There were just I and the General, more an animal, more a brilliant kind of brute able to lead the higher species because of his instinct for savagery and his form of love for prey, now up in a little roof-top world of grey and blue tiles, dormer windows, clouds, the roofs of narrow, easily-leapt, back streets where not even a dog yapped below, streets deserted for the procession—a scrambling, slanting grey world with this one live black and scarlet focal point, a laughing animal, striding over the street-spaces I leapt wildly, and I the prey.

The air itself struck sparks from the hot tiles till the grey and gold neutralized each other, swimming in tension.

The blast from a chimney under which some big kitchen-fire had suddenly been lit nearly sent me flying.

A panic scream wailed till far away on the heat’s tension, it was mine. I was crying. He laughed and came on. Our speeds were about equal, he was gaining but imperceptibly, but whereas mine was maintained by wild leaps and clutches and sprawls, leaps up-again, accompanied by a frantic sobbing, torn clothes, bitten lips and bloodied hands, his was easy and competent. He was stalking me surely. His big head was thrown back, and his gaze on me, noting every humiliating effort, his mouth open, his laughing coming out never-ending, real mirth, harsh, ferocious, ringing.

Big clouds gathered above the heat haze.

The desolation grumbled.

The dusty tiles were pitted with moist roundels.

A great crocodile went thundering round the sky and back again. The heat haze trembled, split. Water came pouring down. I clung with both arms round a chimney-stack as my only defence against being washed away down the roof-slope. For a moment even he was hidden by the mass or rain. The gutters gurgled.

Still he approached, he was very near. It was as if there had been no change.

I screamed because he is a demon.

I flung wide a half-open window and somehow got through

it—a tiny attic window. The attic was evidently that of an upper middle-class home, judging by the lumber of outdated glitter-sewn ball-dresses and trousers, curl-toed slippers, curtains, a pile of tarnished silver plate two generations old, a big chair with ripped upholstery. I dodged over all this musty richness, through a door there, and locked it behind me.

I blessed its key which I had so miraculously found in the lock, and tiptoed down the carpeted stairs.

This was some near-noble’s town home, as I guessed from the furnishings and rooms I glimpsed, but deserted as far as I could make out. In the upper storeys there had been the brief pounding of the General’s boots on the door he’d found locked after he followed me through the window, but though I had waited appalled, quieting even my breathing, no one had come.

Now I did hear a sound, down below. The General had entered below.