The hound of death

She stayed quite still for a moment and then suddenly flung herself down on the lifeless body.

"Arthur!" she cried desperately. "Arthur! Come back to me! Arthur - come back - come back!"

Her voice echoed away into silence. Suddenly I touched Settle's arm. "Look!" I said.

A faint tinge of colour had crept into the drowned man's face. I felt his heart.

"Go on with the respiration," I cried. "He's coming round!"

The moments seemed to fly now. In a marvellously short time his eyes opened.

Then suddenly I realized a difference. These were intelligent eyes, human eyes...

They rested on Phyllis.

"Hallo! Phil," he said weakly. "Is it you? I thought you weren't coming until tomorrow."

She could not yet trust herself to speak, but she smiled at him. He looked around with increasing bewilderment.

"But, I say, where am I? And - how rotten I feel! What's the matter with me? Hallo, Dr Settle!"

"You've been nearly drowned - that's what's the matter," returned Settle grimly.

Sir Arthur made a grimace.

"I've always heard it was beastly coming back afterwards! But how did it happen? Was I walking in my sleep?"

Settle shook his head.

"We must get him to the house," I said, stepping forward.

He stared at me, and Phyllis introduced me. "Dr Carstairs, who is staying here."

We supported him between us and started for the house. He looked up suddenly as though struck by an idea.

"I say, doctor, this won't knock me up for the twelfth, will it?"

"The twelfth?" I said slowly, "you mean the twelfth of August?"

"Yes - next Friday."

"Today is the fourteenth of September," said Settle abruptly.

His bewilderment was evident.

"But - but I thought it was the eighth of August? I must have been ill then?"

Phyllis interposed rather quickly in her gentle voice.

"Yes," she said, "you've been very ill."

He frowned. "I can't understand it. I was perfectly all right when I went to bed last night - at least of course it wasn't really last night. I had dreams, though. I remember, dreams..." His brow furrowed itself still more as he strove to remember. "Something - what was it? - something dreadful - someone had done it to me - and I was angry - desperate... And then I dreamed I was a cat - yes, a cat! Funny, wasn't it? But it wasn't a funny dream. It was more - horrible! But I can't remember. It all goes when I think."

I laid my hand on his shoulder. "Don't try to think, Sir Arthur, I said gravely. "Be content - to forget."

He looked at me in a puzzled way and nodded. I heard Phyllis draw a breath of relief. We had reached the house.

"By the way," said Sir Arthur suddenly, "where's the mater?"

"She has been - ill," said Phyllis after a momentary pause.

"Oh! Poor old mater!" His voice rang with genuine concern. "Where is she? In her room?"

"Yes," I said, "but you had better not disturb -"

The words froze on my lips. The door of the drawing room opened and Lady Carmichael, wrapped in a dressing gown, came out into the hall.

Her eyes were fixed on Arthur, and if ever I have seen a look of absolute guilt-stricken terror, I saw it then. Her face was hardly human in its frenzied terror. Her hand went to her throat.

Arthur advanced towards her with boyish affection.

"Hallo, mater! So you've been ill too? I say, I'm awfully sorry."

She shrank back before him, her eyes dilating. Then suddenly, with the shriek of a doomed soul, she fell backwards through the open door.

I rushed and bent over her, then beckoned to Settle.

"Hush," I said. "Take him upstairs quietly and then come down again. Lady Carmichael is dead."

He returned in a few minutes.

"What was it?" he asked. "What caused it?"

"Shock." I said grimly. "The shock of seeing Arthur Carmichael, the real Arthur Carmichael, restored to life! Or you may call it, as I prefer to, the judgment of God!"

"You mean -" He hesitated.

I looked at him in the eyes so that he understood.

"A life for a life," I said significantly.

"But -"

"Oh! I know that a strange and unforeseen accident permitted the spirit of Arthur Carmichael to return to his body. But, nevertheless, Arthur Carmichael was murdered."

He looked at me half fearfully. "With prussic acid?" he asked in a low tone.

"Yes," I answered. "With prussic acid."

Settle and I have never spoken of our belief. It is not one likely to be credited. According to the orthodox point of view Arthur Carmichael merely suffered from loss of memory, Lady Carmichael lacerated her own throat in a temporary fit of mania, and the apparition of the Grey Cat was mere imagination.

But there are two facts that to my mind are unmistakable. One is the ripped chair in the corridor. The other is even more significant. A catalogue of the library was found, and after exhaustive search it was proved that the missing volume was an ancient and curious work on the possibilities of the metamorphosis of human beings into animals!