On the floor Smoke moved softly in front of
him like a black shadow, his eyes gleaming as he turned his head, still
trying with many insinuating gestures and much purring to bring about
the introductions he desired. But it was all in vain. Flame stood riveted to one spot, motionless as
a figure carved in stone. Some minutes passed, during which only the cat moved, and then there
came a sharp change. Flame began to back towards the wall. He moved his
head from side to side as he went, sometimes turning to snap at
something almost behind him. They were advancing upon him, trying to
surround him. His distress became very marked from now onwards, and it
seemed to the doctor that his anger merged into genuine terror and
became overwhelmed by it. The savage growl sounded perilously like a
whine, and more than once he tried to dive past his master’s legs, as
though hunting for a way of escape. He was trying to avoid something
that everywhere blocked the way. This terror of the indomitable fighter impressed the doctor enormously;
yet also painfully; stirring his impatience; for he had never before
seen the dog show signs of giving in, and it distressed him to witness
it. He knew, however, that he was not giving in easily, and understood
that it was really impossible for him to gauge the animal’s sensations
properly at all. What Flame felt, and saw, must be terrible indeed to
turn him all at once into a coward. He faced something that made him
afraid of more than his life merely. The doctor spoke a few quick words
of encouragement to him, and stroked the bristling hair. But without
much success. The collie seemed already beyond the reach of comfort
such as that, and the collapse of the old dog followed indeed very
speedily after this. And Smoke, meanwhile, remained behind, watching the advance, but not
joining in it; sitting, pleased and expectant, considering that all was
going well and as it wished. It was kneading on the carpet with its
front paws—slowly, laboriously, as though its feet were dipped in
treacle. The sound its claws made as they caught in the threads was
distinctly audible. It was still smiling, blinking, purring. Suddenly the collie uttered a poignant short bark and leaped heavily to
one side. His bared teeth traced a line of whiteness through the gloom. The next instant he dashed past his master’s legs, almost upsetting his
balance, and shot out into the room, where he went blundering wildly
against walls and furniture. But that bark was significant; the doctor
had heard it before and knew what it meant: for it was the cry of the
fighter against odds and it meant that the old beast had found his
courage again. Possibly it was only the courage of despair, but at any
rate the fighting would be terrific. And Dr. Silence understood, too,
that he dared not interfere. Flame must fight his own enemies in his
own way. But the cat, too, had heard that dreadful bark; and it, too, had
understood. This was more than it had bargained for. Across the dim
shadows of that haunted room there must have passed some secret signal
of distress between the animals. Smoke stood up and looked swiftly
about him. He uttered a piteous meow and trotted smartly away into the
greater darkness by the windows. What his object was only those endowed
with the spirit-like intelligence of cats might know. But, at any rate,
he had at last ranged himself on the side of his friend. And the little
beast meant business. At the same moment the collie managed to gain the door. The doctor saw
him rush through into the hall like a flash of yellow light. He shot
across the oilcloth, and tore up the stairs, but in another second he
appeared again, flying down the steps and landing at the bottom in a
tumbling heap, whining, cringing, terrified. The doctor saw him slink
back into the room again and crawl round by the wall towards the cat. Was, then, even the staircase occupied? Did _They_ stand also in the
hall? Was the whole house crowded from floor to ceiling? The thought came to add to the keen distress he felt at the sight of
the collie’s discomfiture. And, indeed, his own personal distress had
increased in a marked degree during the past minutes, and continued to
increase steadily to the climax. He recognised that the drain on his
own vitality grew steadily, and that the attack was now directed
against himself even more than against the defeated dog, and the too
much deceived cat. It all seemed so rapid and uncalculated after that—the events that took
place in this little modern room at the top of Putney Hill between
midnight and sunrise—that Dr. Silence was hardly able to follow and
remember it all. It came about with such uncanny swiftness and terror;
the light was so uncertain; the movements of the black cat so difficult
to follow on the dark carpet, and the doctor himself so weary and taken
by surprise—that he found it almost impossible to observe accurately,
or to recall afterwards precisely what it was he had seen or in what
order the incidents had taken place. He never could understand what
defect of vision on his part made it seem as though the cat had
duplicated itself at first, and then increased indefinitely, so that
there were at least a dozen of them darting silently about the floor,
leaping softly on to chairs and tables, passing like shadows from the
open door to the end of the room, all black as sin, with brilliant
green eyes flashing fire in all directions. It was like the reflections
from a score of mirrors placed round the walls at different angles. Nor
could he make out at the time why the size of the room seemed to have
altered, grown much larger, and why it extended away behind him where
ordinarily the wall should have been. The snarling of the enraged and
terrified collie sounded sometimes so far away; the ceiling seemed to
have raised itself so much higher than before, and much of the
furniture had changed in appearance and shifted marvellously. It was all so confused and confusing, as though the little room he knew
had become merged and transformed into the dimensions of quite another
chamber, that came to him, with its host of cats and its strange
distances, in a sort of vision. But these changes came about a little later, and at a time when his
attention was so concentrated upon the proceedings of Smoke and the
collie, that he only observed them, as it were, subconsciously. And the
excitement, the flickering candlelight, the distress he felt for the
collie, and the distorting atmosphere of fog were the poorest possible
allies to careful observation. At first he was only aware that the dog was repeating his short
dangerous bark from time to time, snapping viciously at the empty air,
a foot or so from the ground. Once, indeed, he sprang upwards and
forwards, working furiously with teeth and paws, and with a noise like
wolves fighting, but only to dash back the next minute against the wall
behind him.