Tiger Cat

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  Tiger Cat

  By DAVID H. KELLER

  [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales October1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: _A grim tale of torture, and the blind men who were chainedto pillars in an underground cave_]

  The man tried his best to sell me the house. He was confident that Iwould like it. Repeatedly he called my attention to the view.

  There was something in what he said about the view. The villa on the topof a mountain commanded a vision of the valley, vine-clad andcottage-studded. It was an irregular bowl of green, dotted with stonehouses which were whitewashed to almost painful brilliancy.

  The valley was three and a third miles at its greatest width. Standingat the front door of the house, an expert marksman with telescopic sightcould have placed a rifle bullet in each of the white marks of cottages.They nestled like little pearls amid a sea of green grape-vines.

  "A wonderful view, _Signor_," the real-estate agent repeated. "Thatscene, at any time of the year, is worth twice what I am asking for thevilla."

  "But I can see all this without buying," I argued.

  "Not without trespassing."

  "But the place is old. It has no running water."

  "Wrong!" and he smiled expansively, showing a row of gold-filled teeth."Listen."

  We were silent.

  There came to us the sound of bubbling water. Turning, I traced thesound. I found a marble Cupid spurting water in a most peculiar way intoa wall basin. I smiled and commented.

  "There is one like that in Brussels and another in Madrid. But this isvery fine. However, I referred to running water in a modern bathroom."

  "But why bathe when you can sit here and enjoy the view?"

  He was impossible. So, I wrote a check, took his bill of sale and becamethe owner of a mountain, topped by a stone house that seemed to be halfruin. But he did not know, and I did not tell him that I considered thefountain alone worth the price that I had paid. In fact, I had come toItaly to buy that fountain if I could; buy it and take it back toAmerica with me. I knew all about that curious piece of marble. GeorgeSeabrook had written to me about it. Just one letter, and then he hadgone on, goodness knows where. George was like that, always on the move.Now I owned the fountain and was already planning where I should placeit in my New York home. Certainly not in the rose garden.

  I sat down on a marble bench and looked down on the valley. Thereal-estate man was right. It was a delicate, delicious piece ofscenery. The surrounding mountains were high enough to throw a constantshadow on some part of the valley except at high noon. There was no signof life, but I was sure that the vineyards were alive with husband-menand their families. An eagle floated serenely on the upper air currents,automatically adjusting himself to their constant changing.

  Stretching myself, I gave one look at my car and then walked into thehouse.

  * * * * *

  In the kitchen two peasants sat, an old man and an old woman. They roseas I entered.

  "Who are you?" I asked in English.

  They simply smiled and waved their hands. I repeated my question inItalian.

  "We serve," the man replied.

  "Serve whom?"

  "Whoever is the master."

  "Have you been here long?"

  "We have always been here. It is our home."

  His statement amused me, and I commented, "The masters come and go, butyou remain?"

  "It seems so."

  "Many masters?"

  "Alas! yes. They come and go. Nice young men, like you, but they do notstay. They buy and look at the view, and eat with us a few days and thenthey are gone."

  "And then the villa is sold again?"

  The man shrugged. "How should we know? We simply serve."

  "Then prepare me my dinner. And serve it outside, under the grapevine,where I can see the view."

  The woman started to obey. The man came nearer.

  "Shall I carry your bags to the bedroom?"

  "Yes. And I will go with you and unpack."

  He took me to a room on the second floor. There was a bed there and avery old chest of drawers. The floor, everything about the room wasspotlessly clean. The walls had been freshly whitewashed. Their smoothwhiteness suggested wonderful possibilities for despoliation, thedrawing of a picture, the writing of a poem, the careless writhingautograph that caused my relatives so much despair.

  "Have all the masters slept here?" I asked carelessly.

  "All."

  "Was there one by the name of George Seabrook?"

  "I think so. But they come and go. I am old and forget."

  "And all these masters, none of them ever wrote on the walls?"

  "Of a certainty. All wrote with pencil what they desired to write. Whoshould say they should not? For did not the villa belong to them whilethey were here? But always we prepared for the new master, and made thewalls clean and beautiful again."

  "You were always sure that there would be a new master?"

  "Certainly. Someone must pay us our wages."

  I gravely placed a gold piece in his itching palm, asking, "What didthey write on the walls?"

  He looked at me with old, unblinking eyes. Owl eyes! That is what theywere, and he slowly said,

  "Each wrote or drew as his fancy led him, for they were the masters andcould do as they wished."

  "But what were the words?"

  "I cannot speak English, or read it."

  Evidently, the man was not going to talk. To me the entire situation wasmost interesting. Same servants, same villa, many masters. They came andbought and wrote on the wall and left, and then my real-estate friendsold the house again. A fine racket!

  Downstairs, outdoors, under the grapevine, eating a good Italian meal,looking at the wonderful view, I came to laugh at my suspicions. I atespaghetti, olives, dark bread and wine. Silence hung heavily over thesullen sleepy afternoon. The sky became copper-colored. It was about torain. The old man came and showed me a place to put my car, a recess inthe wall of the house, open at one end, but sheltered from the weather.The stone floor was black with grease; more than one automobile had beenkept there.

  "Other cars have been here," I ventured.

  "All the masters had cars," the old man replied.

  * * * * *

  Back on the stone gallery I waited for the storm to break. At last itcame in a solid wall of gray wetness across the valley. Nearer andnearer it came till it deluged my villa and drove me inside.

  The woman was lighting candles. I took one from her hand.

  "I want to look through the house," I explained.

  She made no protest; so I started exploring the first floor. One roomwas evidently the sleeping-quarters for the servants; another was thekitchen, and the remaining two might have served in the old days fordining-room and drawing-room. There was little furniture, and the wallswere gray with time and mold. One flight of stone stairs led upward tothe bedroom, another to the cellar. I decided to go downstairs.

  They were steps, not made of masonry, but apparently carved out of theliving rock. The cellar was simply a cubical hole in the mountain. Itall looked very old. I had the uneasy feeling that originally thatcellar had been a tomb and that later the house had been built over it.But, once at the bottom, there was nothing to indicate a sepulcher. Afew small casks of wine, some junk, odds of rope and rusty iron, thosewere in the corners; otherwise, the room was empty, and dusty.

  "It is an odd room," I commented to myself. It seemed
in some way out ofplace and out of shape and size for the villa above it. I had expectedsomething more, something larger, gloomier. Walking around, I examinedthe walls, and then something came to my alert senses.

  Three sides of the room were carved out of rock, but the remaining sidewas of masonry, and in that side there was a door. A door! And whyshould a door be there except to lead to another room? There was a door,and that presupposed something on the other side. And what a door itwas! More of a barricade than a partition. The iron hinges were built tosupport weight and give complete defense and support. There was akeyhole, and if the key corresponded with the size of the hole, it wasthe largest that I had ever heard of.

  Naturally, I wanted to open the door. As master of the villa, I had aright to. Upstairs the old woman seemed unable to understand me andended by telling me to see her husband. He, in turn, seemed incapable offollowing my stream of talk. At