Revil Draycott had never really liked the cat, anyhow. It was too clever, too intelligent, and seemed to hurl constant reminders at him of the time when he had slain his wife and thrown her body into the bottomless depths of Gilpin's Tarn. She had died with the vow that her cat would avenge her when it, too, died...

John Russell Fearn (1908–1960) was a British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp science fiction magazines. Always a highly prolific author, he published not only under his own name, but also as Vargo Statten and other pseudonyms including Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong, John Cotton, Dennis Clive, Ephriam Winiki, Astron Del Martia (and others). He remains best known for his long-running Golden Amazon saga. At times these drew on the pulp traditions of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Fearn also wrote Westerns and crime fiction.