servant by a loose portion of the long jacket. Mr Flay brought down his bony hand suddenly over the boy’s arm, knocking it away and a t’ck, t’ck, t’ck, sounded in the tall creature’s throat, warning him against any further attempts at intimacy.
‘Cat room,’ said Flay, putting his hand to the iron knob of the door.
‘Oh,’ said Steerpike, thinking hard and repeating ‘Cat room’ to fill in time, for he saw no reason for the remark. The only interpretation he could give to the ejaculation was that Flay was referring to him as a cat and asking to be given more room. Yet there had been no irritation in the voice.
‘Cat room,’ said Flay again, ruminatively, and turned the iron doorknob. He opened the door slowly and Steerpike, peering past him, found no longer any need for an explanation.
A room was filled with the late sunbeams. Steerpike stood quite still, a twinge of pleasure running through his body. He grinned. A carpet filled the floor with blue pasture. Thereon were seated in a hundred decorative attitudes, or stood immobile like carvings, or walked superbly across their sapphire setting, interweaving with each other like a living arabesque, a swarm of snow-white cats.
As Mr Flay passed down the centre of the room, Steerpike could not but notice the contrast between the dark rambling figure with his ungainly movements and the monotonous cracking of his knees, the contrast between this and the superb elegance and silence of the white cats. They took not the slightest notice of either Mr Flay or of himself save for the sudden cessation of their purring. When they had stood in the darkness, and before Mr Flay had removed the bunch of keys from his pocket, Steerpike had imagined he had heard a heavy, deep throbbing, a monotonous sea-like drumming of sound, and he now knew that it must have been the pullulation of the tribe.
As they passed through a carved archway at the far end of the room and had closed the door behind them he heard the vibration of their throats, for now that the white cats were once more alone it was revived, and the deep unhurried purring was like the voice of an ocean in the throat of a shell.
‘THE SPY-HOLE’
‘Whose are they?’ asked Steerpike. They were climbing stone stairs. The wall on their right was draped with hideous papers that were peeling off and showed rotting surfaces of chill plaster behind. A mingling of many weird colours enlivened this nether surface, dark patches of which had a submarine and incredible beauty. In another dryer area, where a great sail of paper hung away from the wall, the plaster had cracked into a network of intricate fissures varying in depth and resembling a bird’s-eye view, or map of some fabulous delta. A thousand imaginary journeys might be made along the banks of these rivers of an unexplored world.
Steerpike repeated his question, ‘Whose are they?’ he said.
‘Whose what?’ said Flay, stopping on the stairs and turning round. ‘Still here are you? Still following me?’
‘You suggested that I should,’ said Steerpike.
‘Ch! Ch!’ said Flay, ‘what d’you want, Swelter’s boy?’
‘Nauseating Swelter,’ said Steerpike between his teeth but with one eye on Mr Flay, ‘vile Swelter.’
There was a pause during which Steerpike tapped the iron banisters with his thumb-nail.
‘Name?’ said Mr Flay.
‘My name?’ asked Steerpike.
‘Your name, yes, your name, I know what
‘Steerpike sir,’ said the boy.
‘Queerpike, eh? eh?’ said Flay.
‘No, Steerpike.’
‘What?’
‘Steerpike. Steerpike.’
‘What for?’ said Flay.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘What for, eh? Two Squeertikes, two of you. Twice over. What for? One’s enough for a Swelter’s boy.’
The youth felt it would be useless to clear up the problem of his name. He concentrated his dark eyes on the gawky figure above him for a few moments and shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly. Then he spoke again, showing no sign of irritation.
‘Whose cats were those, sir? May I ask?’
‘Cats?’ said Flay, ‘who said cats?’
‘The white cats,’ said Steerpike. ‘All the white cats in the Cat room. Who do they belong to?’
Mr Flay held up a finger. ‘My Lady’s,’ he said. His hard voice seemed a part of this cold narrow stairway of stone and iron. ‘They belong to my Lady. Lady’s white cats they are. Swelter’s boy. All hers.’
Steerpike pricked his ears up, ‘Where does she live?’ he said. ‘Are we close to where she lives?’
For answer Mr Flay shot his head forward out of his collar and croaked, ‘Silence! you kitchen thing. Hold your tongue you greasy fork. Talk too much,’ and he straddled up the stairs, passing two landings in his ascent, and then at the third he turned sharply to his left and entered an octagonal apartment where full-length portraits in huge dusty gold frames stared from seven of the eight walls. Steerpike followed him in.
Mr Flay had been longer away from his lordship than he had intended or thought right and it was on his mind that the earl might be needing him. Directly he entered the octagonal room he approached one of the portraits at the far end and pushing the suspended frame a little to one side, revealed a small round hole in the panelling the size of a farthing. He placed his eye to this hole and Steerpike watched the wrinkles of his parchment-coloured skin gather below the protruding bone at the base of the skull, for Mr Flay both had to stoop and then to raise his head in order to apply his eye at the necessary angle. What Mr Flay saw was what he had expected to see.
