Perhaps a minute passed. I had put down the umbrella.
Then from the gloaming woods that fringed the mountain foot welled a sound like a bright bubble bursting into a hundred bubbles, a sound like the spray of a sweet fountain—the song of a nightingale from the deep solitudes of Black Mixen.
“The nightingale of Water-break-its-neck,” I thought, for I had heard someone speak of this lonely music-maker.
The form of the cat stiffened; gradually it sank to a crouching posture, as if its prey were near at hand. Then tail and head went up, and its jaws were sharp against the sky, and the valley bristled with its starved and destructive yowl.
Maryvale was a man transformed from trance to action. Spasmodically he felt his pocket for the pistol, then recollected me. His voice was jumbled with the cry of the beast.
“Give me that gun.”
“Wouldn’t it be better—”
His utterance was quickly controlled to a whisper. “Give me that gun. I am going to perform a humane act. I came here for this.”
“But, Mr. Maryvale—”
“Don’t you understand?” he burst out. “I will free the soul of a ghoul from its tenement!” He grabbed the pistol from my hand.