Cat and Mouse Read Online Free PDF Page B

to her that Carlyon must have realized who she was—that Amista had confessed her correspondence to him and that he had been annoyed at the too intimate knowledge of this importunate stranger of his private affairs, and naturally would wish to have nothing to do with her. Perhaps the letter on the hall stand had been to inform her of this very fact—that Amista, now happily married and no longer in need of outside friendship, had confided in Carlyon; that Carlyon violently disapproved, and so the correspondence must cease. She began to see reason through the mist of blood that had risen up so suddenly between herself and Carlyon; to regret her peremptory questioning of his servants, her childish scampering out of his harmless house.
    Carlyon came round the bend of the path. He was hatless in the rain, an old mackintosh hitched round his shoulders. He checked his rapid pace when he saw her, but came on towards her slowly but steadily. “Oh, there you are, Miss Jones! What on earth happened? Why did you dash off so suddenly like that?”
    “I don’t know,” said Katinka. “It was too silly! I suddenly lost my head and whizzed off. And then I tripped over my own heels which actually are not suitable for mountaineering, only I didn’t know that I was going to do any; and fell flat in the mud. I must look a fool!”
    He came and stood over her, smiling down at her. “Actually you look rather pathetic; and you’ve got mud all over your face.” He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and took her chin in his hand and gravely turned her face towards him. “I came after you because I suddenly saw that you must think us all quite mad. The truth is that I’ve been ill and I’m down here in my native hills to recuperate. My servants—well, they’ve been with me for years and they protect me like a mother and father tiger with a particularly fragile cub. But not man-eating tigers—honestly!” He smiled at her.
    “But what about Amista?” she said.
    “That’s some muddle that I simply don’t understand. I promise you, word of honour, I’ve never even heard of such a female. There’s not a soul in the house except us three, never has been—and certainly no wife.”
    He tucked the handkerchief away into his side pocket, mud and all, and leaned back against the boulder beside her. They struggled with cigarettes. “I’m terribly sorry about it all,” she said. “I suppose I was tired, after struggling all this way; and it was so unexpected not to find Amista I simply lost my head. I was thinking just as you came up what an idiot I had been.”
    “Well, I won’t concede the idiot,” said Carlyon. “Except perhaps for sitting here in the rain.”
    “Just like you’re doing now!”
    He acknowledged it, laughing. “But you’re terribly wet. Haven’t you even got an umbrella?”
    Don’t carry an umbrella, was one of Miss Let’s-be-Lovely’s favourite maxims; it looks as if you can’t afford a taxi. “No, and there don’t seem to be many taxis in this part of Wales,” said Katinka.
    “And a great deal of rain.”
    “Is it really quite the climate for convalescence?”
    For a moment he looked just a trifle nonplussed; but he smiled and said: “A Welshman would rather be wet in Wales than dry anywhere else. So when I was in need of a bit of peace I sent my man Dai Jones down here, and he fixed up this place for me.”
    “Dai Jones Trouble?” she said, smiling.
    “You know his name, do you?” he said.
    “They told me about it in the village.”
    “Dear me,” said Carlyon. “Have you been discussing us in the village?”
    “No, no, I just asked if this was your house and they told me…”
    “Oh, don’t apologize,” said Carlyon. “I wasn’t complaining. And as to Dai—every second man in Wales is called Jones, and there are only about half a dozen other names, so we distinguish ourselves in the old way—which is, after all, how surnames ever came to be. John, the Smith, grew into