Here is a dead cat—that is all; it is perhaps four or
five thousand years old—and another cat of another breed, in what is
practically another world, is ready to fly at it, just as it would if
it were not dead. I should like to experiment a bit about that cat if
you don’t mind, Miss Trelawny.”  She hesitated before replying:

“Of course, do anything you may think necessary or wise; but I hope it
will not be anything to hurt or worry my poor Silvio.”  The Doctor
smiled as he answered:

“Oh, Silvio would be all right:  it is the other one that my sympathies
would be reserved for.”

“How do you mean?”

“Master Silvio will do the attacking; the other one will do the
suffering.”

“Suffering?”  There was a note of pain in her voice. The Doctor smiled
more broadly:

“Oh, please make your mind easy as to that. The other won’t suffer as
we understand it; except perhaps in his structure and outfit.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Simply this, my dear young lady, that the antagonist will be a mummy
cat like this one. There are, I take it, plenty of them to be had in
Museum Street. I shall get one and place it here instead of that
one—you won’t think that a temporary exchange will violate your
Father’s instructions, I hope. We shall then find out, to begin with,
whether Silvio objects to all mummy cats, or only to this one in
particular.”

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “Father’s instructions seem very
uncompromising.”  Then after a pause she went on:  “But of course under
the circumstances anything that is to be ultimately for his good must
be done. I suppose there can’t be anything very particular about the
mummy of a cat.”

Doctor Winchester said nothing. He sat rigid, with so grave a look on
his face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in its
enlightening perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet done
the strangeness of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned. When once this thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed it
grew, and blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand different
ways. The room and all in it gave grounds for strange thoughts. There
were so many ancient relics that unconsciously one was taken back to
strange lands and strange times. There were so many mummies or mummy
objects, round which there seemed to cling for ever the penetrating
odours of bitumen, and spices and gums—“Nard and Circassia’s balmy
smells”—that one was unable to forget the past. Of course, there was
but little light in the room, and that carefully shaded; so that there
was no glare anywhere. None of that direct light which can manifest
itself as a power or an entity, and so make for companionship. The
room was a large one, and lofty in proportion to its size. In its
vastness was place for a multitude of things not often found in a
bedchamber. In far corners of the room were shadows of uncanny shape. More than once as I thought, the multitudinous presence of the dead and
the past took such hold on me that I caught myself looking round
fearfully as though some strange personality or influence was present. Even the manifest presence of Doctor Winchester and Miss Trelawny could
not altogether comfort or satisfy me at such moments. It was with a
distinct sense of relief that I saw a new personality in the room in
the shape of Nurse Kennedy. There was no doubt that that business-like,
self-reliant, capable young woman added an element of security to such
wild imaginings as my own. She had a quality of common sense that
seemed to pervade everything around her, as though it were some kind of
emanation. Up to that moment I had been building fancies around the
sick man; so that finally all about him, including myself, had become
involved in them, or enmeshed, or saturated, or.... But now that she had
come, he relapsed into his proper perspective as a patient; the room
was a sick-room, and the shadows lost their fearsome quality. The only
thing which it could not altogether abrogate was the strange Egyptian
smell. You may put a mummy in a glass case and hermetically seal it so
that no corroding air can get within; but all the same it will exhale
its odour. One might think that four or five thousand years would
exhaust the olfactory qualities of anything; but experience teaches us
that these smells remain, and that their secrets are unknown to us. Today they are as much mysteries as they were when the embalmers put
the body in the bath of natron....


All at once I sat up. I had become lost in an absorbing reverie. The
Egyptian smell had seemed to get on my nerves—on my memory—on my very
will. At that moment I had a thought which was like an inspiration. If I was
influenced in such a manner by the smell, might it not be that the sick
man, who lived half his life or more in the atmosphere, had gradually
and by slow but sure process taken into his system something which had
permeated him to such degree that it had a new power derived from
quantity—or strength—or.... I was becoming lost again in a reverie. This would not do. I must
take such precaution that I could remain awake, or free from such
entrancing thought. I had had but half a night’s sleep last night; and
this night I must remain awake. Without stating my intention, for I
feared that I might add to the trouble and uneasiness of Miss Trelawny,
I went downstairs and out of the house. I soon found a chemist’s shop,
and came away with a respirator. When I got back, it was ten o’clock;
the Doctor was going for the night. The Nurse came with him to the
door of the sick-room, taking her last instructions. Miss Trelawny sat
still beside the bed. Sergeant Daw, who had entered as the Doctor went
out, was some little distance off. When Nurse Kennedy joined us, we arranged that she should sit up till
two o’clock, when Miss Trelawny would relieve her. Thus, in accordance
with Mr. Trelawny’s instructions, there would always be a man and a
woman in the room; and each one of us would overlap, so that at no time
would a new set of watchers come on duty without some one to tell of
what—if anything—had occurred. I lay down on a sofa in my own room,
having arranged that one of the servants should call me a little before
twelve. In a few moments I was asleep. When I was waked, it took me several seconds to get back my thoughts so
as to recognise my own identity and surroundings. The short sleep had,
however, done me good, and I could look on things around me in a more
practical light than I had been able to do earlier in the evening. I
bathed my face, and thus refreshed went into the sick-room. I moved
very softly. The Nurse was sitting by the bed, quiet and alert; the
Detective sat in an arm-chair across the room in deep shadow. He did
not move when I crossed, until I got close to him, when he said in a
dull whisper:

“It is all right; I have not been asleep!”  An unnecessary thing to
say, I thought—it always is, unless it be untrue in spirit.