Her attention flickering wildly from the attempt on the door to the conversation, she realized what the older man, the one named Galen, was saying. My God, she thought; he knows I’m here. He’s smarter than Michael, smarter and tougher; he knows I’d be afraid to step out on that fire escape. He must be leaning against the doors, making them move, just to frighten me.

Then the door opened and she saw the source of her terror. Not the doctor. Something worse. The cat, the damned cat. She was afraid of the cat. It looked like a diabolical animal, and it hated people; Michael had said so. It would take one look at her and yowl or spit, and back out, and then they would know where-

Linda saw its eyes shine with that eerie fire, which is, scientifically, due to a perfectly normal phenomenon of light refraction. Then the eyes disappeared. Deliberately the animal sat down, its back to her, and began washing its tail.

“There’s nothing in the alley,” Michael said, with a loud sigh of relief.

“And no signs of her having gone that way, either.”

“A flashlight doesn’t show that much detail from up here. What did you expect, a glove draped daintily over a garbage can? Damn it, Galen, she had to go that way. There’s no place to hide in here. I was in the kitchen the whole time, she couldn’t have gotten past me.”

A small contorted shape in the corner of the wardrobe, Linda could almost feel the other man’s gaze, moving thoughtfully around the room. Oh, yes, he was much smarter than Michael. It never occurred to that innocent idiot that she hadn’t left. But he knew, the doctor-he had had considerable experience with people like her.

Whether he actually bent over to look under the bed, she did not know; a snort of amused disgust from Michael might have been his response to such a gesture. But she knew when the doctor’s searching eyes lit on the wardrobe-the only other place in the room where a person might be concealed.

“There’s Napoleon. Still as unsociable as ever?”

“He hates everybody,” Michael said absently. “Likes it in there, though… Galen, what am I going to do?”

Napoleon finished washing his tail, turned around, and prepared to go to sleep. After the first knowing look, he had not glanced in Linda’s direction.

“Well,” the doctor said finally, “let’s sit down and talk about it. Your original account was somewhat abbreviated.”

“Have you got time?”

“Sixteen minutes. Then I’ll have to drive like hell. I must catch that plane.”

They went out, talking about the medical conference the doctor was going to attend. Linda let her head fall back against one of Michael’s coats. Against the light from the half-open door of the wardrobe she saw the solid, unmoving black lump that was Napoleon. An odd smile curved her mouth. How very appropriate, she thought.

For the moment, at least, she was safe; reprieved by the hallowed familiar of legend, by the animal sacred to the powers of evil. What would happen next she neither knew nor cared; she still had to get out of the apartment, but she would worry about that later. Now she could relax, for a little time, enjoying the omen, and listening intently to the conversation, which was clearly audible through the open door.

“I wonder,” the doctor said, “why she should come to you. Is she in love with you? Or you with her?”

“I don’t know what the word means,” Michael said quietly.

“No more do I.”

“Then why the hell did you bring it up? No, I don’t think she’s running to anyone, or anything-unless it’s safety. She’s running away from something. Not her husband-”

“How do you know?”

“Well, for God’s sake! Modern women don’t run away from husbands, they divorce them. Besides, he-he’s devoted to her. Desperately worried about her. He’s out in this filthy rain now, looking for her. He was here, not five minutes before she came.”

“He was?”

“I wish to God you people could carry on a normal conversation instead of trying to make it into a Socratic dialogue,” Michael said irritably. “Yes, he was. And before you can ask, I’ll tell you. I don’t know why he should expect to find her here-that’s the truth, Galen. But he did. He says she’s run away before-to other men.”

“What other men?”

“How the hell should I know? I didn’t ask.”

“I think I might have asked,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “If a nervous husband told me I was number three on any list, I’d be curious about my predecessors. All right, never mind that. She runs away. He pursues.”

“You make it sound…Galen, I tell you the girl is off her head.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, for-”

“All I’m trying to indicate is the stupidity of jumping to conclusions. As a writer you ought to know that a single set of observed facts may be capable of varying interpretations. And you know the human tendency to misinterpret evidence in terms of a preconceived theory. So far, all you’ve conveyed to me is that the woman is running away from something she fears. Either her husband is the source of her fear, or he is closely connected with it. Certainly it’s possible that her fears are unjustified or imaginary; that she is, as you so elegantly put it, off her head. But it is also possible that she fears a real danger, one which even you would admit to be a legitimate cause of fear if you knew what it was. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

“I know what she’s afraid of,” Michael said reluctantly. “And it-isn’t there.”

“What is it?”

“A dog. A black dog. She saw it one night and it terrified her so badly she went into a fainting fit.”

“You didn’t see it?”

“It happens that I didn’t see it. But if I had, if it was real and not a figment of her imagination-so what? The cause is inadequate to explain her response. I tell you, the girl was frantic with fear.”

The doctor did not respond at once. Linda, who had followed the discussion with growing hope, sagged back. For a while he had sounded like a possibility, a potential convert. But Michael’s last statement was unarguable.

“I could argue that,” the doctor said after a while. “But I’ll accept your hypothesis, if only to keep you from bellowing at me.”

“My hypothesis? I haven’t got one.”

“You sure as hell have. And it’s time you dragged it out into the open and had a look at it. Your voice, when you said, ‘A black dog,’ was significant. What does that phrase suggest to you? No fair thinking about it-give me some images.”

“The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Michael said promptly. “Luminous eyes, jaws dripping with phosphorescence…The black dog of the Celts, that presages doom…Agrisly story I read when I was a kid, about a werewolf…”

“Now I,” said Galen, “had a black dog once. A big black mutt who followed me everywhere I went and chewed up my shoes and hid under the bed when my mother scolded him.”

“All right,” Michael muttered. “I see your point, damn your eyes. None of my dogs was black. But it’s not just a personal bias, Galen. It’s partly the emotional atmosphere in that damned house. There are so many sick feelings-between Linda and that foul secretary, between Linda and the old hag who calls herself a white witch. When I looked back on the weekend, it seems to me that we talked of nothing but evil, and demonology, and Satan. The house is big and brightly lit, it has every modern luxury; but it stinks of ugly emotions. It’s a sick house. Now laugh.”

“Why should I? That’s the most important thing you’ve said yet. You are neither stupid nor insensitive-”

“Thanks a lot.”

“-and emotional atmospheres can be felt, I’d never deny that. The origins of the feeling are another matter.”

“I know. And since I don’t believe in mental telepathy, I’ve been trying to remember what small, unnoticed clues I must have seen. There must have been something; I don’t ordinarily come over psychic.”