The Great Fog (25 page)

Paying no attention to the comment, Innes completed his own sentence … “and the cat's claw, like an accent stroke, is notched against the line which runs, ‘After four or five days of such approach …'”

Hamilton cleared his throat. “Really, Innes,” he said, closing the book and putting it aside, “you must take my opinion. There is nothing in all this. Nothing at all.” Innes turned his head away. “Now, don't think I'm going to be stupidly back-slapping and tell you just not to have damn-fool fancies. But, first, you must take my word for it, my professional word, that all these little incidents which have,” he paused for a word, “have so annoyed you, are, in
themselves
,” he stressed the last word, “nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Innes had sunk in his chair. Hamilton hurried a little; he must rouse the man. “And, secondly, I assure you, I give you my word, that you were right, very right to talk it all over with me. I want particularly to assure you that I've come across plenty of cases like this, plenty; quite common in my practice, quite common. Nothing to be alarmed over, if they're understood. Due to strain, you know, subconscious of course. Quite easy to deal with, quite, taken in time, as you've taken it.”

All that Innes said in reply was, as he turned round slowly and fixed his eyes on the doctor, “Then I may tell you all?”

“Why, of course, naturally, naturally, that's half the cure, you know, especially when we've already decided that we know the source of the little trouble—just strain, strain that's making these queer little subjective associations appear as associations, which an onlooker can see are here,” he pointed quite gaily to his own head, “and not there.” He made a flourish which included the book, fireplace, and bookcase.

Indeed, he might have run on with his reassuring patter had not Innes interrupted him with, “Well, the next thing was worse. Perhaps I'd have lacked nerve to tell you if you hadn't told me to go ahead—at least after the way you've treated evidence which seems to me fairly objective. For this, I know, isn't.”

That's bad, thought the doctor; it's a developing hallucination.

“The next night—the fourth,” Innes remarked parenthetically, “there was the usual tap at nine-thirty. How he knows the time, I don't know; but then, I know now that I know nothing.”

“Go on,” said Hamilton in a quietly commanding voice.

“Well, he does know that, I know for certain,” said Innes almost defiantly. “I confess I went to the window for the first time with something like real uneasiness. Damn it, I'm sure you'd have felt the same if you'd been seeing things as I couldn't help seeing them.”

For a moment Hamilton felt, emotionally—not rationally—that he could sympathize in a way. He blew the thin fog of feeling out of his mind. That kind of sympathy is the end of the professional attitude; you become a patient yourself. “Well,” he said almost sharply, “you went to the window.”

“Yes,” Innes hurried on. “I opened it; I Am ran in, trotted to the fire, waited for me to sit down. I sat down; own, I didn't take up my book; own, I hadn't been reading it before he knocked. But this time he didn't have any queer second thoughts. I began to think the act was over. He was back on the old rails. For, sure enough, he chose his spot on the hearth—there, just where your feet are—and started on his grooming. It was all so reassuring. After all, it's one of the most reassuring sights there is: that sane, methodical, pleasant body-conscious self-centeredness. Women brushing their hair, they're always thinking of some man and what he'll say about it. But a cat's pleasure is sanely animal. I watched a few minutes, watched until, all clear and clean, he stretched out one paw and then the other one, found everything at ease, curled up, and went to sleep. It was such a persuasively pantomime sermon on the virtue of relaxation; he was practicing so well what he preached and demonstrated that it had me convinced. I smiled at myself.” Innes smiled wanly at the memory of his last relief, as the sun itself, already overwhelmed by storm clouds, throws up against them a last pallid shaft of light.

“I picked up my book and found my place. It was a good novel of detective adventure. I was soon well settled: my body snug in this chair, my mind ranging off with the story teller or now and then following its own speculations. I don't know how long I read. I suppose I must have stirred, crossed my legs or something, and that may have done it; set it off. Anyhow, I looked up over the edge of my book to the hearth. There was the cat on it. But he was no longer curled up asleep. He was awake and, as I've said, some move of mine may have done it. Anyhow, he was looking up at me.”

He stopped. Hamilton cut in. “Yes, that's common in cats. I myself have often noticed it. You disturb them; they look up at you and then forget, but also forget to turn their heads. They've never been taught it's rude to stare. After all,” he chuckled rather deliberately, “cats wouldn't have been told they could look at kings unless they'd first shown a taste for this bland, contemptuous interest in human self-consciousness.”

Innes wasn't listening. He was getting ready to make an avowal, dreadful to himself, ridiculous to his companion. At last he collected the words, “I looked at I Am; he at me—a sort of strange staring match, I thought for a little. And then I noticed something else. You know how all cats' eyes flash when at night a car's headlights catch them, say, when they're crossing a road. You'd know also that the pale blue eyes of the Siamese are really nearly pigmentless; they are almost albinos.” Hamilton grunted assent. “Well, then, perhaps you have noticed another thing. If you're sitting like this, with your back to a strong light, such as this reading lamp with its reflector, and the focused light, of course, is thrown straight into the cat's eyes, then, not only are its slit-pupils nearly closed and all the eye nearly covered by the iris, but all the color goes from the eye—it appears like a pink mirror.”

“Of course,” said the Doctor, “you're looking right into the eye itself.”

“Well, all I know is that then it gives the effect …” he went over the sentence again, “it gives the effect of looking into a small, lit room, lit with a warm firelight, cosy, quiet, but waiting for someone to come in and occupy it.” He closed his sentence with an ancient quotation: “‘empty, swept, and garnished.' “I went on looking into those small binocular, stereoscopic mirrors. I suppose the cat and I were both in a kind of reciprocal trance. Anyhow, gradually I began to think that I was actually looking into a mirror and that in that mirror was reflected this room. The cat's eyes would then be showing me this room. You see,” he went on more slowly, “I would be seeing this room, seeing behind me all of the other wall right along to the window.”

Innes pointed over his shoulder with his left hand but kept his eyes on the hearth. “I saw it all perfectly clearly, like a view down the wrong end of a telescope. It was in minute but sharpest-cut detail. I scanned every bit of it with the lazy curiosity with which one looks into a camera obscura. Things reduced to model size are somehow always intriguing. I worked my attention along, or rather my eye shifted out to the very edge of the picture, right out to where that window,” again he didn't turn around but pointed with a hooked-back finger in the direction, “terminated my view. I went to it and glanced at the curtain on the left. You see it is a heavy thick curtain and, as now, it was drawn back, since I had not replaced it when I had let in the cat. And then,” Innes' voice had become a whisper and Hamilton had to lean over to catch the words, “I saw the room was—not—not quite as it had been when I had last looked at it. Something else had—been added. By the thick folds of the curtain—I had blinked my own eyes twice to see that they were not cheating me, I looked carefully twice into the mirror-eyes before I could be sure. But then I was as sure as that you're in that chair—” his voice rose to an unpleasantly shrill dismay. “There in the corner by the curtain, watching me, was something, someone, standing ready, ready …”

He swung round. The panic infection of his voice was too strong for the doctor. He, too, could not keep his head from swiveling over his shoulder. He gasped with relief, and then with disgust at himself. The room was healthily empty as a meadow. He flung a glance at Innes, who with incredulous relief was also gazing at the curtain.

Hamilton sprang up, strode across the room, and shook the heavy velvet—“The commonest form of hallucination,” he exclaimed. “Why, Walter Scott, that sane old tale-teller, says he was almost frightened out of his life by seeing, in the dusk, his dressing gown look like a dead friend.”

“But,” Innes muttered, “but it wasn't in the room itself, at least not yet, not then, that I saw it. It was in that creature's eyes.”

For a moment Dr. Hamilton stood by the window. He'd probably do best to go across to Innes and give him a good shaking. Hysterics are now, once again, being slapped into remembering that they are sane; he recalled reading that only a week ago, in his favorite medical journal. Maybe it's not much use to the hysteric, but what a blessed relief to the doctor. Could he really slap an old, respectable, not well-liked friend? He hesitated. What would have happened if he had acted on the notion, who knows. But in those four or five seconds in which he delayed and Innes waited, the next thing happened.

The room was empty and silent, but suddenly they were both arrested. “Bump, Bump.” Innes had heard it; he was half out of his chair. Yes, there could be no doubt. Hamilton glanced at his watch—nine-thirty, precisely. It was not a considered reaction, but all he could say, was, “Well, that isn't a tap; it's a kind of bump.”

Innes was already passing him on his way to the window. “On time,” was all he said. Hamilton had only to wheel round and they were both abreast of the dark window. They looked down to the lowest pane at floor level. In the light thrown out past them by the lit room behind, they could see a faint object.

“It's I Am,” said Innes. Hamilton couldn't clearly discern that it was a cat at all. If it was, it must be muffled in some way. What was obvious was that Innes was going into complete panic. There'd be an awful scene if he didn't somehow stop the whole fantasy. He gripped the bolt lever and threw open the window. Over the threshold at their feet hopped a smoke-gray cat. Of course it had been hard to see it outside, for its face was nearly hidden in black feathers. In its jaws was a fairly large bird, and the wretched creature was still alive.

With a natural reaction Hamilton struck the cat, dealing it a stinging slap on the back of the head. It sprung back, dropping its prey, and bounded out into the garden. The heap of blood-stained feathers lay on the floor a moment. Then the twisted body began to try and pull itself together. They could see that the head and neck were crushed down under the body. It was trying to get them free. Both Innes and Hamilton drew back, one shrinking to touch the mangled body, the other wondering whether he had not better step on it quickly and so break its neck. The body drew itself up; the neck and head nearly emerged. At that moment both of them heard, rising from the wreckage, a small, hoarse, ghost-of-a-voice. “Are you deaf then?” it questioned.

The feathers flopped. Hamilton, with thumb and finger, lifted the limp dead body of the blackbird. Over at the fire he cleared a place in the blazing logs, dropped the carrion in, and flung after it three or four handfuls of kindling. The fire shot up with a crackle and filled the whole hearth. Then he turned to Innes. He was still looking at the small blood stain and some smeared down-feathers that clung to the carpet. “Come and sit down,” he said. “Cats are cruel little beasts, but they can't help it. In the blood; merely reflex, instinct.”

He owned to himself that that dirty little incident, coming where and when it did, couldn't have been more inapposite—or should he say apposite? Such questions were grotesque. Innes was having bad luck, and that was all. Here, for the first time, was a real coincidence, barging in, to fling a spot of trouble on a nervous case which had gone further than he'd first fancied and further than—in another sense of that odd word—he now quite fancied. He went toward Innes but stopped at the bookcase.

Innes swung past him and, keeping his eyes on the curtain, drew back to the chairs. But he spoke to Hamilton: “I don't blame the cat—any more than I blame the bird.” Then with a sudden blaze of terror exploding into rage: “Don't you see, you hell-fool Hamilton. Don't you see? They were simply pawns, messengers. Don't you see? I've been stalked: stalked so assuredly, so cleverly that the stalker actually gives warnings that he's on my track. Dares me to shake him off. See, he's ready to start as soon as I'll call him up. Yes, he knew I'd called him. I'd wanted to kill her, my wife. Night after night, I've come in here to get away from her. Her voice, saying “Are you deaf”—God how I've longed to silence it. I've sat here night after night praying for a safe, sure way, a way that everyone would think natural. I know there's lots of ways. I've sat in that chair saying to myself, that if I just sit quiet and still it will steal into my mind, the perfect traceless way—just as a forgotten word comes in, while you wait, looking, as it were, in the other direction. Then the next signal,
The Frontier Is Crossed
, he's on his way. The third—then I saw he had me—I was to be the victim, not she—I'm the poor stupid fish. He gave his timetable then, from the first reply to my call till his arrival. Oh, he's a fine timekeeper. He runs on schedule. The next night he shows me he's at my shoulder, at my back, standing over me, ready to strike. Tonight, with perfect irony, in your presence—you whom I've asked to save me, you a starched shirt stuffed with stupid self-assurance—tonight he asks me, ‘Am I deaf?' No, I'm not deaf; I'm not blind now. The poor fish sees and hears as the spear gets it!”