Doctor On The Brain by Richard Gordon Page B

really such a bad sort at heart, he decided. He took out his fountain-pen and changed, Lychfield’s natural abstemiousness was unfortunately interpreted by his friends as a certain meanness in sociability to His aesthetic streak happily did not prevent him from accepting with cheerfulness the hospitality of others .
    Sir Lancelot suddenly looked up. For almost a minute he sat stock-still, staring across the room over his half-moon glasses. Then with a deliberate movement he set pen and obituary on the side-table. He stood up. ‘I shall overcome,’ he murmured. ‘I shall definitely overcome,’
    He stared round keenly. This time it wasn’t his fancy. There was one about somewhere.
    ‘Am I a man?’ he asked himself sombrely. ‘Or indeed a mouse?’
    He stood stroking his beard, shuddering slightly. Perhaps it would have been easier, he thought, had he succumbed to the temptation of slipping poison into the tins of well-advertised cat food which Miss MacNish put out with the same attention as she laid his dinner. Something rather painful, like strychnine. But that would have been unsporting. It was more humane to try the psychological cure, if less likely to be immediately effective.
    ‘Puss,’ Sir Lancelot said bravely. ‘Pretty puss.’
    Something moved. It was in the nook between a small bookcase and the corner. Sir Lancelot felt his hands tremble. Then like some old soldier, battleweary but screwing up his courage, he pursed his lips and uttered a moist squeaking noise. The cat appeared with callous insouciance round the bookcase, tail high. At least it was Chelsea the black one, not Kensington the grey one, which Sir Lancelot liked even less.
    ‘Pussy-wussy,’ said Sir Lancelot.
    It sat, staring at him with yellow eyes.
    ‘Tenderness,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘ Tenderness .’
    He advanced gingerly across the rug. The cat started washing itself. The long pink tongue made Sir Lancelot remember saucers of milk, and he wondered distractedly if whisky and soda would do instead. ‘Think of it as a baby,’ he told himself. He bravely extended a hand. ‘Nice little baby. Tickleum tum-tums.’
    The cat abandoned its toilet and gave a haughty glare. Sir Lancelot crouched down and touched it. The cat arched its back, stuck out its tail, and made a noise like the final squirt from a soda-syphon.
    ‘Ahhhhhh!’ cried Sir Lancelot.
    He leapt back, knocking over the table and smashing the decanter. To keep his balance he grabbed the reading lamp, tripped over the flex, and plunged beside the armchair. ‘Bloody animal!’ he shouted. ‘Pestiferous beast!’
    The cat resumed licking itself. The door flew open and Miss MacNish appeared.
    ‘Sir Lancelot! Are you all right?’
    ‘Of course I am not all right. Do you imagine I have been entertaining a poltergeist, or something?’
    She hastened to help him up. ‘But what was the matter?’
    Sir Lancelot jabbed a forefinger. ‘ That was the matter. That articulated flue-brush.’
    A chilly look frosted the warm solicitude of her expression. ‘Do I take it that you don’t care for my cat?’
    ‘I have no feelings one way or another about the animal. I only ask you to keep it permanently out of my sight, that’s all.’
    Miss MacNish knelt to pick up the broken decanter. ‘You can’t expect cats to stay imprisoned all day in my little flat,’
    ‘Why not? I’ll buy a couple of birdcages for them if you like.’
    ‘I was always brought up to believe one should be kind to dumb animals.’
    ‘But those cats aren’t dumb.’ Chelsea had hollowed its back and was sharpening its claws on the door-curtain. ‘They may not actually say anything, but they radiate malevolence like an atomic pile.’
    Her lips were tight. ‘I simply don’t understand you, Sir Lancelot. I really don’t.’
    ‘Get it out of here, before it has the door-curtain in ribbons.’
    Miss MacNish stood up. ‘You’re always being nasty to my cats,’ she burst out.
    ‘On the contrary, they’re