besides, a kitten couldn’t jump up to a window ledge. The cellar door was closed and had been that way all day. He went upstairs. Again no cat was in sight, although he didn’t look under beds or behind the bathtub or other possible hiding places. The only window open upstairs was in the bedroom he slept in.
He went to the open window and looked out speculatively at a tree branch that came close to it, but considerably above the level of the sill. He leaned out and tugged lightly at the end of the branch; it bent downward easily. Yes, even a small cat’s weight could bend that branch down so it might be able to jump to the window sill. But it could never get out that way. Nor, he decided, after looking down, by jumping down. Onto soft grass, just possibly, but the ground under the window was hard-baked and stone-studded. A cat jumping that far to such a surface would be, if not killed, too seriously injured to be able to get away.
But it came to him suddenly that a cat, if there was one in the house, just might want to die; the Gross’s cat had scared to want to be killed, and the other animals—
He closed the window, went downstairs and left the house. If there was a cat inside now, it would still be there when he got back and he’d worry about it then.
He got back in the car, started it, and backed it around. “I didn’t see a cat, Miss Talley,” he said. “Are you sure you saw one? And just when and where?”
“I thought I was sure at the time, but I suppose it could have been a momentary optical illusion. It was while you were dictating; or rather, while you were pausing between sentences. I looked up, and saw, or thought I saw, the head of a cat sticking around the corner of the hallway passage leading to the kitchen alongside the stairs. I didn’t say anything or call to it because I didn’t want to interrupt your train of thought. Then you started dictating again, and when I looked that way again, it was gone.”
She paused a moment. “Now that I think back, though, I’m sure I must have imagined seeing it. It was just a quick momentary glance and then I looked back at my notebook as you started talking. It’s very easy to imagine something under those circumstances.”
“I suppose so,” Doc said, making his voice easier than he felt. “Well, if I do find a cat there, I’ll let you know.”
For a few minutes they rode in silence and then Miss Talley said, “Doctor, you don’t really believe there could be—a disease, a contagious disease, that could pass from man to animal and vice versa and—make its victims insanely suicidal?”
“I’ll admit I’ve never heard of one, so it would have to be pretty rare.”
“Pretty rare—but pretty well known just
“I’m afraid that’s rather probable. But, Miss Talley, aside from that possibility—or sheer coincidence—can you think of any other explanation?”
“Certainly I can. Don’t you remember about the Gadardene swine, Doctor?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Gadardene swine…” Doc said musingly. “They sound familiar, but I’m afraid I can’t place them.”
“In the Bible,” Miss Talley said. “Book of Luke, I think. Christ came upon a man who was possessed by devils, and ordered them to leave him. There was a herd of swine nearby. Let’s see; I think I can quote the crucial verse: ‘Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.’ ”
Doc groaned softly. “Miss Talley, don’t tell me you believe in demoniac possession. Please.”
“Of course I don’t. That is, I don’t believe in demons. But possession—”
“Possession by what, then? I’m a materialist, Miss Talley. I’ll admit that the Rhine experiments and some other things have shaken me just a little bit, enough so I don’t dogmatically deny the possibility of wild talents like telepathy and telekinesis. And of course hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion are fully accepted scientifically. But not even the wildest enthusiast for parapsychology has suggested that one mind can take over another and control it from inside.”
“One
“Hmmm,” said Doc. Wondering for a moment if Miss Talley was joking, he moved his head far enough to be able to see her face in the rear vision mirror. Her eyes looked excited, the rest of her face was calm.
She said, “Aren’t we working right now to get men onto other planets? What makes you think we’re the most advanced race in the universe? How do you
“Hmmm,” said Doc. “I suppose I don’t, but then again I don’t know that there is. But why
“Because only one person or animal has been—I’ll call it possessed, for lack of a better word—at a time. The field mouse, then Tommy after the field mouse was dead, the hound after Tommy was dead, the owl after the hound was dead, the cat— You see what I mean, Doctor. Never two at any one time. And that’s why he makes his hosts commit suicide, so he can get his mind back out of them and be free to take a different host.”
Something seemed to prickle between Doc’s shoulder blades. But he said, “You certainly have an imagination, Miss Talley. Possibly I should read science fiction instead of mysteries.”
“Possibly you should. But with what’s happening, possibly you won’t have to, to have your imagination stimulated. If there is a cat at your place, maybe it’s host to an alien who was spying on us. You might ask him.”
Doc laughed. “And then kill the cat so the alien can take me over, eh? If that happens, I’ll let you know, Miss Talley.”
But after he’d dropped her off at her little house, his expression was thoughtful and a little worried as he drove home. It was ridiculous, of course, but what if—?
He let himself in the door carefully, making sure nothing got out past him. He saw nothing, heard nothing, out of the ordinary.
He leaned against the inside of the door, filled his pipe with tobacco and lighted it.
He went into the living room and sat down in his favorite chair, a leather upholstered Morris. Backed against the biggest window and with a lamp standing beside it, it afforded excellent light for reading either by day or by night. A paper-back mystery novel lay open on one arm of the chair, but he didn’t pick it up.
Should he search the house? It would be a long and tedious job to look everywhere a cat might hide. And besides, down-stairs here an intelligent cat wouldn’t even have to hide, since there was no door in the doorway between living room and kitchen, or in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway that led to the front door and back to the living room again. It could simply move from room to room ahead of him and stay out of his sight that way. Right now it could be sitting in the kitchen. And if it heard him heading that way it could come back here by way of the hall—or through the kitchen-living room door if he went by the hallway. It could move more silently than he could and would have better hearing.
That is, if there
And if there was, why shouldn’t it be a perfectly ordinary cat, here for perfectly good catlike reasons? Well… certainly it wasn’t very usual for a cat to enter a house, without good reason at least, by making what must have been a fairly dangerous jump from a tree branch to an upstairs window. And another thing, why would it keep itself so well and thoroughly hidden for so long, all the time he’d been dictating?
His pipe had burned out and he knocked the dottle out of it and wondered if he should get himself something to eat, or drive into town for something. Somehow he didn’t feel like making dinner for himself.
But the cat…?
Suddenly he thought of a way of telling, on return, whether or not there was a cat here in the house—at least, if it moved around and didn’t stay hidden in one place. Along with the pots and pans in one of the cupboards there was a flour sifter; he’d used it a few times to flour fish when he was going to fry them. He got it now and put a little flour in it. Then he went to the foot of the stairs and over the bottom few steps scattered a thin, almost
