revolting corpse from the car was not easy. Heavy he had known the body
would be, but when he had opened the door on the off-side, and would
have pulled the dead thing out by the heels, he was surprised to find
that he could not move it. On a second effort the slight yielding of the
mass was accompanied by a sound of rending and he remembered Mut-mut's
right hand, armed with a weapon of unspeakable cruelty, which only once
before in his life had he seen--the Mahratta baag-nouk, or Tiger's Claw.

He went round to the car's-near side, and there found, as he had
expected, the dead right hand anchored to the lining-cushions by what
was, he supposed, a unique specimen, made to the fancy of the creature
that wore it; for, in addition to the leather strap across the back of
the hand, two rings were welded to the instrument, through which to pass
the second and third fingers, thus keeping in position the four short,
razor-edged steel claws hidden in the palm.

Dick loosened the buckle of the strap, and drew the hand, already cold,
from the rings; picked the baag-nouk from the cushion, wrapped it in a
greasy cloth out of the tool-box, and hid it under the seat.

The thought of that gruesome weapon, more frightful than the unsheathed
claws of the royalest Bengal tiger, hanging over the head of his chosen
among women, stung Dick Bellamy to very unceremonious removal of the
body, which, after rifling it of a handful of cartridges, he flung by
the roadside; and then, lest Amaryllis should see the awful head again,
even in death, he covered the whole corpse with an overcoat of
Melchard's from the car.

The engine had run down. As he cranked it up, Dick was seized by a
sudden savage desire to have in his hands the man who had brought all
his outrage, suffering and terror to the girl whose uncovered head and
patient back he could see waiting for him down the road.

A fierce rage, such as he had seldom felt, and never since boyhood,
flooded his body with a dry heat, and stimulated his intelligence.

For with these thoughts of the evil Melchard came sudden insight into
the man's purpose at the foot of the Bull's Neck, and his probable
action at the present moment.

"He was shooting to drive us into Mut-mut's arms, and to make us believe
our danger was all behind us," he reasoned. "And it's a white elephant
to a dead rat he's trudging up this road now to find what Mut-mut's left
of us. Perhaps he's heard the two shots, and me crank