at can it
be, Cheetah?"

Then: "It's coming nearer."

The screaming continued, heart-rending, eviscerating shrieks. Benham,
still confused, lit a match. All the men about him were stirring or
sitting up and listening, their faces showing distorted and ugly in the
flicker of his light. "CHE E?" he tried. No one answered. Then one
by one they stood up and went softly to the ladder that led to the
stable-room below. Benham struck a second match and a third.

"Giorgio!" he called.

The cavasse made an arresting gesture and followed discreetly and
noiselessly after the others, leaving Benham alone in the dark.

Benham heard their shuffling patter, one after the other, down the
ladder, the sounds of a door being unbarred softly, and then no other
sound but that incessant shrieking in the darkness.

Had they gone out? Were they standing at the door looking out into the
night and listening?

Amanda had found the chink and her voice sounded nearer.

"It's a woman," she said.

The shrieking came nearer and nearer, long, repeated, throat-tearing
shrieks. Far off there was a great clamour of dogs. And there was
another sound, a whisper--?

"RAIN!"

The shrieks seemed to turn into a side street and receded. The tension
of listening relaxed. Men's voices sounded below in question and answer.
Dogs close at hand barked shortly and then stopped enquiringly.

Benham seemed to himself to be sitting alone for an interminable time.
He lit another match and consulted his watch. It was four o'clock and
nearly dawn....

Then slowly and stumbling up the ladder the men began to return to
Benham's room.

"Ask them what it is," urged Amanda.

But for a time not even Giorgio would understand Benham's questions.
There seemed to be a doubt whether he ought to know. The shrieking
approached again and then receded. Giorgio came and stood, a vague
thoughtful figure, by the embers of the fire. Explanation dropped from
him reluctantly. It was nothing. Some one had been killed: that was all.
It was a vendetta. A man had been missing overnight, and this morning
his brother who had been prowling and searching with some dogs had found
him, or rather his head. It was on this side of the ravine, thrown over
from the other bank on which the body sprawled stiffly, wet through, and
now growing visible in the gathering daylight. Yes--the voice was the
man's wife. It was raining hard.... There would be shrieking for nine
days. Yes, nine days. Co