The Cat's Eye

I am not a superstitious man. Indeed superstition, which is inseparably
bound up with ignorance or disregard of evidence, would ill accord with
the silken gown of a King's Counsel. And still less am I tainted with
that particular form of superstition in which the fetishism of barbarous
and primitive man is incongruously revived in a population of, at least
nominally, educated persons, by the use of charms, amulets, mascots and
the like.

Had it been otherwise; had I been the subject of this curious atavistic
tendency, I should surely have been led to believe that from the simple
gem whose name I have used to give a title to this chronicle, some subtle
influence exhaled whereby the whole course of my life was directed into
new channels. But I do not believe anything of the kind; and therefore,
though it did actually happen that the appearance of the Cat's Eye was
coincident with a radical change in the course and manner of my life, and
even, as it seemed, with my very personality; and though with the Cat's
Eye the unfolding of the new life seemed constantly associated; still I
would have it understood that I use the name merely as a label to docket
together a succession of events that form a consistent and natural group.

The particular train of events with which this history deals began on a
certain evening near the end of the long vacation. It was a cloudy
evening, I remember, and very dark, for it was past eight o'clock and the
days were drawing in rapidly. I was returning across Hampstead Heath
towards my lodgings in the village, and was crossing the broken,
gorse-covered and wooded hollow to the west of the Spaniards Road, when I
heard the footsteps of someone running, and running swiftly, as I could
judge by the rapid rhythm of the footfalls and the sound of scattering
gravel. I halted to listen, noting that the rhythm of the footsteps was
slightly irregular, like the ticking of an ill-adjusted clock; and even
as I halted, I saw the runner. But only for a moment, and then but dimly.
The vague shape of a man came out of the gloom, passed swiftly across my
field of vision, and was gone. I could not see what he was like. The dim
shape appeared and vanished into the darkness, leaving me standing
motionless, listening with vague suspicion to the now faint footfalls and
wondering what I ought to do.

Suddenly the silence was rent by a piercing cry, the cry of a woman
calling for help. And, strangely enough, it came from the opposite
direction to that towards which the fugitive was running. In an instant I
turned and raced across the rugged hollow towards the spot from whence
the sound seemed to come, and as I scrambled up a gravelly hillock I saw,
faintly silhouetted on the murky skyline of some rising ground ahead, the
figures of a man and a woman struggling together; and I had just noted
that the man seemed to be trying to escape when I saw him deal the woman
a blow, on which she uttered a shriek and fell, while the man, having
wrenched himself free, darted down the farther slope and vanished into
the encompassing darkness.

When I reached the woman she was sitting up with her right hand pressed
to her side, and as I approached she called out sharply:

'Follow him! Follow that man! Never mind me!'

I stood for a moment irresolute, for on the hand that was pressed to her
side I had noticed a smear of blood. But as I hesitated, she repeated:
'Follow him! Don't let him escape! He has just committed a dreadful
murder!'