“But you know. You must know. You’re toying with me. Cats are that way. I’m not a player. I never was. Have you really eaten recently?”
“Yes.”
“That’s worse then. You’ll toy more.”
“Shut up a minute!” she said.
“See? There goes the courtesy.”
“Be still. I _am_ starting to get angry. What do you mean you were never a player?”
“Just that. I saw a good thing and I decided to jump aboard.”
“You’d better explain.”
“I told you I was just a pack rat. I used to hear all you folks talking, Nightwind, Quicklime, Cheeter, you and Snuff, as I lurked about my business. I got the idea pretty quick that there was some sort of strange Game going on, and you were all players. You all had it pretty good and you all left each other alone, even helped each other sometimes. So I decided to learn as much about your Game as I could and figure out how I could pass for one of you. I realized pretty quickly that you all had pretty weird masters and mistresses. Then I knew that I could do it. After all, I’d been hanging around the Good Doctor’s place already, for the leftovers from his work. So I let on that he was in the Game and that I worked for him. Sure enough, I got respect and decent treatment from the rest of you. It made life a lot easier. What a tragedy, the fire. It’ll be rough spending winter in the barn. But rats are adaptable. We…”
“Be still,” she said again, and he obeyed. “Snuff, do you realize what this means?”
“Yes,” I said. “There was no secret player. What it was, was that I had one player too many in my calculations. The Good Doctor must just have come here seeking a little privacy for his work.”
“. . . And that explains why the divinations concerning him were always ambiguous.”
“Of course. I’ll have to do some new figuring, soon. Thank you, Bubo. You’ve just helped me quite a bit.”
Graymalk moved away from the crate and Bubo peered out.
“You mean I can go?” he said.
I was feeling generous, happy even, at the final piece for my puzzle. And he looked kind of pathetic.
“Or you can come with us, if you like,” I said. “You don’t have to live in the barn. You can stay at my place. It’s warm and there’s plenty to eat.”
“You really mean that?”
“Sure. You’ve been a help.”
“Of course you do live near a cat. . . .”
Graymalk made her laughing sound.
“You gave us professional help,” she said. “I’ll leave you on my professional courtesy list.”
“All right, I’ll do it,” he told me.
He emerged and we headed back.
October 28
I knew, but of course I had to check it out by laying it on the terrain. I strolled by most of the places I had visited yesterday, wondering who else might have figured it out yet. I saw the vicar and he saw me, from a distance, after Tekela’d brought her notice of me to his attention, in passing. He was just carrying a carton into the vicarage from a wagon, and he stopped to glare. He was still wearing the bandage on his ear. The Great Detective Mrs. Enderby happened to be in a tree in her yard with a pair of binoculars when I passed, and called out to me.
“Snuff, please come here!”
I kept going.
The sun was shining intermittently through masses of clouds. Yet more leaves, fallen and falling, were scudding in the breezes. I headed south.
Bubo had set up housekeeping in our basement, though he wandered the house with our leave and ate with me in the kitchen.
“What became of the Things in the Mirror? Or to the mirror, for that matter?” he’d asked.
So I told him the story of the attack, following our trip to town. Which led into the story of our trip to town.
“Wouldn’t put it past the vicar,” he said. “He’s taken many a shot at me with that crossbow of his, and I never did anything to him, except hunt through his dustbin on occasion. Is that cause to put an arrow in a fellow? I hope he fudges the final business and you fellows blow him to oblivion.”