RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30172, 2 July 1963, Page 21

RANDOM REMINDER

NOCTURNE

If it was possible to make an accurate survey, it would probably be found that a considerable proportion of those who read in bed at nights devote their attentions to the highly exciting activities of the private eyes, and all the attendant cops, dames, hoods, etc. Many people get well lost in the dreamworld of detection. What is more, constant reading of this stuff heightens their awareness of a situation which might hold danger. One of the addicts we know works at night, and usually arrives home somewhere about 2 a.m. He is invariably greeted by his cat, a ginger animal with no known claims to respect or affection. But one recent

morning there was no feline welcome on the mat; instead, he could hear the beast, plsintively crying, at a distance. The owner, feeling the first cold thrill of dread, tiptoed across his neighbour’s front lawn, homing on the hideous little noises, and discovered that the cat was stranded on the neighbour’s roof. The man tiptoed back to his own home and returned, silently and surreptiouslv, with a fruit box, which he had to place directly outside his neighbour’s bedroom window. But although he was a tall man, he was about three feet short of h’i target. So he had a change of tactics. He stole soft-footed to a car port and from there made

encouraging, sotto voce sounds to the cst. It responded, coming along the roof and alighting on a beam at the top of the car port. But from there it could not move. So the box was brought into play again. But it was a dreadful stretch, and all the while there was the thought of being arrested for loitering or being on enclosed premises, or breaking and entering The man stood on the box, and stretched upwards, upwards, higher still . . . the crash when he fell was deafening. But he had the cat. And he didn’t have the neighbours, who slept through the whole performance. Perhaps, the trespasser thinks, they had been slipped Mickey Finns.