Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/91

Rh rattling her bracelets, as she gambols about in her sunny little garden. She has a great many friends, all of them gentlemen, and I am afraid they do not all come merely for the sake of a look at her pretty face and the pleasure of hearing her silvery voice. But of course it isn't any affair of mine what they come for. And they are reasonably quiet about it, so that I scarcely know when they come and go.

At night, our part of the city is absolutely quiet. It is so still at night that even when the sea is calm I can hear it lapping lazily against the rocks. For the sea is not many feet away from me. I could see it from my windows, if my windows were not so low. But as it is, the cabins of the fishermen's families hide the sea away from me.

But tonight, for some reason or other, I can't hear a sound of any sort, not even the caressing whispers of the waves. It is too calm even for that. There is not a hint of a breeze in the air, not a ripple on the surface of the sea. The winds and the waves are asleep, quite as soundly asleep as Kara Kedi, my black cat.

Kara Kedi, in his velvet-upholstered armchair, is as completely motionless as if he were cast in bronze. I can't see his paws or his tail, or the exact shape of his head. He is rolled up into a tightish ball, with a soft outline of ink-colored fur. Kara Kedi is an enormous cat. I think he is probably the biggest cat I ever saw. You could scarcely call him fat. He is not one of those round, formless cats you see sometimes, who doze day and night because they have more fat flesh than they have energy. He is longer, larger-boned, taller on his feet, than the ordinary house-cat. When he crosses my garden, gravely, gracefully, but with unmistakable evidence of personality and power, to meditate in the branches of the great fig-tree at the end of my garden, my little neighbor on the left says he makes her nervous. She tells me that she is almost afraid of him, and since her zoological attainments are not extensive enough to include black panthers, she reproachfully calls him a big awful bear.

writing at this journal of mine there is a great feeling of calmness and peace about me in the room and in the house  in the garden, and in all the quiet night that reaches out beyond

I discover that my pen is empty. I raise my head and reach out my hand, for the inkwell Ah! Kara Kedi is not asleep any longer. His head has suddenly emerged from the placid ball of dark fur. His head moves upward and forward, and his glaring eyes fix themselves on the dim rectangle of the window. And I can see that his pointed ears have turned straight upward. He is listening with all his might.

"Kara Kedi, old fellow, is there something wrong out beyond that window?"

Kara Kedi is still motionless and silent. But I can see his ears twitch, in a gesture that tells me he has heard me, but implores me to be quiet. He is right. There is no reason why I should distract his attention from the faint and distant noises which may mean much, by the noisy futilities of human speech

They do mean much, I am sure of that. Something is wrong, mysteriously wrong. Kara Kedi rises upright on his four long, strong legs, his head held straight forward and his long tail standing straight out behind him. He has disdained the thousand-year tradition of cats awakened from a nap. He has not stopped to arch his back, to yawn, to stretch himself magnificently. There must be something ominous in the air, or at least it must