odds were. Important was that here was clearly a case where he must fight, and therefore the consequences became quite secondary.
He explained this to Jennie, or at least tried to as best he could, and to his surprise, once he had put it that way, she dried her tears, ceased her objections and self-accusations, and almost from one minute to the other became an entirely different person. What Peter had won back by the moment and method of his decision was his old comrade, partner and standby, the Jennie he had first met and knew and come to love—loyal, steady, faithful, coolly intelligent and as always wise and efficient, and thoroughly capable and self-possessed.
`Very well, Peter,' she said in quite a different tone of voice, for the time for weeping, fretting and sentimentally lamenting was over for her now, `there is at least one way in which I can help you. I can show you a few things you won't find in the book, and maybe that Dempsey hasn't seen either, and prepare you. You will have to harden yourself, Peter, and forget everything, because I am going to hurt you and you must be prepared to hurt me, for this is serious. When the time comes, and you face him, there will be no quarter given or asked. We have a little less than three days, for that is when Dempsey has said he will be coming to get me. It isn't much, but at least we can get in some training and hard work. Dempsey doesn't know about you, so he won't prepare, though he's fighting nearly all the time and is always in condition. Still …'
`When and how will it be when he comes?' Peter asked.
`At night,' Jennie replied. `At night of the third day. He will come and call to me at the mouth of the iron pipe from the street. He will be angry and impatient for me to come. Anything or anyone who gets in his way at that moment he will try to kill.'
'Ah,' said Peter, 'I see. You won't come out, but I will. There's room in the street …'
`That will be in Dempsey's favour,' Jennie said, `he's the greatest street-fighter ever seen in this neighbourhood for generations back. But that can't be helped. He's too experienced an old campaigner to be lured in here. Otherwise you could try to ambush him in the tunnel and kill him there.'
Peter stared for an instant in astonishment at his friend and companion, and then said-`But that wouldn't be fair. I couldn't do that.'
Jennie said: `Oh, Peter, in this kind of battle there is no such thing as fair and unfair. There is only life and death, the vanquished and the survivor. Rest assured that Dempsey won't trouble about being 'fair' …'
`Well,' said Peter, 'I don't care about him. I shall.'
Jennie emitted a great sigh. There were certain things in Peter, certain facets of being human that she could never learn to understand. They just had to be accepted.
`Very well,' she said, `let's go into the gymnasium and begin …'
The gymnasium proved to be a large and wholly empty storage bin about five down from where they had their home, and to which they repaired at once.
`Now,' Jennie said, withdrawing a slight distance from him, 'I'm coming at you. Give a little with the charge, and stop me with claws out. Hit hard, Peter!' She flew at him like a small cannonball of furred fury.
Peter yielded ground as she had directed, but he countered her attack with no more than a gentle play– pat, a buffet only half delivered with all talons sheathed. He on his part suddenly felt a sharp stab of pain in his right flank and a stinging in his nose. He backed away, blinking. His tender nose was scratched, and when he turned his head to look, a small fleck of red was already showing near his shoulder where Jennie's claws had dug.
Jennie was standing a few feet away from him, her eyes narrowed down to slits, her tail bushed and lashing. `I warned you!' she said. And then, only for an instant, and the last time, she softened and the love-sound was in her throat. 'Oh, my Peter,' she said, `you must…. It's for YOUR sake . . .' Then she cried-'
'Ware!' and charged in again.
This time Peter defended himself with tooth and claw.
Then began what was a kind of nightmare to Peter—three days of grim and bitter lessons in the art of self- preservation and other-destruction. From the lore of cats from time immemorial culled from jungle, rocky mountain caves and desert, Jennie brought up her memories of every trick of attack and defence, augmented by her deep knowledge and experience of the seamy side of London and the hard-bitten customers to be encountered there.
It was not that Peter could not take it, but when he first saw the telltale flecks of crimson on Jennie's white throat and sweet muzzle and mask, for which he knew he was responsible, he came close to breaking down and weeping because so deeply and tenderly did he love her that he could not bear to hurt her.
But she was as hard as steel, and far more tough than he at that moment, for she knew that her own skin was of no account at this time and that he needed the training if he was to survive the battle to come. And she was merciless to him, too: she made him protect his vital spots, or suffer the consequences. Herself, her own person, she offered to the augmenting of his skill in combat almost as a sacrifice to ensure his victory. Since she could not by their Law enter the fray and battle at his side, she took her hurts in this manner and cherished them, because each drop she shed, each nick or bite, cut or scratch she suffered for him and thus it was no suffering at all.
At night they lay down side by side on the great Napoleon bed and washed and licked one another's wounds so that they would be clean and healed by the next day when the horrid lessons were resumed, and Peter, learning quickly, now improved by leaps and bounds in speed, deadliness and agility, … And if he noticed that he was less injured now during the training affrays, while Jennie's face and body was a mass of bites, cuts, scars and bruises, he said nothing, for she had likewise managed to instill in him a feeling of the danger and the deadly earnestness of the fight into which he was going. Time was so short, and it would be for her happiness as well as his that he would be doing battle.
But the third day there was no training, nor would Jennie let Peter eat anything, for she knew that one fought best on an empty stomach. But all day long she made him sleep, curled up and relaxed on their bed, and when he showed signs of being fretful or restless as the hour approached she soothed him with washing and massage until he slept again.
And so the sun girded that part of the hemisphere and the light faded away from the broken pane of glass in the tiny window in their bin and Peter slept, calmly and deeply, the sleep that repairs all ravages to mind and body and brings renewed strength.
It was shortly before Dempsey came and called that Peter roused out of the depths of his sleep at once, and awake all over, alive and clear-headed and tingling in every nerve and muscle. It was pitch dark, but the light of a single star that came in through the broken pane was enough for his cat-sensitive eyes to orient themselves. Jennie was nearby. He felt her presence rather than saw her. He stretched once, and then crouched and listened.
Then he heard it, muffled by its passage through the walls and windings of the warehouse, via the tunnel and aisles, but unmistakably the voice of Dempsey. Peter remembered it now. He would have known it anywhere. And it was calling to Jennie. `Come out . . . Jennie come aaaaaaout naaaaow! Naaaaaaaow Jennie come aaaaaaout …'
A low, deep, nearly inaudible growl formed itself in Peter's throat. He flattened himself almost on to his stomach and began to slink forward. The last thing he heard was Jennie's deep sigh from the bed, and he felt rather than heard her wish to him-`Good hunting, oh, my Peter. . .'
Then, he was down from the bed, and with the fur from his belly almost brushing the floor, every movement controlled so that he seemed to flow along the ground, he went down the dark aisle of the warehouse in the direction of the tunnel from whence came that call that raised every hackle and hair on his body
`Jennie, come aaaaaaaaaout naaaaaaow, come aaaaaaout, come aaaaaaaaaaout!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: The Last Fight
MY Jennie come aaaaaaaout! Naaaaaaow naaaaaaow come aaaaaout!'
The low-pitched, insistent cry from the street penetrated the pitch-black tunnel where Peter was crawling slowly but steadily towards the exit orifice. And now that the moment was so close at hand when he must face Dempsey, Peter knew that he was very lonely and very much afraid. Nevertheless, he kept on.
When he had been together with Jennie, in the safety and security of their home, he had had the comfort and aid of her presence to keep him from dwelling too long in his mind or imagination upon the consequences of the
