"Yes," I replied abstractedly. "But there is a matter about which I have not spoken to you hitherto because quite frankly I had doubted if it had any existence outside my imagination; but every new development of the case is so utterly fantastic that I no longer regard my experience as being in the least degree outside the province of possibility. Before we go further, therefore, into the purely archæological side of the inquiry (and I have still serious doubt respecting the usefulness of such a quest) let me relate a peculiar experience which I had last night after I had left Bolton."
Gatton listened in silence whilst I gave him an account of that evasive shadow which I had perceived behind me, and then of the great cat's eyes which had looked in through the window.
His expression of naïve wonderment was almost funny; and when I had concluded:
"Well, Mr. Addison," said he, "if you had told me this story before I had taken up 'the Oritoga mystery,' for so I observe—" drawing an evening paper from his pocket—"the press has agreed to entitle the case, I should have suggested that your peculiar studies had begun to tell upon your nerves; but this voice on the 'phone and this empty house in which only one room was furnished, finally the green cat painted on the packing-case and the green cat which stands there upon the table have prepared me for even stranger things than your adventure of last night."
"Yet," I urged, "there is no visible connection between the episodes of the case and this strange apparition which I saw in the garden last night."
"There was no visible connection between Sir Marcus's body in a packing-case in the hold of the Oritoga and the garage of the house in College Road until we found one," retorted Gatton. "Anyway I am glad you mentioned the matter to me; I will take a note of it, for it may prove to provide a link in the chain. And now"—taking out a note-book and pencil—"for the history of these cat things."
I sighed rather wearily as I crossed the room to my bookcase and took down the volume of Gaston Maspero, the same which I had been reading but had returned to its shelf as Gatton had been admitted.
"We have it here in a nutshell," I said.
Gatton methodically noted the passages which I read to him. The task concluded:
"H'm," he muttered, scanning his notes, "very strange, very strange indeed. 'She had also her hours of treacherous perversity, during which she played with her victim as with a mouse, before finishing him off with a blow of her claws.'"