A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 65: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE NINTH LIFE 65 thing about what she had just seen. “Mrs. Bell owned that there were stories about it, and then the girl told what she’d seen and said she couldn't stop another hour in a place like that. She'd infected the other girl with her fright, and they both packed and quit. Then Mrs. Bell had a word with Miss Kefra, and she packed and quit, to some extent be- cause of the panic of those two girls and this tale of ghost-cats, but more, she says, because of this Mr. Sally.” “Tt sounds like a queer business,”’ Tott observed. “Tf you ask me,” Perry said, “the look of that Sally chap is enough to give any girl the jitters, and that place is too far from cinemas and the boys to pay for the tickets, and girls like those two know they can get posts anywhere, with the shortage of domestics there is nowadays, especially in villages and small towns. “IT went to the Grange this morning,” Perry went on, “and this Sally let me in. He’s a weird-looking specimen with a face a million years old, but he was quite re- spectful. I told Miss Kefra why I was there—the possibility of cats. about the place. She was most sympathetic over the death of the girl, and assured me there were no cats of any sort at the Grange. “And she as good as insisted on my satisfying myself about it, went all over it with me, from attic to cellar, in case, as she said, any strays had got in without her knowledge. We went over all the buildings, too. I’d gathered from Mrs, Bell that Miss Kefra was a bit of a terror, but I found her perfectly charming, a real lady in every way, and anxious to do everything she could to help me.” “What was that you said the girl said— that the cats suddenly weren’t there when they first frightened her?” “According to Mrs. Bell, they were her words. Not that the cats vanished, but that they weren’t there, just as one of them was going to spring at her. But nobody else in that house ever saw any— and if there was a cat there, Mrs. Bell would have known about it. I see no rea- son to disbelieve her telling me that she never saw a cat in or near the house, all the while she was there.” “You acquit the Grange of cats?” Tott suggested, “Absolutely. I’ve never seen a ghost myself, but that girl may have thought she saw something—may even have seen something, for all I know, because it seems that some people can see apparitions, if they are to be believed. But apparitions, even ghost-cats, haven't got material claws and fangs. They can’t rend and kill phys- ically.” “Have you any theory at all of the cause of this?’’ Gees asked. Perry shook his head. “We can’t get away from the fact that two people, this Miss Kefra and her man Saleh, were at Gravenor IMansions or thereabouts when the Parkoot child was killed in this—well, I might almost say this unique way—and then they move down here and another death of almost exactly the same sort happens,” Tott ex- plained. “Which was why I had my talk with Crampton over the telephone, to get all ‘the particulars he could give me,” Perry pointed out. “The cases are similar, but there is this difference of the bruises.” “A child of two wouldn’t struggle long FIRST AID % ACID INDIGESTION When Acid Indigestion Follows a heavy meal TryAlka-Seltzer for fist Aid” And $ee how good you feel. Alka - = Seltzer # All drugstores ents U.S. and Canada \ Se comicbooks.com