It helps one to face a danger when one knows that one has done all that possibly can be done.  There is nothing for it then but to quietly await the result.  In this case, there was no chance of safety anywhere except the precise spot where I was.  I stretched myself out, therefore, and lay silently, almost breathlessly, hoping that the beast might forget my presence if I did nothing to remind him.  I reckoned that it must already be two o’clock.  At four it would be full dawn.  I had not more than two hours to wait for daylight.

Outside, the storm was still raging, and the rain lashed continually against the little windows.  Inside, the poisonous and fetid air was overpowering.  I could neither hear nor see the cat.  I tried to think about other things—­but only one had power enough to draw my mind from my terrible position.  That was the contemplation of my cousin’s villainy, his unparalleled hypocrisy, his malignant hatred of me.  Beneath that cheerful face there lurked the spirit of a mediaeval assassin.  And as I thought of it I saw more clearly how cunningly the thing had been arranged.  He had apparently gone to bed with the others.  No doubt he had his witness to prove it.  Then, unknown to them, he had slipped down, had lured me into his den and abandoned me.  His story would be so simple.  He had left me to finish my cigar in the billiard-room.  I had gone down on my own account to have a last look at the cat.  I had entered the room without observing that the cage was opened, and I had been caught.  How could such a crime be brought home to him?  Suspicion, perhaps—­but proof, never!

How slowly those dreadful two hours went by!  Once I heard a low, rasping sound, which I took to be the creature licking its own fur.  Several times those greenish eyes gleamed at me through the darkness, but never in a fixed stare, and my hopes grew stronger that my presence had been forgotten or ignored.  At last the least faint glimmer of light came through the windows—­I first dimly saw them as two grey squares upon the black wall, then grey turned to white, and I could see my terrible companion once more.  And he, alas, could see me!

It was evident to me at once that he was in a much more dangerous and aggressive mood than when I had seen him last.  The cold of the morning had irritated him, and he was hungry as well.  With a continual growl he paced swiftly up and down the side of the room which was farthest from my refuge, his whiskers bristling angrily, and his tail switching and lashing.  As he turned at the corners his savage eyes always looked upwards at me with a dreadful menace.  I knew then that he meant to kill me.  Yet I found myself even at that moment admiring the sinuous grace of the devilish thing, its long, undulating, rippling movements, the gloss of its beautiful flanks, the vivid, palpitating scarlet of the glistening tongue which hung from the jet-black muzzle.  And all the time that deep, threatening growl was rising and rising in an unbroken crescendo.  I knew that the crisis was at hand.