"Schwartz," I said, "that cat, that mouser you gave me, he goes off every other week and comes home smelling like a whorehouse on Sunday morning."
"No whorehouses around here," said the druggist.
"I know," I said, "but where do you suppose he gets the perfume?"
"Cats roam," said the druggist.
"I suppose so," I said, "but do you sell French perfume? I mean if I can find who buys the stuff
"I don't remember selling a bottle since last Christmas," the druggist said. "The Avery boy bought a bottle for his girl friend."
"Thank you," I said.
That night after dinner Schwartz went to the door and signaled to be let out. I put on a coat and went out with him. He went directly through the garden and into the woods at the right of the house with me following. I was as excited as any lover on his way. The smell of the woods, heightened by the dampness of the brook, the stars overhead, especially Venus, seemed to be extensions of my love affair. I thought she would be raven-haired with a marbly pallor and a single blue vein at the side of her brow. I thought she would be about thirty. (I was twenty-three.) Now and then Schwartz let out a meow so that it wasn't too difficult to follow him. I went happily through the woods, across Marshman's pasture and into Marsh-man's woods. These had not been cleared for some years and the saplings lashed at my trousers and my face. Then I lost Schwartz. I called and called. Schwartz, Schwartz, here Schwartz. Would anyone, hearing my voice in the dark woods, recognize it as the voice of a lover? I wandered through the woods calling my cat until a tall sapling dealt me a blinding blow across the eyes and I gave up. I made my way home feeling frustrated and lonely.
Schwartz returned at the end of the week and I seized him and smelled his coat to make sure that she was still setting out her lures. She was. He stayed with me that time ten days. A snow had fallen on the night he vanished and in the morning I saw that his tracks were clear enough to follow. I got through Marshman's woods and came, at the edge of them, on a small frame house, painted gray. It was utilitarian and graceless and might have been built by some hard-working amateur carpenter on Saturdays and Sundays and those summer nights when the dark comes late. I had seriously begun to doubt that it was the lair of a raven-haired beauty. The cat's tracks went around the house to a back door. When I knocked an old man opened the door.
He was small, smaller than I, anyhow, with thin gray hair, pomaded and combed. There was a white button in his right ear, connected to a cord. From the lines and the colorlessness of his face I would guess that he was close to seventy. Some clash between the immutable facts of vanity and time seemed to animate him. He was old but he wore a flashy diamond ring, his shoes were polished and there was all that pomade. He looked a little like one of those dapper men who manage movie theaters in the badlands.
"Good morning," I said. "I'm looking for my cat."
"Ah," he said, "then you must be the master of dear Henry. I've often wondered where Henry was domiciled when he was not with me. Henry, Henry, your second master has come to pay us a call." Schwartz was asleep on a chair. He did not stir. The room was a combination kitchen and chemistry laboratory. There was the usual kitchen furniture and on a long bench an assortment of test tubes and retorts. The air was heavy with scent. "I don't know anything about the olfactory capacities of cats but Henry does seem to enjoy perfumes, don't you Henry. May I introduce myself. I'm Gilbert Hansen, formerly head chemist for Beaure-garde et Cie."
"Hammer," I said, "Paul Hammer." "
How do you do. Won't you sit down."
"Thank you," I said. "You manufacture perfume here?"
"I experiment with scents," he said. "I'm no longer in the manufacturing end of things but if I hit on something I like I'll sell the patent, of course. Not to Beauregarde et Cie, however. After forty-two years with them I was dismissed without cause or warning. However this seems to be a common practice in industry these days. I do have an income from my patents. I am the inventor of Étoile de Neige, Chous-Chous, Muguet de Nuit and Naissance de Jour."
"Really," I said. "How did you happen to pick a place like this-way off in the woods-for your experiments?'
"Well it isn't as out of the way as it seems. I have a garden and I grow my own thyme, lavender, iris, roses, mint, wintergreen, celery and parsley. I buy my lemons and oranges in Blenville and Charlie Hubber, who lives at the four corners, traps beaver and muskrat for me. I find their castors as lasting as civet and I get them for a fraction of the market price. I buy gum resin, methyl salicylate and benz-aldehyde. Flower perfumes are not my forte since they have very limited aphrodisiac powers. The principal ingredient of Chous-Chous is cedar bark, and parsley and celery go into Naissance de Jour."
"Did you study chemistry?"
"No. I learned my profession as an apprentice. I think of it more as alchemy than chemistry. Alchemy is, of course, the transmutation of base metals into noble ones and when an extract of beaver musk, cedar bark, heliotrope, celery and gum resin can arouse immortal longings in a male we are close to alchemy, wouldn't you say?"
"I know what you mean," I said.
"The concept of man as a microcosm, containing within himself all the parts of the universe, is Babylonian. The elements are constant. The distillations and transmutations release their innate power. This not only works in the manufacture of perfume; I think these transmutations can work in the development of character."
I heard a woman's heels in the next room-light, swift, the step of someone young. Marietta came into the kitchen. "This is my granddaughter," he said, "Marietta Drum."
"Paul Hammer," I said.
"Oh, hello," she said. She lighted a cigarette. "Eight," she said.
"How many yesterday," he asked.
"Sixteen," she said, "but it was only twelve the day before."
She wore a cloth coat with a white thread on one shoulder. Her hair was dark blond. She was not beautiful-not yet. Something, some form of loneliness or unhappiness, seemed to mask or darken her looks. It would be a lie to say that there was always a white thread on her clothing-that even if I bought her a mink coat there would be a white thread on it-but the white thread had some mysterious power as if it were a catalyst that clarified my susceptibilities. It seemed like magic and when she picked the thread off her coat and dropped it onto the floor, the magic remained.
"Where are you going now," he asked.