Some instinct prompted me to hurry back to my room, swiftly but silently, shoeless feet treading softly. And as I neared the door, T was aware of something in the darkness before me. Something which crept in from a side corridor and glided stealthily along.
In a wild panic of, fear I leaped, striking wildly and aimlessly in the darkness. All my clenched fist encountered a human head, and something went down with a crash. Again I struck a light; a man lay senseless on the floor, and he was de Montour.
I thrust a candle into a niche in the Wall, and just then de Montour's eyes opened and he rose uncertainly. "You!" I exclaimed, hardly knowing what I said. "You, of all men!"
He merely nodded.
"You killed von Sehiller?"
"Yes."
I recoiled with a gasp of horror.
"Listen." He raised his hand. "Take your rapier and run me through. No man will touch you."
"No," I exclaimed. "I can not."
"Then, quick," he said hurriedly, "get into your chamber and bolt the door. Haste! It will return!"
"What will return?" I asked, with a thrill of horror. "If it will harm me, it will harm you. Come into the chamber with me."
"No, no!" he fairly shrieked, springing back from my outstretched arm. "Haste, haste! It left me for an instant, but it will return." Then in a low- pitched voice of indescribable horror: "It is returning. It is here now!"
And I felt a something, a formless, shapeless presence near. A thing of frightfulness.
De Montour was standing, legs braced, arms thrown back, fists clenched. The muscles bulged beneath his skin, his eyes widened and narrowed, the veins stood out upon his forehead as if in great physical effort. As I looked, to my horror, out of nothing, a shapeless, nameless something took vague form! Like a shadow it moved upon de Montour.
It was hovering about him! Good God, it was merging, becoming one with the man!
De Montour swayed; a great gasp escaped him. The dim thing vanished. De Montour wavered. Then he turned toward me, and may God grant that I never look on a face like that again!
It was a hideous, a bestial face. The eyes gleamed with a frightful ferocity; the snarling lips were drawn back from gleaming teeth, which to my startled gaze appeared more like bestial fangs than human teeth.
Silently the thing (I can not call it a human) slunk toward me. Gasping with horror I sprang back and through the door, just as the thing launched itself through the air, with a sinuous motion which even then made me think of a leaping wolf. I slammed the door, holding it against the frightful thing which hurled itself again and again against it.
Finally it desisted and I heard it slink stealthily off down the corridor. Faint and exhausted I sat down, waiting, listening. Through the open window wafted the breeze, bearing all the scents of Africa, the spicy and the foul. From the native village came the sound of a native drum. Other drums answered farther up the river and back in the bush. Then from somewhere in the jungle, horridly incongruous, sounded the long, high-pitched call of a timber wolf. My soul revolted.
Dawn brought a tale of terrified villagers, of a Negro woman torn by some fiend of the night, barely escaping. And to de Montour I went:
On the way I met Dom Vincente: He was perplexed and angry.
"Some hellish thing is at work in this castle," he said. "Last night, though I have said naught of it to anyone, something leaped upon the back of one of the arquebusiers, tore the leather jerkin from his shoulders and pursued him to the barbican. More, someone locked de Montour into his room last night, and he was forced to smash the door to get out."
He strode on, muttering to himself, and I proceeded down the stairs, more puzzled than ever.
De Montour sat upon a stool, gazing out the window. An indescribable air of weariness was about him.
His long hair was uncombed and tousled, his garments were tattered. With a shudder I saw faint crimson stains upon his hands,—and noted that the nails were torn and broken.
He looked up as I came in, and waved me to a seat. His face was worn and haggard, but was that of a man.
After a moment's silence, he spoke.
"I will tell you my strange tale. Never before has it passed my lips, and why I tell you, knowing that you will not believe me, I can not say."
And then I listened to what was surely the wildest, the most fantastic, the weirdest tale ever heard by man.
"Years ago," said de Montour, "I was upon a military mission in northern France. Alone, I was forced to pass through the fiendhaunted woodlands of Villefere. In those frightful forests I was beset by an inhuman, a ghastly thing—a werewolf. Beneath a midnight moon we fought, and slew it. Now this is the truth: that if a werewolf is slain in the half-form of a man, its ghost will haunt its slayer through eternity. But if it is slain as a wolf, hell gapes to receive it. The true werewolf is not (as many think) a man who may take the form of a wolf, but a wolf who takes the form of a man!
