ng in the hedge by which
even a small animal could have retired, no living thing was in sight!
But, near and remote, dogs were howling mournfully.

CHAPTER II

THE SIGN OF THE CAT

When Coates brought in my tea, newspapers and letters in the morning,
I awakened with a start, and:

"Has there been any rain during the night, Coates?" I asked.

Coates, whose unruffled calm at all times provided an excellent
sedative, replied:

"Not since a little before midnight, sir."

"Ah!" said I, "and have you been in the garden this morning, Coates?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, "for raspberries for breakfast, sir."

"But not on this side of the cottage?"

"Not on this side."

"Then will you step out, Coates, keeping carefully to the paths, and
proceed as far as the tool-shed? Particularly note if the beds have
been disturbed between the hedge and the path, but don't make any
marks yourself. You are looking for _spoor_, you understand?"

"Spoor? Very good, sir. Of big game?"

"Of big game, yes, Coates."

Unmoved by the strangeness of his instructions, Coates, an
object-lesson for those who decry the excellence of British Army
disciplinary methods, departed.

It was with not a little curiosity and interest that I awaited his
report. As I sat sipping my tea I could hear his regular tread as he
passed along the garden path outside the window. Then it ceased and
was followed by a vague muttering. He had found something. All traces
of the storm had disappeared and there was every indication of a
renewal of the heat-wave; but I knew that the wet soil would have
preserved a perfect impression of any imprint made upon it on the
previous night. Nevertheless, with the early morning sun streaming
into my window out of a sky as near to turquoise as I had ever seen it
in England, I found it impossible to recapture that uncanny thrill
which had come to me in the dark hours when out of the shadows under
the hedge the great cat's eyes had looked up at me.

And now, becoming more fully awake, I remembered something else which
hitherto I had not associated with the latter phenomenon. I remembered
that lithe and evasive pursuing shape which I had detected behind me
on the road. Even now, however, it was difficult to associate one with
the other; for whereas the dimly-seen figure had resembled that of a
man (or, more closely, that of a woman) the eyes had looked out upon
me from a point low down near the ground, like those of som