ll
respect any command given by him. That is what happened on that night.
Young Henri was chosen to put his head into Nero's mouth, and did so
without fear or hesitation. He took the beast's jaws and pulled them
apart, and laid his head within them, as he had done a hundred times
before; but of a sudden an appalling, an uncanny, thing happened. It was
as though some supernatural power laid hold of the beast and made a
thing of horror of what a moment before had been a noble-looking animal;
for suddenly a strange hissing noise issued from its jaws, its lips
curled upward until it smiled--smiled, Mr. Cleek!--oh, the ghastliest,
most awful, most blood-curdling smile imaginable--and then, with a sort
of mingled snarl and bark, it clamped its jaws together and crushed the
boy's head as though it were an egg-shell!"

He put up his hands and covered his eyes as if to shut out some
appalling vision, and for a moment or two nothing was heard but the low
sobbing of the victim's sister.

"As suddenly as that change had come over the beast, Mr. Cleek,"
Scarmelli went on presently, "just so suddenly it passed, and it was the
docile, affectionate animal it had been for years. It seemed to
understand that some harm had befallen its favourite--for Henri was its
favourite--and, curling itself up beside his body, it licked his hands
and moaned disconsolately in a manner almost human. That's all there is
to tell, sir, save that at times the horrid change, the appalling smile,
repeat themselves when either the chevalier or his son bend to put a
head within its jaws, and but for their watchfulness and quickness the
tragedy of that other awful night would surely be repeated. Sir, it is
not natural; I know now, as surely as if the lion itself had spoken,
that someone is at the bottom of this ghastly thing, that some human
agency is at work, some unknown enemy of the chevalier's is doing
something, God alone knows what or why, to bring about his death as his
son's was brought about."

And here, for the first time, the chevalier's daughter spoke.

"Ah, tell him all, Jim, tell him all," she said, in her pretty broken
English. "Monsieur, may the good God in heaven forgive me, if I wrong
her; but--but--Ah, Monsieur Cleek, sometimes I feel that she, my
stepmother, and that man, that 'rider' who knows not how to ride as the
artist should--monsieur, I cannot help it, but I feel that they are at
the bottom of it."

"Yes, but why?" queried Cleek.