The men liked each other and their personalities did

not clash, or would not have clashed had they chanced to come to terms

of acquaintance. The Frenchman, indeed, seemed to have exercised a

silent protective influence over the insignificant little Englishman,

and without words or gestures betrayed that he wished him well and

would gladly have been of service to him.

“And this sentence that he hurled at you after the

bag?” asked John Silence, smiling that peculiarly sympathetic smile

that always melted the prejudices of his patient, “were you unable to

follow it exactly?”

“It was so quick and low and vehement,” explained

Vezin, in his small voice, “that I missed practically the whole of it.

I only caught the few words at the very end, because he spoke them so

clearly, and his face was bent down out of the carriage window so near

to mine.”

“‘A cause du sommeil et a cause des chats’?” repeated Dr. Silence, as though half speaking to himself.

“That’s it exactly,” said Vezin; “which, I take it,

means something like ‘because of sleep and because of the cats,’

doesn’t it?”

“Certainly, that’s how I should translate it,” the

doctor observed shortly, evidently not wishing to interrupt more than

necessary.

“And the rest of the sentence—all the first part I

couldn’t understand, I mean—was a warning not to do something—not to

stop in the town, or at some particular place in the town, perhaps.

That was the impression it made on me.”

Then, of course, the train rushed off, and left

Vezin standing on the platform alone and rather forlorn.

The little town climbed in straggling fashion up a

sharp hill rising out of the plain at the back of the station, and was

crowned by the twin towers of the ruined cathedral peeping over the

summit. From the station itself it looked uninteresting and modern, but

the fact was that the mediaeval position lay out of sight just beyond

the crest. And once he reached the top and entered the old streets, he

stepped clean out of modern life into a bygone century. The noise and

bustle of the crowded train seemed days away. The spirit of this silent

hill-town, remote from tourists and motor-cars, dreaming its own quiet

life under the autumn sun, rose up and cast its spell upon him. Long

before he recognised this spell he acted under it. He walked softly,

almost on tiptoe, down the winding narrow streets where the gables all

but met over his head, and he entered the doorway of the solitary inn

with a deprecating and modest demeanour that was in itself an apology

for intruding upon the place and disturbing its dream.

At first, however, Vezin said, he noticed very

little of all this. The attempt at analysis came much later. What

struck him then was only the delightful contrast of the silence and

peace after the dust and noisy rattle of the train. He felt soothed and

stroked like a cat.

“Like a cat, you said?” interrupted John Silence,

quickly catching him up.

“Yes. At the very start I felt that.” He laughed

apologetically. “I felt as though the warmth and the stillness and the

comfort made me purr. It seemed to be the general mood of the whole

place—then.”

The inn, a rambling ancient house, the atmosphere of the old

coaching days still about it, apparently did not welcome him too

warmly. He felt he was only tolerated, he said. But it was cheap and

comfortable, and the delicious cup of afternoon tea he ordered at once

made him feel really very pleased with himself for leaving the train in

this bold, original way. For to him it had seemed bold and original. He

felt something of a dog. His room, too, soothed him with its dark

panelling and low irregular ceiling, and the long sloping passage that

led to it seemed the natural pathway to a real Chamber of Sleep—a

little dim cubby hole out of the world where noise could not enter. It

looked upon the courtyard at the back. It was all very charming, and

made him think of himself as dressed in very soft velvet somehow, and

the floors seemed padded, the walls provided with cushions. The sounds

of the streets could not penetrate there. It was an atmosphere of

absolute rest that surrounded him.

On engaging the two-franc room he had interviewed

the only person who seemed to be about that sleepy afternoon, an

elderly waiter with Dundreary whiskers and a drowsy courtesy, who had

ambled lazily towards him across the stone yard; but on coming

downstairs again for a little promenade in the town before dinner he

encountered the proprietress herself. She was a large woman whose

hands, feet, and features seemed to swim towards him out of a sea of

person. They emerged, so to speak. But she had great dark, vivacious

eyes that counteracted the bulk of her body, and betrayed the fact that

in reality she was both vigorous and alert. When he first caught sight

of her she was knitting in a low chair against the sunlight of the

wall, and something at once made him see her as a great tabby cat,

dozing, yet awake, heavily sleepy, and yet at the same time prepared

for instantaneous action.