‘Be so good as to draw the blind,’ says the Doctor, raising himself to his full height beside the bed, and returning his needle to its little silver case. This done, he taps the points of his long white fingers together thoughtfully. With the blinds drawn across the sunrise the colour of his lordship’s face is mercifully modified.
‘That was quick work, Doctor.’
Steerpike is balancing upon his heels. ‘What happens next?’ He clicks his tongue ruminatively as he waits for Prunesquallor’s answer. ‘What was the drug you used, Doctor?’
‘I am not in the mood to answer questions, dear boy,’ replies Prunesquallor, showing Steerpike the whole range of his teeth, but in a mirthless way. ‘Not at all in the mood.’
‘What about the Breakfast?’ says Steerpike, unabashed.
‘His Lordship will
‘Will he, though?’ says the youth, peering at the face. ‘What about his colour?’
‘In half an hour his skin will have returned to normal. He will be there … Now, fetch me Flay and some boiling water, a towel. He must be washed and dressed. Quickly now.’
Before Steerpike leaves the room he bends over Lord Sepulchrave, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. The Earl’s eyes are closed and there is a tranquillity about his face which has been absent for many years.
A BLOODY CHEEKBONE
Steerpike has some difficulty in finding Flay, but he comes across him at last in the blue-carpeted Room of Cats, whose sunlit pile they had trodden together under very different circumstances a year ago. Flay has just reappeared from the Stone Lanes and looks very bedraggled, a long dirty hank of cobweb hanging over his shoulder. When he sees Steerpike his lips curl back like a wolf’s.
‘What you want?’ he says.
‘How’s Flay?’ says Steerpike.
The cats are crowded upon one enormous ottoman with its carven head and foot piece rising into the air in a tangle of gilded tracery as though two toppling waves at sunset were suspended in mid-air, the hollow between them filled with foam. There is no sound from them and they do not move.
‘The Earl wants you,’ continues Steerpike, enjoying Flay’s discomfort. He does not know whether Flay has any knowledge of what is happening to his master.
Flay involuntarily propels his gawky body forwards as he hears that his Lordship wants him, but he pulls himself up at the end of his first long step towards the door, and peers even more suspiciously and acidly at the youth in his immaculate black cloth.
Steerpike on a sudden, without considering the consequences of his action with the same thoroughness that is typical of him, forces his eyes open with the forefinger and thumb of either hand. He wishes to see whether the thin creature before him has seen the Earl during his madness. He is really banking on the assumption that Flay will not have done so, in which case the forcing of his eyes into owlish circles will have no meaning. But he has made this early morning one of his rare mistakes.
With a hoarse, broken cry, Flay, his head reddening with wrath at this insult to his master, staggers to the divan and, shooting out a gaunt hand, plucks a cat by its head from the snowy hill and hurls it at his tormentor. As this happens a cloaked and heavy woman enters the room. The living missile, hurtling at Steerpike’s face, reaches out one of its white legs and as the youth jerks his head to one side, five claws rip out a crimson wedge from his cheek immediately below the right eye.
The air is filled at once with the screaming of a hundred cats which, swarming the walls and furniture, leaping and circling the blue carpet with the speed of light, give the room the appearance of a white maelstrom. The blood, streaming down Steerpike’s neck, feels as warm as tea as it slides to his belly. His hand, which he has raised automatically to his face in a vain attempt to ward off the blow, moves to his cheek as he drops back a pace, and the tips of his fingers become wet. The cat itself has ended its flight against the wall, near the door through which the third figure has just entered. As it falls in a huddle to the floor, half stunned, and with the wedge of Steerpike’s sallow skin between the claws of its left forefoot, it sees the figure above it; it crawls with a moan to within a pace of the visitor, and then, with a superfeline effort, springs to the height of her great breasts where it lies coiled with its eyes like yellow moons appearing above the whiteness of its haunches.
Flay turns his eyes from Steerpike. It has done him good to watch the red blood bubbling from the upstart’s cheek, but now his satisfaction is at an end, for he is gazing stupefied into the hard eyes of the Countess of Groan.
Her big head has coloured to a dim and dreadful madder. Her eyes are completely remorseless. She has no interest in the cause of the quarrel between Flay and the Steerpike youth. All she knows is that one of her white cats had been dashed against the wall and has suffered pain.
