"Nothing," her husband answered.
"Nothing! It sounded like nothing! What have you got there? A cat?"
"No--yes."
"Well--I won't have such goings on, and that's all there is to it."
Danner collected the débris. He buried the tadpoles. One was dissected
first. Then he wrote for a long time in his notebook. After that he went
out and, with some difficulty, secured a pregnant cat. A week later he
chloroformed the tabby and inoculated her. Then he waited. He had been
patient for a long time. It was difficult to be patient now.
When the kittens were born into this dark and dreary world, Mr. Danner
assisted as sole obstetrician. In their first hours nothing marked them
as unique. The professor selected one and drowned the remainder. He
remembered the tadpoles and made a simple calculation.
When the kitten was two weeks old and its eyes opened, it was dieting on
all its mother's milk and more besides. The professor considered that
fact significant. Then one day it committed matricide.
Probably the playful blow of its front paw was intended in the best
spirit. Certainly the old tabby, receiving it, was not prepared for such
violence from its offspring. Danner gasped. The kitten had unseamed its
mother in a swift and horrid manner. He put the cat out of its misery
and tended the kitten with trepidation. It grew. It ate--beefsteaks and
chops, bone and all.
When it reached three weeks, it began to jump alarmingly. The laboratory
was not large enough. The professor brought it its food with the
expression of a man offering a wax sausage to a hungry panther.
On a peaceful Friday evening Danner built a fire to stave off the
rigours of a cold snap. He and Mrs. Danner sat beside the friendly
blaze. Her sewing was in her lap, and in his was a book to which he paid
scant attention. The kitten, behind its locked door, thumped and mewed.
"It's hungry," Mrs. Danner said. "If you must keep a cat, why don't you
feed it?"
"I do," he answered. He refrained, for politic reasons, from mentioning
what and how much he fed it. The kitten mewed again.
"Well," she repeated, "it sounds hungry."
Danner fidgeted. The laboratory was unheated and consequently chilly.
From its gloomy interior the kitten peered beneath the door and saw the
fire. It sensed warmth. The feline affinity for hearths drew it. One paw
scratched tentatively on the door.
"It's cold," Mrs. Danner said. "Why don't you bring it here? No, I don't
want it here. Take it a cover."
"It--it has a cover." Danner did not wish to go into that dark room.
The kitten scratched again and then it became earnest. There was a
splitting, rending sound. The bottom panel of the door was torn away and
it emerged nonchalantly, crossing the room and curling up by the fire.
For five minutes Mrs. Danner sat motionless. Her eyes at length moved
from the kitten to her husband's quivering face and then to the broken
door. On his part, he made no move. The kitten was a scant six inches
from his foot. Mrs. Danner rose. She went to the door and studied the
orifice, prying at it with her fingers as if to measure the kitten's
strength by her own. Then she turned the key and peered into the gloom.
That required either consummate nerve or great curiosity. After her
inspection she sat down again.
Ten minutes passed. Danner cleared his throat. Then she spoke. "So.
You've done it?"
"Done what?" he asked innocently.
"You've made all this rubbish you've been talking about strength--happen
to that kitten."
"It wasn't rubbish."
"Evidently."
At that crisis Mr. Danner's toe trembled and the kitten, believing it a
new toy, curled its paws over the shoe. There was a sound of tearing
leather, and the shoe came apart. Fortunately the foot inside it was not
hurt severely. Danner did not dare to budge. He heard his wife's
startled inhalation.
Mrs. Danner did not resume her sewing. She breathed heavily and slow
fire crept into her cheeks. The enormity of the crime overcame her. And
she perceived that the hateful laboratory had invaded her portion of
the house. Moreover, her sturdy religion had been desecrated. Danner
read her thoughts.
"Don't be angry," he said. Beads of perspiration gathered on his brow.
"Angry!" The kitten stirred at the sound of her voice. "Angry! And why
not? Here you defied God and man--and made that creature of the devil.
You've overrun my house. You're a wicked, wicked man. And as for that
cat, I won't have it. I won't stand for it."
"What are you going to do?"
Her voice rose to a scream. "Do! Do! Plenty--and right here and now."
She ran to the kitchen and came back with a broom. She flung the front
door wide. Her blazing eyes rested for a moment on the kitten. To her it
had become merely an obnoxious little animal. "Scat! You little demon!"
The broom came down on the cat's back with a jarring thud.
After that, chaos. A ball of fur lashed through the air. What-not, bird
cage, bookcase, morris chair flew asunder. Then the light went out. In
the darkness a comet, a hurricane, ricochetted through the room. Then
there was a crash mightier than the others, followed by silence.
When Danner was able, he picked himself up and lighted the lamp. His
wife lay on the floor in a dead faint. He revived her. She sat up and
wept silently over the wreck of her parlour. Danner paled. A round
hole--a hole that could have been made by nothing but a solid cannon
shot--showed where the kitten had left the room through the wall.
Mrs. Danner's eyes were red-rimmed. Her breath came jerkily. With
incredulous little gestures she picked herself up and gazed at the hole.
A draught blew through it. Mr. Danner stuffed it with a rug.
"What are we going to do?" she said.
"If it comes back--we'll call it Samson."
And--as soon as Samson felt the gnawing of appetite, he returned to his
rightful premises. Mrs. Danner fed him. Her face was pale and her hands
trembled. Horror and fascination fought with each other in her soul as
she offered the food. Her husband was in his classroom, nervously trying
to fix his wits on the subject of the day.
"Kitty, kitty, poor little kitty," she said.
Samson purred and drank a quart of milk. She concealed her astonishment
from herself. Mrs. Danner's universe was undergoing a transformation.
At three in the afternoon the kitten scratched away the screen door on
the back porch and entered the house. Mrs. Danner fed it the supper
meat.
Danner saw it when he returned. It was chasing flies in the yard. He
stood in awe. The cat could spring twenty or thirty feet with ease. Then
the sharp spur of dread entered him. Suppose someone saw and asked
questions. He might be arrested, taken to prison. Something would
happen. He tried to analyze and solve the problem. Night came. The cat
was allowed to go out unmolested. In the morning the town of Indian
Creek rose to find that six large dogs had been slain during the dark
hours. A panther had come down from the mountains, they said. And Danner
lectured with a dry tongue and errant mind.
It was Will Hoag, farmer of the fifth generation, resident of the
environs of Indian Creek, church-goer, and hard-cider addict, who bent
himself most mercilessly on the capture of the alleged panther. His
chicken-house suffered thrice and then his sheep-fold. After four such
depredations he cleaned his rifle and undertook a vigil from a spot
behind the barn. An old moon rose late and illuminated his pastures with
a blue glow. He drank occasionally from a jug to ward off the evil
effects of the night air.
Some time after twelve his attention was distracted from the jug by
stealthy sounds. He moved toward them. A hundred yards away his cows
were huddled together--a heap of dun shadows. He saw a form which he
mistook for a weasel creeping toward the cows. As he watched, he
perceived that the small animal behaved singularly unlike a weasel. It
slid across the earth on taut limbs, as if it was going to attack the
cows. Will Hoag repressed a guffaw.
Then the farmer's short hair bristled. The cat sprang and landed on the
neck of the nearest cow and clung there. Its paw descended. There was a
horrid sound of ripping flesh, a moan, the thrashing of hoofs, a blot
of dribbling blood, and the cat began to gorge on its prey.
Hoag believed that he was intoxicated, that delirium tremens had
overtaken him. He stood rooted to the spot. The marauder ignored him.
Slowly, unbelievingly, he raised his rifle and fired. The bullet knocked
the cat from its perch. Mr. Hoag went forward and picked it up.
"God Almighty," he whispered. The bullet had not penetrated the cat's
skin. And, suddenly, it wriggled in his hand. He dropped it. A flash of
fur in the moonlight, and he was alone with the corpse of his Holstein.
He contemplated profanity, he considered kneeling in prayer. His joints
turned to water. He called faintly for his family. He fell unconscious.
When Danner heard of that exploit--it was relayed by jeering tongues who
said the farmer was drunk and a panther had killed the cow--his lips set
in a line of resolve. Samson was taking too great liberties. It might
attack a person, in which case he, Danner, would be guilty of murder.
That day he did not attend his classes. Instead, he prepared a
relentless poison in his laboratory and fed it to the kitten in a brace
of meaty chops. The dying agonies of Samson, aged seven weeks, were
Homeric.
After that, Danner did nothing for some days. He wondered if his formulæ
and processes should be given to the world. But, being primarily a man
of vast imagination, he foresaw hundreds of rash experiments. Suppose,
he thought, that his discovery was tried on a lion, or an elephant! Such
a creature would be invincible. The tadpoles were dead. The kitten had
been buried. He sighed wearily and turned his life into its usual
courses.