me when I say that a little of my heart went with him.
Lestrade stood leaning against the door, his wet coat steaming slightly, his lips parted in a detestable grin. "Shall I take Holmes's new admirer, Watson?"
"Leave it," I said, "and close the door when you go out."
"I'd lay a fiver you're wasting our time, old man," Lestrade said, but I saw something different in his eyes: if I'd offered to take him up on the wager, he would have found a way to squirm out of it.
"Close the door," I repeated. "I shan't be long."
He closed the door. I was alone in Hull's study . . . except for the cat, of course, which was now sitting in the middle of the rug, tail curled neatly about its paws, green eyes watching me.
I felt in my pockets and found my own souvenir from last night's dinner—men on their own are rather untidy people, I fear, but there was a reason for the bread other than general slovenliness. I almost always kept a crust in one pocket or the other, for it amused me to feed the pigeons that landed outside the very window where Holmes had been sitting when Lestrade drove up.
"Pussy," said I, and put the bread beneath the coffee-table—the coffee-table to which Lord Hull would have presented his back when he sat down with his two wills, the wretched old one and the even more wretched new one. "Puss-puss-puss."
The cat rose and walked languidly beneath the table to investigate the crust.
I went to the door and opened it. "Holmes! Lestrade! Quickly!"
They came in.
"Step over here," I said, and walked to the coffee-table.
Lestrade looked about and began to frown, seeing nothing; Holmes, of course, began to sneeze again. "Can't we have that wretched thing out of here?" he managed from behind the table-napkin, which was now quite soggy.
"Of course," said I. "But where is the wretched thing, Holmes?"
A startled expression filled his wet eyes. Lestrade whirled, walked toward Hull's writing-desk, and peered behind it. Holmes knew his reaction should not have been so violent if the cat had been on the far side of the room. He bent and looked beneath the coffee-table, saw nothing but the rug and the bottom row of the two bookcases opposite, and straightened up again. If his eyes had not been spouting like fountains, he should have seen all then; he was, after all, right on top of it. But one must also give credit where credit is due, and the illusion was devilishly good. The empty space beneath his father's coffee-table had been Jory Hull's masterpiece.
"I don't—" Holmes began, and then the cat, who found my friend much more to its liking than any stale crust of bread, strolled out from beneath the table and began once more to twine ecstatically about his ankles. Lestrade had returned, and his eyes grew so wide I thought they might actually fall out. Even having understood the trick, I myself was amazed. The scarred tomcat seemed to be materializing out of thin air; head, body, white-tipped tail last.
It rubbed against Holmes's leg, purring as Holmes sneezed.
"That's enough," I said. "You've done your job and may leave."
I picked it up, took it to the door (getting a good scratch for my pains), and tossed it unceremoniously into the hall. I shut the door behind it.
Holmes was sitting down. "My God," he said in a nasal, clogged voice. Lestrade was incapable of any speech at all. His eyes never left the table and the faded Turkish rug beneath its legs: an empty space that had somehow given birth to a cat.
"I should have seen," Holmes was muttering. "Yes . . . but you . . . how did you understand so quickly?" I detected the faintest hurt and pique in that voice, and forgave it at once.
"It was those," I said, and pointed at the rug.
"Of course!" Holmes nearly groaned. He slapped his welted forehead. "Idiot! I'm a perfect idiot!"
"Nonsense," I said tartly. "With a houseful of cats—and one who has apparently picked you out for a special friend—I suspect you were seeing ten of everything."
"What about the rug?" Lestrade asked impatiently. "It's very nice, I'll grant, and probably expensive, but—"
"Not the rug," I said. "The shadows"
"Show him, Watson," Holmes said wearily, lowering the napkin into his lap.
So I bent and picked one of them off the floor.
Lestrade sat down in the other chair, hard, like a man who has been unexpectedly punched.
"I kept looking at