_An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive_
Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.
For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then,
as though arousing from a bad dream:
"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is
bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that
ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing
which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."
His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.
"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am
I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and
let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed
asleep and the whole thing is off."
Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on
alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things
up with the Carringtons, do you?"
"Brown, _do_ you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of
you? _Do_ you?"
"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever
before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"
"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't
suppose _she_ has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"
"Anything to do with it? How?"
"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that
this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, _might_ be a--a--one
of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and
get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes
and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."
He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.
"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself
into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."
He waited, but Brown made no reply.
"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."
No observation from Brown.
"So, _good_-by, old fellow"--with some emotion.
"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.
In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left
the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of
thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always
lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. _Where_ had all this occurred
before? When? What was going to happen next--happen inexorably, as it had
once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone
age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely
girl existed together on earth--or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far
out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?
He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her
youthful beauty began to disturb him. Then cold doubt crept in; something
of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult
research. Should he speak to her?
Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do--an offense the enormity of
which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely
impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of
humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.
He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances
which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car. Number one,
and he held up one finger:
As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to
him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at
Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before
under similar circumstances. That was the beginning.
Number two, and he gravely held up a second finger:
Always before when this idea had come to bother him it had faded after a
moment or two, leaving him merely uneasy and dissatisfied.
This time it persisted--intruding, annoying, exasperating him in his
efforts to remember things which he could not recollect.
Number three, and he held up a third finger:
He _had_ begun to remember! As soon as he or Smith said or did anything
he recollected having said or done it sometime, somewhere, or recollected
that he _ought_ to have.
Number four--four fingers in air, stiff, determined digits:
He had not only, by a violent concentration of his memory, succeeded in
recognizing the things said and done as having been said and done before,
but suddenly he became aware that he was going to be able to foretell,
vaguely, certain incidents that were yet to occur--like the prophesied
advent of the cherry-colored car and the hat, gown, and wicker basket.
He now had four fingers in the air; he examined them seriously, and then
stuck up the fifth.
"Here I am," he thought, "awake, perfectly sane, absolutely respectable.
Why should a foolish terror of convention prevent me from asking that
girl whether she knows anything which might throw some light on this most
interesting mental phenomenon?... I'll do it."
The girl turned her head slightly; speech and the politely perfunctory
smile froze on his lips.
She held up one finger; Brown's heart leaped. _Was_ that some cabalistic
sign which he ought to recognize? But she was merely signaling the
conductor, who promptly pulled the bell and lifted her basket for her
when she got off.
She thanked him; Brown heard her, and the crystalline voice began to ring
in little bell-like echoes all through his ears, stirring endless little
mysteries of memory.
Brown also got off; his legs struck up a walk of their own volition,
carrying him across the street, hoisting him into a north-bound Lexington
Avenue car, and landing him in a seat behind the one where she had
installed herself and her wicker basket.
She seemed to be having some difficulty with the wicker basket;
beseeching six-toed paws were thrust out persistently; soft meows pleaded
for the right of liberty and pursuit of feline happiness. Several
passengers smiled.
Trouble increased as the car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder;
mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl
turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to
soothe its enervated inmate.
In the forties she managed to control the situation; in the fifties a
frantic rush from within burst a string that fastened the basket lid, but
the girl held it down with energy.
In the sixties a tempest broke loose in the basket; harrowing yowls
pierced the atmosphere; the girl, crimson with embarrassment and
distress, signaled the conductor at Sixty-fourth Street and descended,
clinging valiantly to a basket which apparently contained a pack of
firecrackers in process of explosion.
A classical heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will
_no_ one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to
follow, instinctively awaited some similar appeal.
It came unexpectedly; the kicking basket escaped from her arms, the lid
burst open, and an extraordinarily large, healthy and indignant cat flew
out, tail as big as a duster, and fled east on Sixty-fourth Street.
The girl in the summer gown and white straw hat ran after the cat.
Brown's legs ran, too.
There was, and is, between the house on the northeast corner of Sixty-
fourth Street and Lexington Avenue and the next house on Sixty-fourth, an
open space guarded by an iron railing; through this the cat darted, fur
on end, and, with a flying leap, took to the back fences.
"Oh!" gasped the girl.
Then Brown's legs did an extraordinary thing--they began to scramble and
kick and shin up the iron railing, hoisting Brown over; and Brown's
voice, pleasant, calm, reassuring, was busy, too: "If you will look out
for my suitcase I think I can recover your cat.... It will give me great
pleasure to recover your cat. I shall be very glad to have, the
opportunity of recovering--puff--puff--your--puff--puff--c-cat!" And he
dropped inside the iron railing and paused to recover his breath.
The girl came up to the railing and gazed anxiously through at the corner
of the only back fence she could perceive.
"What a perfectly dreadful thing to happen!" she said in a voice not very
steady. "It is exceedingly nice of you to help me catch Clarence. He is
quite beside himself, poor lamb! You see, he has never before been in the
city. I--I shall be distressed beyond m-measure if he is lost."
"He went over those fences," said Brown, breathing faster. "I think I'd
better go after him."
"Oh--_would_ you mind? I'd be so very grateful. It seems so much to ask
of you."
"I'll do it," said Brown, firmly. "Every boy in New York has climbed back
fences, and I'm only thirty."
"It is most kind of you; but--but I don't know whether you could possibly
get him to come to you. Clarence is timid with strangers."
Brown had already clambered on to the wooden fence. He balanced himself
there, astride. Whitewash liberally decorated coat and trousers.
"I see him," he said.
"W-what is he doing?"
"Squatting on a trellis three back yards away." And Brown lifted a
blandishing voice: "Here, Clarence--Clarence--Clarence! Here, kitty--
kitty--kitty! Good pussy! Nice Clarence!"
"Does he come?" inquired the girl, peering wistfully through the railing.
"He does not," said Brown. "Perhaps you had better call."
"Here, puss--puss--puss--puss!" she began gently in that fascinating,
crystalline voice which seemed to set tiny silvery chimes ringing in
Brown's ears: "Here, Clarence, darling--Betty's own little kitty-cat!"
"If he doesn't come to _that_," thought Brown, "he _is_ a brute." And
aloud: "If you could only let him see you; he sits there blinking at me."
"Do you think he'd come if he saw me?"
"Who wouldn't?" thought Brown, and answered, calmly: "I think so.... Of
course, you couldn't get up here."
"I could.... But I'd better not.... Besides, I live only a few houses
away--Number 161--and I _could_ go through into the back yard."
"But you'd better not attempt to climb the fence. Have one of the
servants do it; we'll get the cat between us then and corner him."
"There are no servants in the house. It's closed for the summer--all
boarded up!"
"Then how can you get in?"
"I have a key to the basement.... Shall I?"
"And climb up on the fence?"
"Yes--if I must--if it's necessary to save Clarence.... Shall I?"
"Why can't I shoo him into your yard."
"He doesn't know our yard. He's a country cat; he's never stayed in town.
I was taking him with me to Oyster Bay.... I came down from a week-end at
Stockbridge, where some relatives kept Clarence for us while we were
abroad during the winter.... I meant to stop and get some things in the
house on my way back to Oyster Bay.... Isn't it a perfectly wretched
situation?... We--the entire family--adore Clarence--and--I-I'm so
anxious----"
Her fascinating underlip trembled, but she controlled it.
"I'll get that cat if it takes a month!" said Brown. Then he flushed; he
had not meant to speak so warmly.