“Talk sense, please,” he said sharply. “My time is valuable.”
“Oh yes? How valuable?”
She looked scornfully around his office. He had to admit to himself that it was grim, but he was damned if he was just going to sit there and take it. Just because he needed the work, needed the money, had nothing better to do with his time, there was no reason for anybody to think that he was at the beck and call of every good-looking woman who walked into his office offering to pay for his services. He felt humiliated.
“I’m not talking about my scale of fees, though it is, I promise you, awesome. I was merely thinking of time passing. Time that won’t pass this way again.”
He leaned forward in a pointed manner.
“Time is a finite entity, you know. Only about four billion years to go till the sun explodes. I know it seems like a lot now, but it will soon go if we just squander it on frivolous nonsense and small talk.”
“Small talk! This is half of my cat we’re talking about!”
“Madam, I don’t know who this ‘we’ is that you are referring to, but ...”
“Listen. You may choose, when you’ve heard the details of this case, not to accept it because it is, I admit, a little odd. But I made an appointment to see you on the basis of what it said in your advertisement, to whit, that you find lost cats, and if you turn me down solely on the basis that you do not find lost cats, then I must remind you that there is such a thing as the Trades Descriptions Act. I can’t remember exactly what it says, but I bet you five pounds it says you can’t do that.”
Dirk sighed. He picked up a pencil and pulled a pad of paper towards him.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll take down the details of the case.”
“Thank you.”
“And then I’ll turn it down.”
“That’s your business.”
“The point I’m trying to make,” said Dirk, “is that it isn’t. So. What is this cat’s name?”
“Gusty.”
“Gusty.”
“Yes. Short for Gusty Winds.”
Dirk looked at her. “I won’t ask,” he said.
“You’ll wish you had.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
She shrugged.
“Male?” said Dirk. “Female?”
“Male.”
“Age?”
“Four years.”
“Description?”
“Well, um. That’s a bit tricky.”
“How hard can a question be? What is he, black? White? Ginger? Tabby?”
“Oh. Siamese.”
“Good,” said Dirk, writing down “Siamese.” “And when did you last see him?”
“About three minutes ago.”
Dirk laid his pencil down and looked at her.
“Maybe four, in fact,” she added.
“Let me see if I understand you,” said Dirk. “You say you lost your cat, er, ‘Gusty,’ while you’ve been standing here talking to me?”
“No. I lost him—or sort of half-lost him—two weeks ago. But I last saw him, which is what you asked, just before I came into your office. I just checked to see he was okay. Which he was. Well, sort of okay. If you can call it okay.”
“And ... er, where was he, exactly, when you checked to see that he was okay?”
“In his basket. Shall I bring him in? He’s just out here.”
She went out of the room and returned with a medium-sized wickerwork cat box. She put it down on Dirk’s desk. Its contents mewed slightly. She closed the door behind her.
Dirk frowned.
“Excuse me if I’m being a little obtuse,” he said, looking round the basket at her. “Tell me which bit of this I’ve got wrong. It seems to me that you are asking me if I will exercise my professional skills to search for and if possible find and return to you a cat ...”
“Yes.”
“... which you already have with you in a cat basket?”
“Well, that’s right up to a point.”
“And which point is that?”
“Have a look for yourself.”
She slid out the metal rod that held the lid in place, reached into the basket, lifted out the cat, and put him down on Dirk’s desk, next to the basket.
Dirk looked at him.
He—Gusty—looked at him.
There is a particular disdain with which Siamese cats regard you. Anyone who has accidentally walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will be familiar with this feeling.
Gusty looked at Dirk and clearly found him reprehensible in some way. He turned away, yawned, stretched, groomed his whiskers briefly, licked down a small patch of ruffled fur, then leapt lightly off the table and started carefully to examine a splinter of floorboard, which he found to be far more interesting than Dirk.
Dirk stared wordlessly at Gusty.
Up to a point, Gusty looked exactly like a normal Siamese cat. Up to a point. The point up to which Gusty looked like a normal Siamese cat was his waist, which was marked by a narrrow, cloudy grey band.
“The front half looks quite well,” said Melinda whatever-her-name-was in a small voice. “Quite sleek and healthy, really.”
“And the back half?” said Dirk.
“Is what I want you to look for.”
Beyond the grey, cloudy band there was nothing. The cat’s body simply stopped dead in midair. Everything below approximately the ninth rib was, well, absent.
The odd thing about this was that the cat seemed quite unaffected. This is not to suggest that he had learnt to live with his sad affliction, or that he was courageously making the best things. He was, quite simply, unaffected. He didn’t seem to notice. Not content with ignoring the normal requirements of biology, the cat was also in clear breach of the laws of physics. He moved, jumped, promenaded, sat, in exactly the same way as if his rear half were present.
“It isn’t invisible,” said Melinda, picking the cat up, awkwardly. “It’s actually not there.” She passed her hand back and forth through clear air, where the cat’s hindquarters should have been. The cat twisted and turned in her grip, mewling crossly, then leapt nimbly to the ground and stalked about in an affronted manner.
“My, my,” said Dirk, steepling his fingers under his chin. “That is odd.”
“You’ll take the case?”
“No,” said Dirk. He pushed the pad of paper away from him. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t be doing this sort of stuff. If there’s anything I want less than to find a cat, it’s to find half a cat. Suppose I was unfortunate enough to find it. What then? How am I supposed to go about sticking it on? I’m sorry, but I’m through with cats, and I am definitely through with anything that even smacks of the supernatural or paranormal. I’m a rational being, and I ... excuse me.” The phone was ringing. Dirk answered it. He sighed. It was Thor, the ancient Norse God of Thunder. Dirk knew immediately it was him from the long, portentous silence and the low grumblings of irritation followed by strange, distant bawling noises. Thor did not understand phones very well. He would usually stand ten feet away and shout godlike commands at them. This worked surprisingly well as far as making the connection was concerned, but made actual conversation well-nigh impossible.
Thor had moved in with an American girl of Dirk’s acquaintance, and Dirk understood from the strange Icelandic proclamations echoing over the line that he, Dirk, was supposed to be turning up for tea that afternoon.