e mummy of a cat; and a very fine one, too. If it hadn't been
a special favourite of some very special person it would never have
received so much honour. See! A painted case and obsidian eyes--just
like a human mummy. It is an extraordinary thing, that knowledge of
kind to kind. Here is a dead cat--that is all; it is perhaps four or
five thousand years old--and another cat of another breed, in what is
practically another world, is ready to fly at it, just as it would if
it were not dead. I should like to experiment a bit about that cat if
you don't mind, Miss Trelawny." She hesitated before replying:

"Of course, do anything you may think necessary or wise; but I hope it
will not be anything to hurt or worry my poor Silvio." The Doctor
smiled as he answered:

"Oh, Silvio would be all right: it is the other one that my sympathies
would be reserved for."

"How do you mean?"

"Master Silvio will do the attacking; the other one will do the
suffering."

"Suffering?" There was a note of pain in her voice. The Doctor smiled
more broadly:

"Oh, please make your mind easy as to that. The other won't suffer as
we understand it; except perhaps in his structure and outfit."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Simply this, my dear young lady, that the antagonist will be a mummy
cat like this one. There are, I take it, plenty of them to be had in
Museum Street. I shall get one and place it here instead of that
one--you won't think that a temporary exchange will violate your
Father's instructions, I hope. We shall then find out, to begin with,
whether Silvio objects to all mummy cats, or only to this one in
particular."

"I don't know," she said doubtfully. "Father's instructions seem very
uncompromising." Then after a pause she went on: "But of course under
the circumstances anything that is to be ultimately for his good must
be done. I suppose there can't be anything very particular about the
mummy of a cat."

Doctor Winchester said nothing. He sat rigid, with so grave a look on
his face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in its
enlightening perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet done
the strangeness of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned.
When once this thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed it
grew, and blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand different
ways. The room and all in it gave grounds for strange thoughts. There
were so many ancient relic