Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

moon like an old doubloon rising behind the hills and tuming silver. The hot thick scent of flowers weighted the wind. “I would like to see a tiger trap him,” said Dineen, “Yes, Tuan’—ler voice held a quivering vibranee of satisfaction like the purring of a cat—“but tigers take vengeance on innocent and guilty men alike. It will not be safe for you to be abroad.” “Tow brave you are,” he said, “to say the name of the tiger boldly. Your people always speak of him as “My Lord.” He saw her slow smile in the moonlight. “Perhaps the Tuan remembers the little bag of tiger dust my be- loved took from the unmentionable Omar Sung Loo. Lt is mine now. Besides, there are tigers and tigers. Most of them are stupid beasts intent only ou fending for existence. Ilas the Tuan heard of the tiger berhantu?” “Ghost tigers!" he said. “I have heard. Rourke believed im them. t do not. Anyway, il happens I have never killed a tiger, so Ho spirit need take vengeance on me.” ; “Tuan, it is not dead tigers you need fear. But you will give me the word of a white Tuan that you will not leave my house until ven- geance is accomplished!” She swayed before him, sitting on her heels with her pretty head bent in supplication. He saw his pearls in a string around the creamy column of her throat. A queer Eiseination caught him as her head lifted and he looked into the black fire of her eyes, which slowly brightened until they were shining amber in the moonlighted porch, He was ready to grant ber slightest wish; yet his mood was unaffected by her prettiness as a woman. She was no longer quite normal. He felt the burning desire of her vengeance toward Rourke’s murderer as she rose and stood before him motionless, then spread her arms and bent her body as if dedicating herself to a mission. She went from the house, but that night Dineen sat in a porch chair, dozing and waking until the dark hour before dawn, when in the night noises he heard another sound, Something crept steakhily nearer. The slanting moonlight showed a long shape stirring the flower hedge it came through. He saw a tawny body. Then to his horror it reared up on its hind legs, and the two forepaws and velvet- striped head of a Uger rose above the floor boards of the porch. He saw its shining green cyes, its bristling whiskers, its black muzzle and white fangs, the long claws clenched on the floor matting. As he stared, the tiger head changed. Like breath blown on hot metal it was misted and blurred. Before his terrified gaze the velvet stripes of the head fused into the black hair of Rourke’s wife, framing her amber-tinted face. The tiger body flowed np the steps, transfusing itself into the slender body of the girl, which stood there sbuddering, her black hair veiling arms that were torn and scratched. One hand comicbooks.com