She stopped halfway up the stairs. "That was a rotten, rotten thing for
anybody to do."
"Yes. We'll try to find out who."
She left the door open. A moment later she came out and laid on the
porch railing a square of heavy cloth, covered with shed hair. Then
she went in again and shut the door.
He rolled up the cat's body and stopped at the garage for the spade.
He did not spend time searching for any brick or heavy stone or other
missile. Nor did he examine closer the heavy footmarks he fancied he
saw in the grass beyond the service yard.
Lightning began to flicker as his spade bit into the soft ground by
the back fence. He kept his mind strictly on the task at hand. He
worked steadily, but without undue haste. When he patted down the last
spadeful of earth and started for the house, the lightning flashes were
stronger, making the moments in between even darker. A wind had started
up and was dragging at the leaves.
He did not hurry. What if the lightning did indistinctly show him a
large dog near the house toward the front? There were several large
dogs in the neighborhood. They were not savage. Totem had not been
killed by a dog.
Deliberately he replaced the spade in the garage and walked back to the
house. Only when he got inside and looked back through the screen did
his thoughts break loose for a moment.
The lightning flash, brightest yet, showed the dog coming around the
corner of the house. He had only a glimpse. A gray dog who walked
stiff-legged. He quickly closed the door and shot home the bolt.
Then he remembered that the study windows were open. He must close
them. Quickly.
It might rain in.
When Norman entered the living room his face was composed. Tansy was
sitting in the straight chair, leaning a little forward, an intent
moody expression around her eyes. Her hands were playing absently with
a bit of twine.
He carefully lit a cigarette.
"Do you want that drink now?" he asked, not too casually, not too
sharply.
"No, thanks. You have one." Her hands kept on knotting and unknotting
the twine.
He sat down and picked up his book. From the easy-chair he could watch
her unobtrusively.
And now that he had no grave to dig or other mechanical task to
perform, his thoughts were not to be denied. But at least he could keep
them circling in a little isolated sphere inside his skull, without
affecting either the expression of his face or the direction of his
other thoughts, which were protectively focused on Tansy.
"Sorcery _is_," went the thoughts inside the sphere. "Something
has been conjured down from a roof. Women are witches fighting for
their men. Tansy was a witch. She was guarding you. But you made her
stop."
"In that case," he replied swiftly to the thoughts inside the sphere,
"why isn't Tansy aware of what's happening? It can't be denied that she
has acted very relieved and happy."
"Are you sure she isn't aware or becoming aware?" answered the thoughts
inside the sphere. "Besides, in losing her weapons, she has lost
her sensitivity, which had probably declined in acuteness through
familiarity. Without microscope or telescope, a scientist would be no
better able than a savage to see the germs of typhoid or the moons of
Mars. His natural sensory equipment would even be inferior to that of
the savage."
And the imprisoned thoughts buzzed violently, like bees seeking escape
from a stopped-up hive.
"Norman," Tansy said abruptly, without looking up at him, "you found
and burned that hand in your watch charm, didn't you?"
He thought a moment. "Yes, I did," he said lightly.
"I'd really forgotten about it. There were so many."
He turned a page, and then another. Thunder crackled loudly, and rain
began to patter on the roof.
"Norman, you burned the diary, too, didn't you? You were right in doing
it, of course. I held it back, because it didn't contain actual curses,
only the formulas for them. So in a twisted illogical way I pretended
it didn't count."
That was harder to answer. He felt as if he were playing a guessing
game and Tansy was getting perilously "warm." The thoughts in the
sphere buzzed triumphantly, "Mrs. Gunnison has the diary. Now she knows
all of Tansy's protective charms."