lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or
that she felt that she would leave India safer and more wholesome than
she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast per million of
inhabitants. The compelling motive for her sudden deviation towards
the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact that Loona Bimberton had recently
been carried eleven miles in an aeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and
talked of nothing else; only a personally procured tiger-skin and a
heavy harvest of Press photographs could successfully counter that sort
of thing. Mrs. Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch
she would give at her house in Curzon Street, ostensibly in Loona
Bimberton's honour, with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of the
foreground and all of the conversation. She had also already designed
in her mind the tiger-claw brooch that she was going to give Loona
Bimberton on her next birthday. In a world that is supposed to be
chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was an exception;
her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona
Bimberton.

Circumstances proved propitious. Mrs. Packletide had offered a
thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without
overmuch risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouring
village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal of
respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing
infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite to
the smaller domestic animals. The prospect of earning the thousand
rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct of the
villagers; children were posted night and day on the outskirts of the
local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely event of his
attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds
of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him
satisfied with his present quarters. The one great anxiety was lest he
should die of old age before the date appointed for the memsahib's
shoot. Mothers carrying their babies home through the jungle after the
day's work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail
the restful sleep of the venerable herd-robber.

The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had
been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and
thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin.
A goat, gifted with a pa