again! And again and yet again in any shape the devils in hell may send you to prey upon honest men!”
And I seized her by her beautiful throat. I meant to choke her until those cruel yellow eyes started from their sockets, and then laugh as I saw her gasping in the last agony of death.
But I was cheated. The servants overpowered me, and I was brought here to this mad-house.