Chapter Six

A Nightmare

Jenius, accustomed as he now was to receiving odd orders at odd times, instantly collapsed flat on his back. He stopped chewing his mouthful of lettuce, he closed his eyes, and even the rise and fall of his ribs seemed to have stopped, so lightly did he breathe. He lay, slack and still, looking every inch as he was meant to look. Dead.

‘Dead!’ said a voice in his ear suddenly.

Jenius’s blood ran cold at the sound of this harsh, cruel voice, at the smell of hot, rank breath, at the tickle of long whiskers as something sniffed him all over.

‘Pity,’ said the cat. ‘Could have had a bit of sport if you’d been alive. Ah well, a dead tail-less rat is better than no rat at all,’ and with that he began to lick at his victim’s head.

Try as he would, Jenius could not keep his upper eye shut. Under the rasp of the cat’s tongue the eyelid was pulled back, and he saw, only inches away, a nightmare face. A merciless face it was, with glowing yellow eyes and a wide mouth filled with sharp white teeth. Despite himself, Jenius gave a little shudder.

‘Aha!’ hissed the cat. ‘Not dead after all!’ and he opened that wide mouth. But before he could close it again, a clod of earth hit him on the ear and a furious voice yelled, ‘Scat!’ as Judy came galloping to the rescue. She knelt among the lettuce plants beside the motionless figure of the Jenius.

‘It’s all right!’ she cried. ‘He’s gone. You can get up now.’

As always she used the system of praise-and-reward by which she had trained him.

‘What a good boy!’ she said, and from the pocket of her dungarees she took one of his favourite digestive biscuits and broke off a bit.

Jenius did not move. Now it was Judy’s blood that ran cold.

Fearfully she lifted the limp body. There was no mark upon it, no blood to be seen.

Could he have died of shock?

‘Jenius!’ cried Judy frantically in his ear. ‘Speak to me. Speak!’

Even though he had fainted with fear at the sheer horror of the experience, the sound of a familiar command was enough to bring him to his senses.

Feebly, through that unchewed mouthful of lettuce, the Jenius obediently uttered a single strangled squeak.

It was a much-reduced Jenius that Judy replaced in his hutch, and when Molly asked: ‘Had a nice walk, dear?’ he did not answer.

‘What’s the matter, son?’ said Joe. ‘Cat got your tongue?’