ped it into the room.
It saw another enemy armed with whip and pistol and sidled off with
still greater show of dripping fangs. All this in dead silence so far
as Kendric was concerned; never the faintest sound coming to him. The
whip was flung out and snapped, and there was no sound; the puma's
teeth clicked together on empty air, and no sound; Betty, looking up,
shrieked, and no sound. They looked to be so close to Kendric that he
felt as if with one stride he could hurl himself among them; and yet he
knew that they might be shut off from him by innumerable walls and
locked and barred doors. He saw Betty so plainly that until he
reasoned with himself he felt that she must see him.

"A puma will not attack a human being." Kendric sought to speak as
though merely contemptuous of Zoraida's entertainment. "They are
cowardly brutes."

"The puma," said Zoraida, "is starving. Further, he has been driven
mad by men who whipped and then appeared to run, frightened of him.
Watch."

The man threatening the puma slipped out through the door behind him.
The door closed. Betty and the animal were alone. The great cat lay
down and looked at her with its hard, unwinking eyes, only its slow
tail moving back and forth like a bit of mechanism clock-regulated.
Presently the puma lifted its head and began a horrible sniffing; it
lifted itself gradually from the floor; it drew a step nearer Betty's
cage and sniffed again. Kendric could see Betty draw back the few
inches made possible by the narrow confines of the cage, could see that
again she screamed.

"A little fresh blood has been sprinkled on the floor of the cage,"
said Zoraida. "A little of it is on the gown she wears. It will not
be overlong to watch. Are you growing impatient?"

"Are you mad?" he burst out. "Good God, do you mean to let this go on?"

"Am I mad?" Her eyes, slowly turned to his, looked it. "Perhaps. Who
that is mad knows he is mad? And who, my friend, is sane? Do I mean
to let this go on?" She laughed at him, and the sound was as hard as
the tinkle of bits of jangling glass. "You have but to be patient to
know."

The puma sniffed again, again drew closer. Betty was tight pressed
against the far bars shutting her in, and even so had the great cat
thrust a claw forward she could not withdraw beyond the reach of the
ripping talons. The cat circled her. Always Betty turned with it, her
eyes upon its eyes, her eyes that were large and fix