He was at the edge of a rather massive bed, gathering his wits to him, waiting for the burst of sweat on him to dry off.  Was he still trembling?  What had happened had happened many times before: a cat had jumped onto his bed.  He would normally have pulled the cat in to him, nuzzled it, made it want to nuzzle to him, but, this time, he had reacted as if the cat had been a planted enemy agent.  He had hurled it off the bed in a sudden and wild fit.  He heard the cat scurrying around in the dark with claws snapping in the carpet, scraping the desk (his papers!), tearing up curtains, as mad as he.  The door to the hotel room was closed.  There were no windows to open.  How did it get in?  The cat was suddenly on the bed again, madly tearing through the sheets and covers.  He jumped off, turned on the bedside lights.  The cat sat poised, all scrunched up into itself with eyes that were experiencing terror.  That is what calmed him down, the thought that it is not necessary to gather evidence in any situation when it is purely enough to have looked in the eyes.