“I know who you are and what you want this poor frightened puppy for.  You shan’t have him!  There seems to be no law to prevent human devils from strapping helpless dogs to a table and torturing them to death in the unholy name of science.  But if there isn’t a corner waiting for them, below, it’s only because Hades can’t be made hot enough to punish such men as they ought to be punished!  You’re not going to torture Bruce.  There’s your money.  Let go of him.”

“You talk like all silly, sloppy sentimentalists!” scoffed the Doctor, his slight German accent becoming more noticeable as he continued:  “A woman can’t have the intellect to understand our services to humanity.  We—­”

“Neither have half the real doctors!” she flashed.  “Fully half of them deny that vivisection ever helped humanity.  And half the remainder say they are in doubt.  They can’t point to a single definite case where it has been of use.  Alienists say it’s a distinct form of mental perversion,—­the craving to torture dumb animals to death and to make scientific notes of their sufferings.”

“Pah!” he sniffed.  “I—­”

She hurried on

“If humanity can’t be helped without cutting live dogs and kittens to shreds, in slow agony—­then so much the worse for humanity!  If you vivisectors would be content to practice on one another—­or on condemned murderers,—­instead of on friendly and innocent dogs, there’d be no complaint from any one.  But leave our pets alone.  Let go of my puppy!”

By way of response the Doctor grunted in lofty contempt.  At the same time he tucked the wriggling dog under his right arm, holding him thus momentarily safe, and pressed the self-starter button.

There was a subdued whir.  A move of Halding’s foot and a release of the brake, and the car started forward.

“Stand clear!” he ordered.  “I’m going.”

The jolt of the sudden start was too much for the Mistress’s balance on the running-board.  Back she toppled.  Only by luck did she land on her feet instead of her head, upon the greasy pavement of the street.

But she sprang forward again, with a little cry of indignant dismay, and reached desperately into the moving car for Bruce, calling him eagerly by name.

Dr. Halding was steering with his left hand, while his viselike right arm still encircled the protesting collie.  As the Mistress ran alongside and grasped frantically for her doomed pet, he let go of Bruce for an instant, to fend off her hand—­or perhaps to thrust her away from the peril of the fast-moving mud-guards.  At the Mistress’s cry—­and at the brief letup of pressure caused by the Doctor’s menacing gesture toward the unhappy woman—­Bruce’s long-sleeping soul awoke.  He answered the cry and the man’s blow at his deity in the immemorial fashion of all dogs whose human gods are threatened.

There was a snarling wild-beast growl, the first that ever had come from the clownlike puppy’s throat,—­and Bruce flung his unwieldy young body straight for the vivisector’s throat.