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impressed. Neill’s response was that, as gentlemen, we should now insist on offering the women a safe escort into the university, but his scheme gained little support and I felt a bitter disappointment when Macfarlane’s next pharmacology lecture came and went without any women attending at all.
    I walked home after it, wondering gloomily if I would ever see her again. The weather seemed to fit my mood, for the city had suddenly thrown up one of those late frosts that make its streets a treacherous misery, even in early spring. It was, I reflected, inauspicious weather for that night’s medical society ball, an annual event I usually managed to avoid. But on this occasion Waller happened to have been given a ticket, though he never attended, and my mother insisted I make use of it. So a few hours later I found myself in the ballroom of the Waverley Hotel, which once stood at the end of Chambers Street, doing my best to dance an eightsome reel.
    It might be thought that a medical society ball in Edinburgh at that time would be a smart formal event. In fact it was nothing of the kind. The hotel was a dingy place, lit by an inadequate series of gas lamps, which made for an eerie spectacle, sending flickering shadows of the dancers on to the floor beneath our feet. As an economy measure there was little in the way of food, but a plentiful supply of brandy punch had been provided in steaming bowls set to one side.
    Partly because of the absence of food, and partly because of the cold, it was soon obvious as we staggered through our dances that too much punch had already been consumed, though more by the men than the women. My partner in the reel was the daughter of the hotel owner, and by the end her father came over with a grim countenance, looked me up and down (though I was perfectly sober, having had only one glass) and pulled her away, obviously concerned about the propriety of such partners and the reputation of his establishment.
    I was rather irritated to be treated in this way and sauntered over to where Stark and Neill were pouring themselves liberal glasses of punch and laughing, for they had witnessed it.
    Neill put a comforting arm round me. ‘You are not respectable enough in his eyes,’ he said. ‘Like the heroes of our favourite Poe stories, you are “plunged in excess”.’
    ‘And I may as well be,’ I said bitterly. ‘He judges without evidence.’
    ‘Well, I hope he has no cat for you to attack.’ He was referring to Poe’s strange tale, ‘The Black Cat’, one of the many stories by that author Neill and I constantly devoured.
    ‘Then, I have not seen one,’ I rejoined. ‘But if it appears I may well be tempted.’
    All of a sudden we were interrupted by a commotion on the stairs to one side of the room. I could hear women’s voices raised, and the sound of running feet. Several men, including Stark, Neill and myself, ran up there, and women pointed along the corridor. Loud screams and sobs were coming from a room at the end.
    Stark was first there and Neill and I ran behind him as he flung open the door. We were in a ladies’ powder room, which was brightly lit with a red carpet. Directly ahead of us a woman was on her knees. She was as white as a sheet and quivering with terror. Another woman was trying to hold her, but she was hysterical. A man, who turned out to be her brother, pushed past us and put his arm round her, trying to console her.
    ‘Kathy,’ he said. ‘It is all right, you are unharmed, but what has happened?’
    She calmed down a little, but it was a while before we heard the full story, and it came out only haltingly after some brandy. The woman, whose name was Miss Katherine Morrison, had entered alone and there had been a man behind the door. The instant she closed it, he pulled her towards the window and covered her mouth. She was terrified enough, and then he produced a blade and said he might cut her throat.
    What happened next she would not say, but her friend knew