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    Routh looked from Deilos to Squire – from the unnatural animal to the unnatural man – and was by no means sure which was the more alarming. Was this mad freak before the tamed lion merely a whim or a cruel joke by the way? Was it, in fact, a sudden and almost meaningless fancy prompted by Squire’s knowledge of his victim’s earlier humiliation that day? Or was this sort of thing going to go on, and was the lion simply the first exhibit in a leisured sadistic joke?
    Long before he had ceased confusedly asking himself these questions Routh found that he had in fact cast himself on the ground beside Deilos. The brute on this near acquaintance was rather smelly, but took not the slightest notice of him. Squire was looking down at them with his horrible smile. ‘You must understand,’ he said, ‘that I am a magician. If I say “Abracadabra” Deilos will take no notice of you. But if I say “Abracadabra” backwards, he will at once change his nature and eat you. Wouldn’t you like to be able to change the nature of a living creature at a word?’
    Routh made no reply. He felt frightened and ridiculous, but still his cunning didn’t cease to work. It worked the more desperately, the more he hated his tormentor. And by now he hated him very much.
    Squire’s smile vanished. He took a quick, almost furtive glance around him. He stepped forward and kicked Deilos hard on the rump – whereupon Deilos got to his feet with a yelp and padded away. Routh, without waiting to be kicked in his turn, scrambled to his feet. Squire brought out a handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. ‘We must get on,’ he said abruptly – and he strode forward. They passed out of the lion’s paddock and moved downhill, through a stretch of sombre woodland. Presently, beyond a lighter screen of larches, the variously pitched roofs of a large and rambling house became visible.
    Routh considered the simple proposition that his companion was insane. It was certainly the easiest way of explaining him. And Squire, if mad, must now be considered as harmlessly mad. For they were at length almost within a stone’s throw of a house that must surely be too populous to admit even of a wealthy owner’s engaging in vagaries of a markedly violent or criminal kind. On the other hand Squire had already behaved so strangely and unwarrantably to Routh that there was no likelihood of any further trouble being made about the affair with his employee in the lane. Whoever was more or less in charge of Squire would have to hush all that up. Otherwise there would be a row. For some seconds Routh gave himself up to the elaboration of a pleasantly novel fantasy. It would be high-class Sunday paper stuff. Out of the Lion’s Mouth. The Frank Story of My Two Ordeals. Exclusive. By Alfred Routh.
    The glowing picture faded. It wouldn’t really do. For once the police had a grip on him they would uncover a dozen of the three-ten swindles while having him on remand. Still, the fact remained that if Squire were no more than a bit of a lunatic at large he, Routh, was invulnerable. There was so much of relief in this reading of his situation that Routh for some moments inclined to it violently. But if it ministered to the ease of his cowardice it correspondingly thwarted his cunning. There could be very little in it. A bit of bluster before a relative or a doctor, and he might get away with a five or ten pound note. There were far greater possibilities in the idea that Squire was involved in crime or racket in a big way, and that his keeping a pet like Deilos and using him to scare recruits was no more than a streak of casual nastiness such as a master criminal might very properly allow himself.
    Or perhaps the suggestion of madness was a sort of blind. For Routh an interpretation of human conduct was always the more plausible if it embodied a large element of deception and fraud. With these ideals he was at home, whereas the notion of irresponsible madness was alarming