And into this animal hell Michael descended—­although his arrival was horizontal, across three thousand five hundred miles, in the same crate in which he had been placed at the New Washington Hotel in Seattle.  Never once had he been out of the crate during the entire journey, and filthiness, as well as wretchedness, characterized his condition.  Thanks to his general good health, the wound of the amputated toe was in the process of uneventful healing.  But dirt clung to him, and he was infested with fleas.

Cedarwild, to look at, was anything save a hell.  Velvet lawns, gravelled walks and drives, and flowers formally growing, led up to the group of long low buildings, some of frame and some of concrete.  But Michael was not received by Harris Collins, who, at the moment, sat in his private office, Harry Del Mar’s last telegram on his desk, writing a memorandum to his secretary to query the railroad and the express companies for the whereabouts of a dog, crated and shipped by one, Harry Del Mar, from Seattle and consigned to Cedarwild.  It was a pallid-eyed youth of eighteen in overalls who received Michael, receipted for him to the expressman, and carried his crate into a slope-floored concrete room that smelled offensively and chemically clean.

Michael was impressed by his surroundings but not attracted by the youth, who rolled up his sleeves and encased himself in large oilskin apron before he opened the crate.  Michael sprang out and staggered about on legs which had not walked for days.  This particular two-legged god was uninteresting.  He was as cold as the concrete floor, as methodical as a machine; and in such fashion he went about the washing, scrubbing, and disinfecting of Michael.  For Harris Collins was scientific and antiseptic to the last word in his handling of animals, and Michael was scientifically made clean, without deliberate harshness, but without any slightest hint of gentleness or consideration.

Naturally, he did not understand.  On top of all he had already experienced, not even knowing executioners and execution chambers, for all he knew this bare room of cement and chemical smell might well be the place of the ultimate life-disaster and this youth the god who was to send him into the dark which had engulfed all he had known and loved.  What Michael did know beyond the shadow of any doubt was that it was all coldly ominous and terribly strange.  He endured the hand of the youth-god on the scruff of his neck, after the collar had been unbuckled; but when the hose was turned on him, he resented and resisted.  The youth, merely working by formula, tightened the safe grip on the scruff of Michael’s neck and lifted him clear of the floor, at the same time, with the other hand, directing the stream of water into his mouth and increasing it to full force by the nozzle control.  Michael fought, and was well drowned for his pains, until he gasped and strangled helplessly.