The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield Read Free Book Online Page B

After all, what can have happened to keep
them
awake?”
    The moon stood in the sky above the two distracted households like a scimitar. It illumined a thread between them like a silver worm winding through a world of black. Along this thread, which here and there vanished under interrupting shadows, moved the double shape of Bostock and Harris,and a little way behind, a smaller, quicker shape that stopped and started, then went arrow straight.
    The brutish Jupiter had left the birdless apple tree to follow his master into the night.
    â€œGo back!” pleaded Bostock at intervals, and Jupiter would pause and stare at him meaningfully. Then, when the friends went on, he would follow after with the quick, stiff-legged walk of an elderly but still powerful cat, no longer able to hunt for himself, but eager for others to oblige.
    Though the two friends were as familiar with the way to Dr. Bunnion’s as with each other’s pockets, it now became mysterious and uncanny. The solemnity of the night and the desperate nature of their journey lent an unearthly aspect to the well-worn streets. The houses—now the tombs of sleep—seemed curiously insubstantial, as if their very walls had only been bodied forth by the dreams within and a touch would dissolve them into wide vistas . . .
    But Bostock and Harris were real. No dream could have bodied them forth, and no touch could have dissolved them. They crept among the shadowy plots of half-built houses where ambitious builders were extending the scope of the town. Stealthily they removed a ladder and carried it with them until they reached the school.
    All was in darkness. The academy was wrapped round and round in a deep silence. Harris pointed upward. Miss Alexander’s room lay under the roof at the side of the house. The mystery of theacademy’s upper architecture was as an open book to a mind like Harris’s.
    Harris smiled. The window was open to the warm night. He nodded. Nature herself was on the side of the two friends. Cautiously the ladder was raised and settled against the wall. Harris signaled to Bostock to mount while he steadied the ladder’s foot.
    Bostock shook hands with Harris and began to mount. As he did so, a rapid shape passed Harris. Jupiter, with hungry green eyes, had gone up after his master. Harris saw them enter the window almost together, with Jupiter scrambling over Bostock’s shoulder.
    Harris waited. For a moment there was silence. Then there was a loud and dreadful cry followed by the sound of something heavy falling. Then Jupiter reappeared and descended the ladder with Bostock after him, at a great speed. Bostock looked very white. Harris paused till Bostock was down, then the two friends fled for their lives. They did not stop running until they were back in Bostock’s garden. There they leaned against the apple tree, while in the branches above them, Jupiter cleaned the blood from his claws.
    A terrible thing had happened. Inflamed by vengeance, lust and wine, Ralph Bunnion had accomplished his monstrous errand. Unseen by the other wanderers in the night, he had somehow unraveled the maze of passages, stairs and corners and found out Tizzy Alexander’s room. A wolfish smile haddisfigured his handsome features. Quietly he’d opened the door. Then had struck disaster. The bed was empty, but the room was not. A shape of strange, inhuman aspect was at the window. Outlined against the sky, it seemed to Ralph’s crimsoned mind to be part man and part beast. From its human shoulders reared the wicked head of a cat.
    Courageously he’d stumbled forward, hands outstretched. He was in such a mood to attack angels and devils alike. He reached out—when, for a second time, the concerns of Bostock and Harris crossed the purpose of the headmaster’s son.
    The brutish Jupiter flew at the intruder in the darkened room, savaged his face and fled, hissing with alarm. Nor was Bostock far behind. Ralph