We all started at his wild shriek and he reeled from the corner screaming, a thing like a black cable writhing about his arm. As we looked aghast, he crashed down in the midst of the tiled floor and there tore to fragments with his bare hands the hideous reptile which had struck him.

"Oh Heavens!" he screeched, writhing about and staring up at his mates with wild, crazed eyes. "Oh, Grand Dieu, I burn, I die! Oh, saints, grant me ease!"

Even Bellefonte's steel nerves seemed shaken at this terrible sight, but John Gower remained unmoved. He drew a pistol and flung it to the dying man.

"You are doomed," said he brutally. "The venom is coursing through your veins like the fire of Hell, but you may live for hours yet. Best end your torment."

La Costa clutched at the weapon as a drowning man seizes a twig. A moment he hesitated, torn between two terrible fears, then as the burning of the venom shook him with fiercer stabbings, he set the muzzle against his temple, gibbering and yammering, and jerked the trigger. The stare of his tortured eyes will haunt me till Doomsday, and may his crimes on earth be forgiven him for if ever a man passed through Purgatory in his dying, it was he.

"By God!" said Bellefonte, wiping his brow. "This looks like the hand of Satan!"