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Three John Silence Stories by Algernon Blackwood
page 91 of 236 (38%)
They behaved _obliquely_. He laughed in his mind as the thought thus
clothed itself in words, but the phrase exactly described it. They
looked at him from angles which naturally should have led their sight in
another direction altogether. Their movements were oblique, too, so far
as these concerned himself. The straight, direct thing was not their way
evidently. They did nothing obviously. If he entered a shop to buy, the
woman walked instantly away and busied herself with something at the
farther end of the counter, though answering at once when he spoke,
showing that she knew he was there and that this was only her way of
attending to him. It was the fashion of the cat she followed. Even in
the dining-room of the inn, the be-whiskered and courteous waiter, lithe
and silent in all his movements, never seemed able to come straight to
his table for an order or a dish. He came by zigzags, indirectly,
vaguely, so that he appeared to be going to another table altogether,
and only turned suddenly at the last moment, and was there beside him.

Vezin smiled curiously to himself as he described how he began to
realize these things. Other tourists there were none in the hostel, but
he recalled the figures of one or two old men, inhabitants, who took
their _déjeuner_ and dinner there, and remembered how fantastically they
entered the room in similar fashion. First, they paused in the doorway,
peering about the room, and then, after a temporary inspection, they
came in, as it were, sideways, keeping close to the walls so that he
wondered which table they were making for, and at the last minute making
almost a little quick run to their particular seats. And again he
thought of the ways and methods of cats.

Other small incidents, too, impressed him as all part of this queer,
soft town with its muffled, indirect life, for the way some of the
people appeared and disappeared with extraordinary swiftness puzzled him
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