“If you’ll excuse me putting in a word, madam, you won’t get your own back on him by gettin’ him fined ten bob. Why, he pays some-think like £50 a month in fines for ’is runners — thinks no more of it than you think o’ your train fare.”
Miss Paisley was somewhat dashed. Jenkins enlarged.
“You’d be surprised, madam, at the cash that comes his way. The night before a big race, he’ll be home at 6 with more’n a couple o’ hundred pound in that bag o’ his; then he’ll go out at a quarter to 8, do his round of the pubs, and be back at 10:30 with as much cash again.”
The amount of the fine, Miss Paisley told herself, was irrelevant. This was a matter of principle. The lawyer, whom she consulted during her lunch hour, failed to perceive the principle. He told her that she could not prove her statements: that, as the cat admittedly bore no sign of the attack, the case would be “laughed out of court.”
She had never heard that phrase before, and she resented it, the resentment being tinged with fear.
When she reached home, she found the cat crouching on the far side of the escritoire. It took no notice of her, but she could wait 110 longer to unburden herself.
“We should be laughed out of court,” she said. “In other words, Mr. Rinditch can kick us, and the Law will laugh at us for being kicked. I expect we look very funny when we are in pain!”
In the whole of Miss Paisley’s life that was the unluckiest moment for that particular remark. If her eyes had not been turned inward, she could have interpreted the behavior of the cat, could not have failed to recognize that its position by the escritoire was strategic. She was still talking about her interview with the lawyer when the cat pounced, then turned in her direction, a live mouse kicking in its jaws.
“Oh, dear!” She accepted the situation with a sigh. She was without the physiological fear of mice — thought them pretty little things and would have encouraged them but for their unsanitary habits.
Now, Miss Paisley knew — certainly from the cliche, if not from experience — the way of a cat with a mouse. Yet it took her by surprise, creating an unmanageable conflict.
“Don’t — oh, don’t! Stop! Can’t you see?... We’re no better than Mr. Rinditch! Oh, God, please make him stop! I can’t endure it. I mustn’t endure it! Isn’t it any use praying? Are You laughing, too?”
Physical movement was not at Miss Paisley’s command, just then. The feeling of cold in her spine turned to heat, and spread outwards over her body, tingling as it spread. In her ears was the sound of crackling, like the burning of dried weeds.
Her breathing ceased to be painful. The immemorial ritual claimed first her attention, then her interest.
After some minutes, Miss Paisley tittered. Then she giggled. The cat, which can create in humanity so many illusions about itself, seemed to be playing its mouse to a gallery, and playing hard for a laugh.
Miss Paisley laughed.
There were periods of normality, of uneventful months in which one day was indistinguishable from another, and Miss Paisley thought of herself as an elderly lady who happened to keep a cat.
She deduced that the cat wandered a good deal, and sometimes begged or stole food from unknown persons. She had almost persuaded herself that it had abandoned its perilous habit of visiting Mr. Rinditch’s flatlet. One evening in early summer, about a fortnight before the end came, this hope was dashed.
At about half-past 8 the cat had gone out, after its evening meal. Miss Paisley was looking out of her window, idly awaiting its return. Presently she saw it on top of the wall that divided the yard from the old burial ground. She waved to it; it stared at her, then proceeded to wash itself, making a ten-minute job of it. Then it slithered down via the tool shed, but instead of making straight for the drainpipe that led past Miss Paisley’s windowsill, it changed direction. By leaning out of the window, she could obtain an oblique view of Mr. Rinditch’s rear window.
She hurried downstairs along the corridor, past Mr. Rinditch’s door to the door that gave onto the yard, skirted a group of six ashcans, and came to Mr. Rinditch’s window, which was open about eighteen inches at the bottom. She could see the cat on Mr. Rinditch’s bed. She knew she could not tempt it with food so soon after its main meal. She called coaxingly, then desperately.
“We are in great danger,” she whispered. “Don’t you care?”
The cat stared at her, then closed its eyes. Miss Paisley took stock of the room. It was sparsely but not inexpensively furnished. The paneling was disfigured with calendars and metal coat-hooks.
The sill was more than four feet from the ground. She put her shoulders in the gap, and insinuated herself. She grasped the cat by its scruff, with one finger under its collar, and retained her hold while she scrambled to the safety of the yard, neglecting to lower the window to its usual position. They both reached her apartment without meeting anyone.
During that last fortnight which remained to them, Miss Paisley received — as she would have expressed it — a final lesson from the cat. She was returning from work on a warm evening. When some 50 yards from the chambers, she saw the cat sunning itself on the pavement. From the opposite direction came a man with a Labrador dog on a leash. Suddenly the dog bounded, snatching the leash from the man’s hand.
“Danger! Run a-way!” screamed Miss Paisley.
The cat saw its enemy a second too late. Moreover, its stiff leg put flight out of the question. While Miss Paisley ran forward, feeling the dogs hot breath on the back of her neck, she nerved herself for the breaking of her bones. And then, as it seemed to her, the incredible happened. The dog sprang away from the cat, ran round in a circle, yelping with pain, while the cat clambered to the top of a nearby gatepost.
The man had recovered the leash and was soothing the dog. Again Miss Paisley extemporized a prayer, this time of thankfulness. Then the habit of years asserted itself over the teaching she believed she had received from the cat.
“I am afraid, sir, my cat has injured your dog. I am very sorry. If there is anything I can do—”
“That’s all right, miss,” a genial cockney voice answered. “He asked for it, an’ he got it.” The dog was bleeding under the throat, and there were two long weals on its chest. “That’s the way cats ought to fight — get in under and strike UP, I say!”
“I have some iodine in my flat—”
“Cor, he don’t want none o’ that! Maybe your cat has saved ’im from losing an eye to the next one. Don’t you give it another thought, miss!”
Miss Paisley bowed, sadly confused in her social values, which were also her moral values. The man’s cockney accent was as inescapable as the excellence of his manners. Miss Paisley’s world was changing too fast for her.
She enjoyed another six days and nights of the cat’s company, which included four and a half days at the office. But these can he counted in, because the attention she gave to her work had become automatic and did not disturb her inner awareness of the relationship. She never defined that relationship, had not even observed the oddity that she had given the cat no name...
It was a Tuesday evening. The cat was not at home when she arrived.
“You’ve started being late for meals again,” she grumbled. “Tonight, as it so happens, you can have ten minutes’ grace.” Her subscription to an illustrated social weekly was overdue. She filled up the renewal form, went out to buy a money order.
In the hall, Mr. Rinditch’s voice reached her through the closed door of his apartment — apparently swearing to himself. There followed a muffled, whistling sound, as of cord being drawn sharply over metal. Then she heard a queer kind of growling cough and a scratching on woodwork — the kind of scratching sound that could be made by a cat’s claws on a wooden panel, if the cat’s body were suspended above the floor.