CHAPTER 3

It was a Saturday evening and an evil-looking man stood at the door, when Jenkins opened it to a modest ring. He had a large black bag which bulged and looked heavy in his hand.

“A fine cat, mister,” he whispered hoarsely, “only two bob, hand over and let me go.”

Jenkins took the bag and loosening the string at its mouth looked down into it. At the bottom was a soft mass of handsome-looking fur from which a faint mew came as the cat saw Jenkins’ face at the top of the bag. It was evidently very tame and nestled up against Jenkins’ chest directly he drew it out. It was a magnificent creature, not a Persian, but with a very thick coat, pure white and a tail like the brush of an Arctic fox. Jenkins returned the bag and gave two shillings to the man with the evil face who immediately melted into the darkness and Jenkins was just closing the door, the cat still in his arms, when the doctor came up from the outside and entered.

“That’s a fine animal,” he remarked as he closed the door and the cat turned its great golden eyes on him, “how much did you have to give?”

“Only 2/ Sir,” Jenkins answered, “the man has stolen it I should think.”

The doctor laughed.

“Evidently. Some old maid’s cat, I expect. Nice tame beast,” he put his hand on the cat’s head and ruffled the fur backwards and forwards rather roughly. The cat put its head back and looked at the doctor with some resentment in its golden eyes. “Accustomed to sit on the table and drink cream out of the old maid’s saucer, eh?” he went on half playfully. “Well, we’ve a little table here for you, my beauty. We’ll set you on it and clamp you down and then we set it spinning. One hundred miles an hour or more we keep you whirling round for a fortnight and then when we take you off your eyes will be all criss-cross and you’ll be just mad with terror. That’s what we’ll do with you, Pussy.” Then he walked on humming into his own study, into which he went and slammed the door. Jenkins left standing in the passage, the cat still clasped to him, wondered whether men were men or fiends. A sick loathing grew up in him and seemed to submerge his spirit like a great wave. Then it rolled over, leaving him with a clear fierce determination that come what might, this thing in his arms so gentle, so trustful, should never be placed on that hellish table.

The cat, distressed by something in the doctor’s touch or voice or face, turned its head up to Jenkins and fixed its beautiful golden gaze on him and apparently from Jenkins’ drawn sad face it gained confidence and began to purr. Jenkins with the fire of hatred glowing in his heart against mankind climbed the stairs to his own room and deposited the cat on his bed. He then set his stove going, drew his curtains and poured out a saucer of milk. The cat watched all these proceedings appreciatively and purred loudly in response. When it had lapped up all the milk while Jenkins held the saucer, it lay back on the bed and stretched its paws up purring, saying quite clearly, “Come and caress me, I’m accustomed to it. I’m a very nice cat,” and Jenkins sat beside it, stroking it, with the tears burning behind his eye-lids. It was a stolen pet evidently and Jenkins would not have taken it in at the door except that he knew if he refused it, where possibly through him it might have a chance of safety, the cat stealer would simply take it on to another accursed laboratory where it would have _no_ chance of escape from the tortures awaiting it.

That night the doctor called to Jenkins as he was going up to bed, “I’m very busy just now. I’ve got so many things going to attend to but I’ll have more time in a week or so. Just remind me about the cat later on, will you? If I forget.”

Jenkins listened, his face growing dark as he stood in the shadow, on the stairs.

“Yes, Sir,” he replied and went on up.

The cat was waiting for him curled on the bed and mewed delightedly at his entrance, showing its white teeth and its little pink tongue, curled up like a rose leaf, behind them.

Jenkins seated himself beside the cat and fed it on some scraps he had brought up with him. For a week the cat remained, a willing prisoner in his room. He gave it a large tray of earth over by the window to scratch in and replenished it every day from the bit of common ground round the house. He brought everything up to it and waited on it and never let it out where evil eyes could fall on it and all that week he searched the papers daily for some announcement of a lost cat. There were no shops very near the laboratory but he walked every day to the nearest, a small newsagent’s and tobacconist’s where he bought his papers and then studied them diligently in his own room.

At last he found the notice he wanted.

“Lost. A large white tomcat. Not Persian, but thick coat and bushy tail. Finder will be handsomely rewarded if he brings cat to blank Grosvenor Square, W.”

Jenkins read this with a beating heart. This was his cat he felt sure. The doctor was away for his usual week end. This was Saturday. He always was allowed Sunday afternoon for himself. To-morrow he would take the cat back to its owner.

That night he held it tightly to him and hardly slept but spent his time stroking and caressing it and realising how lonely he would be without it. But still to get it out of this hell, safe and alive, was everything. The cat, with all its claws sheathed in its velvet skin patted gently with its paws Jenkins’ thin cheeks and nestled close to him purring ecstatically. It missed its own house and mistress but no animal could be insensible of the flood of love and sympathy that poured out from Jenkins’ unhappy heart. The next morning he spent much time on brushing and combing its silky coat and about two in the afternoon with his heart high in hope he set out for Grosvenor Square, the cat curled round in the lidded basket which Jenkins had brought, filled with vegetables, with him from the country. He thought if he; could once see the owner of the cat and tell him or her of the horrors his or her pet had so narrowly escaped, then surely anyone so rich and powerful as to be able to live in Grosvenor Square would take some steps against the system which made these horrors possible.

When he arrived at the door of the house it was opened by a footman who at once glanced at the basket. When Jenkins asked to see the person who had put in the advertisement, the man replied affably, “Miss Courtneidge is in and I think will see you.” Then he stooped down and scratched at the basket side. “Cushy,” he called and a mew of recognition came from within.

“Come upstairs,” he said and Jenkins followed full of joyful anticipation of coming face to face with someone who surely would listen to his message. He entered a large room and at the far end there sat Miss Courtneidge, a fat, middle-aged woman with a bright intelligent and pleasing face. She jumped up and took the basket from Jenkins smiling and lifted the lid.

“Oh, there you are Cushy,” she exclaimed, and lifted the creature out with many murmurs of delight.

Jenkins stood by respectfully enjoying the scene to the full. There was no doubt the lady genuinely loved her pet and the cat could hardly have a better mistress.

“Do sit down,” she said after a minute, “and tell me where you found him.”

She sat down with the cat in her arms and Jenkins took a seat opposite her.

“A man, a regular cat stealer, I think, brought him in a bag to our place and offered him to me for 2/--I saw at once he was stolen and I thought I’d better take him and try to find the owner. If I hadn’t, the man would have taken him to another laboratory where they wouldn’t have bothered to restore him to his owner but used him in the laboratory.”

The lady was listening intently to Jenkins and he thought her eyes grew harder.

“What are you then?” she asked quietly.

“I am an attendant at a laboratory for Scientific Research,” returned Jenkins, “and the man brought the cat to be experimented upon, but I don’t like the business and I meant to save this cat anyway.”

“If you don’t like it, why do you stay?” asked the lady quietly and very coldly.

Jenkins realised that his hearer’s sympathies were alienated from him and the false position in which he stood came home to him. At first he had thought it might be possible to make a clean breast of his feelings. He had visions of the lady coming to see the tortured animals and in her righteous wrath having the hideous place done away with altogether, but now something in the coldness of her voice and eyes warned him he must go very carefully.

“I stay to try and do what I can for the animals,” he answered, “do you know about this Scientific Research, ma’am?”

“I know that it is a very noble work carried on by selfless men and women who give up their lives to the cause of humanity,” replied the lady proudly.

Jenkins looked back at her aghast as these parrot phrases fell from her lips. Evidently she knew nothing at all about it and against this dense ignorance he felt he had no weapons.

“You don’t know what goes on in the laboratories, animals are tortured to death and given the most hideous sufferings that don’t lead to anything,” he said.

The lady compressed her lips.

“I can’t believe you,” she said icily, “I have many friends who are doctors and scientific men and I am sure they would do nothing but what is right. If they have to experiment on animals I am sure they do it kindly.”

Jenkins could have laughed bitterly as he heard but he controlled himself and answered:

“How _can_ you starve animals kindly, ma’am?”

The lady looked cross and was silent for a moment and Jenkins burst out:

“Do come with me now and I’ll show you what Scientific Research really means. The laboratory is empty, I am in sole charge, the doctor is away. Come and see the animals for yourself. Then you can judge about it.”

The lady looked crosser than ever.

“Thank you. I am quite capable of judging the matter already. I rely upon what my doctor tells me. In any case, if there were any cruelty, I couldn’t bear to see it, I couldn’t sleep for a week if I did.”

Again Jenkins felt helpless and appalled. What stupendous folly, what selfishness! Any cruelty might be practiced, provided _she_ did not see it, provided _her_ sleep was not disturbed.

“I really must ask you to go now,” she continued. “I have a meeting this afternoon here of the League of Love. We have the Bishop coming and we are going to organize something to aid the hospitals.”

Jenkins rose immediately.

“To aid the hospitals! To build new laboratories for the torture of _more_ animals! Oh ma’am, you don’t know what you are doing! If _I_ had not saved your cat he’d have been pinned down to an electric table and spun round at 100 miles an hour for a fortnight and taken off it mad and blind to have his brain opened and looked at. That was _his_ fate and how does that help humanity?”

The lady was standing too.

“You need not expect that I shall increase your reward for bringing him back by telling me these wicked stories,” she said severely. “Here is two pounds. I shall not give you any more!” and she held towards him two pound-notes.

Over Jenkins’ face ran a flame of scarlet, then faded leaving him ashy white. That was what she thought! That he was detailing false sufferings to increase his own reward!

He took the notes from her hand and dropped them on the floor and then stepped forward and put his foot down on them, looking her full in the face.

“That, ma’am, is what I care for your reward! I brought that creature back to you because I loved it. I never thought of the reward and should not have taken any in any case. I pray some day you may be shaken out of the darkness and the ignorance you live in.”

He turned and strode to the door, leaving the notes on the floor and the lady too astonished to say anything. A pair of golden eyes watched him depart and a little soft mew came to his ears as he closed the door and seemed to stab into his heart.

He walked down the stairs and out into the street with a sorely wounded spirit. All the joy and elation at having rescued the cat and restored it was blotted out by the cold tide of despair. He felt that he was helpless to save others just as loving, just as beautiful as this one, from death by torture. What could he do? So long as the world consisted of the friends who did these things and the fools who were so kind that they couldn’t believe in the fiends and so cowardly that they would not consider the question for fear of losing a night’s sleep, what could he do? “God help me, God help me,” was the cry that rose in his heart. And formerly it had comforted him and he had believed that God would help him however unkind man might be. But how? Was there any God? Was it not a Devil who ruled the world if this sort of Scientific Research were allowed in it? Why should God help him, if he cared nothing for the miseries of the innocent and sweet animals he had created?

Thoroughly miserable he went back to the hell on the common and up in his own room, making his solitary tea, he took himself severely to task. Had he wasted that golden opportunity, when he, knowing the truth, was face to face with one who knew nothing except some phrases culled from the articles of doctors, in the Press? Could he have done better? Was it his fault that he had failed? Over and over in his mind he turned that conversation but could decide nothing. His brains felt battered and weary but he was glad the cat was gone.

The very next morning when the doctor returned, he called Jenkins into his study.

“Jenkins our stock of dogs is low, isn’t it?”

“The last one died last night, Sir.”

“Oh: which was that?”

“The little Skye you were starving, Sir.”

“H’m: when did I begin? Do you remember?”

“Ten days ago.”

“Ten days! That’s quite a good record. Isn’t it? Had it eaten that coke I put in the cage?”

“No, Sir. Only gnawed it a bit. I found blood on it where the coke had cut its mouth. It hadn’t eaten it.”

“Oh, well,” cheerily, “we must get in some more dogs. By the way, there’s that cat, bring me that.”

“Sorry, Sir, the cat escaped.”

“What?” the doctor wheeled round in his chair and looked piercingly at his attendant, but Jenkin’s face was still and stolid as a mask.

“You let it go, you mean, do you? I thought you were rather soft headed over that cat when it came in. Now look here, mind this, if any more animals _escape_ at any time, I shall have no further use for you. See?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And to-morrow morning you’ll go and get me half a dozen kittens: big ones. Go to the Army and Navy Stores or anywhere you like but mind those kittens are here by noon. I am going to try some eye transplanting.”

Jenkins withdrew.

How could such a man be allowed to exist, he asked himself. How could such a place as this stand? Why did not a lightning stroke burn it to the ground with its fiendish owner inside? Why did not the flame that swept over Sodom and Gomorra sweep also over the laboratories of London and obliterate them?

Then he smiled grimly remembering how the laboratories were supported by the tax payer, approved by the king, and beloved by the aristocracy.

What was he, Jenkins, to think differently from all these? He was only a poor common-sense man of the people. But he knew and they did not. That was the tragedy of it. He would have given his life to be able to tell and convince them.