He released control of the cat's actions, while still watching through its eyes and ears. Egon's hand again rubbed heavily upward across the cat's fur. Almost light-swift was the slash of a clawed paw ... and Egon yelped as he dropped Ebony to clap his hand to his chin, on which blood began seeping from several deep and painful scratches.
Egon aimed a hard kick in its direction, but Ebony dodged safely away and ran under a large piece of furniture.
"What happened?" Yandor sprang forward, a cloth in his hand to wipe away the blood from Egon's chin. "Wait a minute. I'll get medicine to put on that."
"Get rid of that cursed animal or I'll kill it," Egon blazed.
"Well now, you must have hurt it some way," Yandor said placatingly as he daubed medicine on his friend's chin, stopping the bleeding and relieving the pain. "Ebony is so friendly and quiet, I can't understand it. He never acted that way before."
"Well, keep the vicious thing caged after this, then," and Egon stomped out of the house, the other two men silently following.
Nor could Hanlon detect anything in Yandor's mind, which he invaded as quickly as possible, that this was anything more than the grumbling of a friend who had been accidentally injured. Yet there was a bit of fear of that other man there, and a resolution to keep the cat out of sight when Egon was around.
Did Yandor, himself, know that Egon and the masked man were the same—or were Hanlon and Ebony wrong? If not, why was Yandor afraid? There were many questions, but no answers—and Hanlon fumed.
He must get facts. He was getting a lot of suspicions and possible clues, and certainly more information all the time. But none of them tied in together as yet; none of them were provable facts.
Slowly, as he thought this out, it became more and more apparent to Hanlon that he must no longer be tied down to his work at the theatre. It—and taking care of the roches daytimes—was demanding entirely too much of his time. Besides, it had only been undertaken to give him a chance to get acquainted with Ino Yandor and, later, to give Hanlon a reason for presenting the cat to this pet-collector.