“‘But that didn’t go with me. I stepped up, and he dropped a velvet curtain over the thing before I could see it. He was ready to fight before letting me see it, but that — that — she — stepped up and sided with me. Said we ought to see it. Frank got horribly worked up, and gave me a punch when I tried to get at the curtain. I punched back and seemed to have knocked him out. Then I was almost knocked out myself by the shriek that — that creature — gave. She’d drawn aside the hangings herself, and had caught a look at what Marsh had been painting. I wheeled around and saw her rushing like mad out of the room — then I saw the picture.’
“Madness flared up in the boy’s eyes again as he got to this place, and I thought for a minute he was going to spring at me with his machete. But after a pause he partly steadied himself.
“‘Oh, God — that thing! Don’t ever look at it! Burn it with the hangings around it and throw the ashes into the river! Marsh knew — and was warning me. He knew what it was — what that woman — that leopardess, or gorgon, or lamia, or whatever she was — actually represented. He’d tried to hint to me ever since I met her in his Paris studio, but it couldn’t be told in words. I thought they all wronged her when they whispered horrors about her — she had me hypnotised so that I couldn’t believe the plain facts — but this picture has caught the whole secret — the whole monstrous background!
“‘God, but Frank is an artist! That thing is the greatest piece of work any living soul has produced since Rembrandt! It’s a crime to burn it — but it would be a greater crime to let it exist — just as it would have been an abhorrent sin to let — that she-daemon — exist any longer. The minute I saw it I understood what — she — was, and what part she played in the frightful secret that has come down from the days of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones — the secret that was nearly wiped out when Atlantis sank, but that kept half alive in hidden traditions and allegorical myths and furtive, midnight cult-practices. For you know she was the real thing. It wasn’t any fake. It would have been merciful if it had been a fake. It was the old, hideous shadow that philosophers never dared mention — the thing hinted at in the Necronomicon and symbolised in the Easter Island colossi.
“‘She thought we couldn’t see through — that the false front would hold till we had bartered away our immortal souls. And she was half right — she’d have got me in the end. She was only — waiting. But Frank — good old Frank — was too much for me. He knew what it all meant, and painted it. I don’t wonder she shrieked and ran off when she saw it. It wasn’t quite done, but God knows enough was there.
“‘Then I knew I’d got to kill her — kill her, and everything connected with her. It was a taint that wholesome human blood couldn’t bear. There was something else, too — but you’ll never know that if you burn the picture without looking. I staggered down to her room with this machete that I got off the wall here, leaving Frank still knocked out. He was breathing, though, and I knew and thanked heaven that I hadn’t killed him.
“‘I found her in front of the mirror braiding that accursed hair. She turned on me like a wild beast, and began spitting out her hatred of Marsh. The fact that she’d been in love with him — and I knew she had — only made it worse. For a minute I couldn’t move, and she came within an ace of completely hypnotising me. Then I thought of the picture, and the spell broke. She saw the breaking in my eyes, and must have noticed the machete, too. I never saw anything give such a wild jungle beast look as she did then. She sprang for me with claws out like a leopard’s, but I was too quick. I swung the machete, and it was all over.’
“Denis had to stop again there, and I saw the perspiration running down his forehead through the spattered blood. But in a moment he hoarsely resumed.
“‘I said it was all over — but God! some of it had only just begun! I felt I had fought the legions of Satan, and put my foot on the back of the thing I had annihilated. Then I saw that blasphemous braid of coarse black hair begin to twist and squirm of itself.
“‘I might have known it. It was all in the old tales. That damnable hair had a life of its own, that couldn’t be ended by killing the creature itself. I knew I’d have to burn it, so I started to hack it off with the machete. God, but it was devilish work! Tough — like iron wires — but I managed to do it. And it was loathsome the way the big braid writhed and struggled in my grasp.