no less kind, had shaken my hand and told me it was about time I got on with something 
useful. That's when I took up plumbing, and that's what I've been ever since, Mason 
Perkins, plumber.
    I think, to tell you the truth, that I look more like a plumber than a psychiatrist. 
I'm six-one, with dark wavy hair, and a long thin face, and one of those expressions of 
constant bafflement, like plumbers always have. If I'd taken up psychiatry, I think my 
patients would have spent most of their time wondering when I was going to bring out my 
wrench and screw their heads on straight by force. My manner has always been more 
bathside than bedside, if you get my drift. 
    I have been married. It didn't last very long, although she was pretty nice in her 
way. Her name was Jane and she wanted a neat, neat house in the suburbs, and a television 
set, and a polished Pinto, and I guess whatever it was that I wanted and still want, it 
wasn't quite that. We sat in silence for three years staring at the wallpaper and then 
she went home to Duluth. I guess one shouldn't really try to marry people from Duluth.
    But, anyway, here I was, with my plumbing business in Connecticut, and Shelley, and I 
was trying very hard with the waitress from The Cattle Yard restaurant down on the 
Danbury road, although I hadn't gotten much further than unbuttoning her chaps. Life was 
okay, and not too hostile, and I felt that I could cope, even if I was ultimately copping 
out.
    I drove into the outskirts of New Milford. It's a sleepy, pretty little town on the 
Housatonic, with dozens of picturesque colonial houses, and a main street with a wide 
grass mall and a bandstand. I parked outside of the New Milford Savings Bank and switched 
off the engine. Shelley, who had been sleeping soundly, stretched himself and yawned.
    I took the jar of water out of my pocket and checked that it wasn't leaking. It could 
have been the deepening dusk, but the. water looked more darkly tinted than it had 
before. I unscrewed the lid and sniffed at it.
    It was then that Shelley stiffened, and bristled, and let out a spitting hiss that 
made my hair stand on end, too. He was arched up so much that he was almost bent double, 
and his tail was bushed out. His eyes were wide with something that was either fear or 
hatred.
    'Shelley, for Christ's sake-' I told him.
    He stayed where he was, his claws scraping at the vinyl seat, snarling like I'd never 
heard him snarl before, I made a move towards him, but he only spat harder, and let out 
one of those tortured yowls that have people throwing their left boot out of the window 
in the middle of the night.
    I screwed the lid back on the jar. Almost at once, Shelley's fur subsided, and he 
began to relax. He still looked at me suspiciously, but then cats are experts at making 
humans feel guilty for upsetting or discomfiting them. I looked back at him with a
    frown, and then I looked at the jar again. It was only water, why .should it make him 
go so crazy?
    Maybe Alison had been right, and the water did smell of fish, or something like fish. 
After all, both Jimmy and I liked to smoke an occasional cigar, and perhaps our sense of 
smell wasn't as keen as hers. But then, Shelley didn't go berserk, even for fish. As a 
matter of fact, he preferred left-over pizza to almost any food you could name. He could 
possibly go berserk for a pepperoni, but I doubted it.
    I climbed out of the car, locked it, and then I took the lid off the jar of water 
again and sniffed it. There was some faint trace of odour, I had to admit. Some chilly, 
lingering smell that was more metallic than fishy. It gave me an odd sensation for some 
reason, like I'd smelled something that was very strange and hostile, and I stood there 
in the dusk of New Milford feeling unusually lonesome. Beyond the bandstand, three or 
four children were playing ball in the gloom. Their laughing was like the cries of birds.
    Crossing the green, I mounted the steps of the New Milford Health Department. There 
were still lights in the upstairs window, and I guessed that Dan Kirk and his associates 
were working late. I walked inside through the tall black-painted doors, and went up the 
broad colonial staircase until I reached the first landing. The building was brightly lit 
with fluorescent tubes, and painted a dull Adam green. I went up to the door marked 
Health Department, Private, and walked in. Mrs. Wardell was sitting at her desk in the 
front office, all upswept glasses and red lipstick, and she said: 'Hi, Mason. What brings 
you down here?'
    I raised the jelly jar of water. 'They're poisoning the wells,' I said, 
melodramatically. 'Is Dan there, or did he duck out early?'
    'Did Dan duck out early? Is that a joke? Dan thinks going home at dawn is ducking out 
early. They have a swine disease crisis over at Sherman.'
    'Can I go straight in?' I asked her.
    I knocked, and went through into Dan Kirk's laboratory. Dan was there, sitting at the 
end of a long varnished workbench, peering into a microscope. He was young, but very 
bald, and in
    his white laboratory coat he looked like a mad professor, or at the very worst a 
boiled egg. I noticed Rheta Warren there, too, and that was always good news. She was 
Dan's assistant researcher, on her first job since she graduated from Princeton 
Biological college, and compared with most of the quail around New Milford she was most 
provocative. She had long muddy-blonde hair, wide hazel eyes, and a figure that obviously 
wasn't meant to be hidden by a starched white overall. I gave her a more-than-friendly 
wave as I crossed the laboratory to have a word with Dan.
    'The plumber cometh,' I said, and set down the jelly jar. Dan looked up from his 
microscope and blinked at it balefully. Then he blinked at me.
    'My stars said this was going to be a silly week,' he told me.
    'What's silly? This is colored water, possibly contaminated. Fd like you to test it 
for me.'
    He picked up the jar and peered at it with bulging, shortsighted eyes. 'Where'd you 
get this?' he asked.
    'Out at Jimmy Bodine's house. He says he's had discolored water for Two to three 
days. Alison Bodine swears it smells of fish, and Shelley seems to think the same way.'
    'Shelley? Your cat Shelley?'
    'That's right. When I took the lid off the jar he went crazy. When I put it back on 
again, he returned to his normal condition of utter indolence.'
    Dan switched off the bright light over his microscope and rubbed his eyes. 'Do you 
think Shelley would like a job here?' he asked. 'I have a vacancy for a lab assistant 
with a good nose.'
    'I'm serious, Dan. All I'm asking is that you test it.'
    Dan Kirk smiled tiredly, and nodded. 'You know that I have to anyway. If you like, 
we'll run through it now. I think I've had a bellyful of swine fever for one day.'
    'Is it bad?'
    'About as bad as it can get. Poor old Ken Follard had to slaughter every .damn pig on 
the farm. You can smell burning bacon as far away as Roxbury.'
    I took out my handkerchief and blew my nose. It was the effect of walking into an 
overheated laboratory from a freezing street. I looked at Rheta over the handkerchief as 
Dan led the way to the centrifuge, and winked. I guess it wasn't very romantic, but I 
believe in taking every chance you can get.
    'You want to tell me something about this sample?' asked Dan, switching on the lights