Free Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand Page A

mouse, a mouse as round and light and white as a ping-pong ball. … And the ping-pong ball was caught in the cruel claws, was caught and crying out with little shrill squealings such as one might expect from a ping-pong ball, little shrill, cut-off squeaks, little gurgling, muffled screams, cut off by the muffling of the soft plush paws; cut off by the tearing of the claws at the celluloid throat, claws that struck out, and released, and caught and tore again. Little muffled, horrible, squealing, gurgling screams… She shot bolt upright in the bed. I was dreaming! But now I’m not dreaming any more, I’m awake, I’m wide awake. … She was wide awake and not dreaming any more about the white, tortured ping-pong mouse and the Siamese cat. …
    But the screams went on.
    She sat absolutely still, the sheets clutched up under her chin as though they alone could protect her heart from that muffled screaming. Little muffled, cut-off, squealings; not animal and yet—not human. Something, not animal, not human, was being tortured in this house and she must drive herself forth from this refuge of her quiet room, and go to its aid, must leave this oasis of white bed, warm blankets, hard, cool, comfortable pillows and cross the desert of the lonely floor and fling open the door and face whatever horror was outside. Half hoping that the door would be locked and give her good reason for flying back to the frail security of the bed, half praying that it be open and leave her free to intervene, she crept across the room. Slowly, slowly she turned the handle. The door inched open. She thought, faint with terror: in a moment I shall know .
    Somewhere in the house a door closed, and abruptly the sobbings and squealings were cut off. She stood for a half moment, staring, transfixed, into the corridor; and then slammed the door shut and rushed back across the room and flung herself down upon the bed, writhing with her face pressed into the pillows in uncontrollable terror.
    So utterly unexpected; so utterly, sickeningly, terrifyingly unexpected. … For in a doorway at the far end of the corridor, standing staring intently at her own slowly opening door, she had seen a man. A man with a round, white face, stupidly staring at her slowly opening door, standing staring at the door, moving his hands over and over one another in a dry, washing movement, over and over and over. A man with a round, white European face—and brown, Indian hands. Hands flecked with blood and foam.

CHAPTER FIVE
    N OW THE HOUSE WAS absolutely still. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. She lay shuddering on her bed, watching with beating heart for the slow, stealthy opening of her door; but it did not come. The crying had ceased with the slamming of that other, far-away door, and all was silence.
    Absolute silence. Had he seen her watching him? He had been looking straight at her door, but had he seen her there? By comparison with the corridor, her room was dark—it was not as though a gleam of light could have shone out, giving her away. She found herself praying to the gods of her childhood to make it so, to make her safe from the steady, purposeful advance of the man with the round white English face and the brown, Indian hands, to protect her from the sight of her door once again slowly, slowly opening in.
    Somewhere, sometime she had seen this man before; just as she had seen the woman Mrs. Love before, so she had seen the man; had seen them together, somewhere, and connected them with death. People in courtrooms, people in prison cells, people in morgues, at gravesides, in the waiting-rooms of hospitals. … So many people that a journalist saw in the daily routine. And somewhere, sometime not so very long ago, she had seen these two people, this woman and this man; and in her mind they were inseparable from Death.
    How long had the man been in the house? Had he been there all along—creeping about the bright corridors avoiding her, dodging into doorways, peering