Cat of Many Tails

3

The sixth tail of the Cat, which went on display on the morning of August 26, offered a delicate departure from the mode. Where its five fellows were hairlines enclosing white space, this tail was solidly inked in. Thus New York City was informed that the Cat had crossed the color line. By the glowing encirclement of one black throat, to the seven million pale necks already within the orbit of the noose were joined five hundred thousand others.

It was notable that, while Inspector Queen occupied himself in Harlem with Beatrice Willikins’s demise, the Mayor called a dawn press conference at City Hall which was attended by the Police Commissioner and other officials.

“We are convinced, gentlemen,” said the Mayor, “that there is no race angle to Beatrice Willikins’s murder. The one thing we’ve got to avoid is a repetition of the kind of tension that brought on the so-called Black Ides of March in 1935. A trivial incident and false rumor resulted in three deaths, thirty-odd people hospitalized for bullet wounds, and over two hundred others treated for injuries, cuts, and abrasions. Not to mention property damage amounting to more than $2,000,000.”

“I was under the impression, Mr. Mayor,” remarked a reporter for one of the Harlem newspapers, “that — to quote from the report of the bi-racial commission appointed by Mayor La Guardia to investigate the riot — it was caused by ‘resentments against radical discrimination and poverty in the midst of plenty.’”

“Of course,” replied the Mayor quickly. “There are always underlying social and economic causes. Frankly, that’s what we’re a little apprehensive about. New York is a melting pot of every race, national origin, and creed under the sun. One out of every fifteen of our fellow New Yorkers is Negro. Three out of every ten are Jewish. There are more Italians in New York City than in Genoa. More Germans than in Bremen. More Irish than in Dublin. We’ve got Poles, Greeks, Russians, Spaniards, Turks, Portuguese, Chinese, Scandinavians, Filipinos, Persians — everything. That’s what makes us the greatest city on earth. But it also keeps us on the lid of a volcano. Postwar tensions haven’t helped. These stranglings have made the whole City nervous and we don’t want anything foolish to touch off public disorders. Naturally, that last remark is off the record.

“Gentlemen, our most sensible course is to treat these murders, uh, as, routine. Non-sensationally. They’re a bit off the beaten path and they present some rather tough problems, but we have the finest crime-investigating agency in the world, we’re working on the murders night and day, and the break may be expected at any time.”

“Beatrice Willikins,” said the Commissioner, “was strangled by the Cat. She was Negro. The five other victims have all been white. That’s the thing for you boys to emphasize.”

“Our angle might be, Commissioner,” said the reporter for the Harlem paper, “that the Cat is a firm democratic believer in civil rights.”

In the shout that followed, an atmosphere was created which enabled the Mayor to close “the conference without disclosing that the latest murder was giving the head of the new Cat squad a very bad time.

They were sitting around in the squad room of the main Harlem precinct weighing reports on Beatrice Willikins. The investigation on the scene, in the Park, had yielded nothing. The ground behind the boulder was rocky and if the Cat had left the print of his pads on it the first confusion following the discovery of the young woman’s body had scuffed it out. An inch-by-inch examination of the grass, soil, and paths in the vicinity of the boulder produced only two hairpins, both identified as coming from the victim’s head. Laboratory analysis of certain particles scraped from under the victim’s fingernails, at first thought to be coagulated blood or bloody tissue, proved that they consisted principally of lip rouge, of a shade popular with Negro women and which matched exactly the rouge still on the dead girl’s lips. There was no trace of the weapon with which the Cat had struck her head and the bruise gave no clue to its nature: it could only be described by that most inconclusive of terms, “blunt instrument.”

As for the catch of the police dragnet, thrown around the area within minutes of the body’s discovery, it consisted of a great many citizens of both colors and sexes and all ages, uniformly overheated, excited, frightened, and guilty-looking; none, however, gave off precisely the whiff for which Ellery’s nostrils were sniffing. It took the entire night to screen them. At the end with echoes of bedlam still in their ears, the police had only two likely fish, a white and a black, the white an unemployed jazz trumpet player 27 years old found lying on the grass smoking a marijuana cigaret, the black a skinny, undersized runner for a Lenox Avenue drop. The Negro, a middleaged man, was caught in the act of peddling the numbers. Each was stripped to the skin and thoroughly examined without result. The policy employee was released when Negro detectives rounded up witnesses who accounted for his whereabouts for an hour preceding the general crime period, and for some time after that; at which everyone, remembering the Black Ides, looked happy. The white musician was taken to Headquarters for further questioning. But, as Inspector Queen remarked, it didn’t look promising: if he was the Cat, he had been in New York on June 3, June 22, July 18, August 9, and August 19; whereas the trumpet player claimed to have left New York in May and returned only five days before. He said he had been employed during that period on a round-the-world luxury boat. He had described the boat, the captain, the purser, and other members of the ship’s orchestra; and, in some detail, several feminine passengers.

So they tackled it from the other end and hoisted the victim to the scales. Which tipped depressingly on the side of rectitude and good works.

Beatrice Willikins had been a responsible member of the Negro community, belonging to the Abyssinian Baptist Church and active in many of its groups. Born and raised in Harlem, and educated at Howard University, she had been employed by a child welfare agency and her work had been exclusively with the underprivileged and delinquent children of Harlem.

She had contributed sociological articles to Journal of Negro Education and poetry to Phylon. Occasional freelance pieces under her byline had appeared in the Amsterdam-Star News, Pittsburgh Courier, and the Atlanta Daily World.

Beatrice Willikins’s associations had been impeccable. Her friends were Negro educators, social workers, writers, and professional people. Her work had taken her from Black Bohemia to San Juan Hill; she had come in frequent contact with dope peddlers, pimps, the streetwalkers of “The Market Place”; Puerto Ricans, Negro Moslems, French Africans, Black Jews, darkskinned Mexicans and Cubans, Negroid Chinese and Japanese. But she had gone among them as a friend and healer, unresented and unmolested. The police of Harlem had known her as a quietly determined defender of juvenile delinquents.

“She was a fighter,” the precinct captain told Inspector Queen, “but she wasn’t any fanatic. I don’t know of anybody in Harlem, white or black, who didn’t respect her.”

In 1942 she had been engaged to a young Negro physician named Lawrence Caton. Dr. Caton had gone into the Army and he had been killed in Italy. Her fiancé’s death had apparently sealed off the girl’s emotional life; there was no record that she had ever gone out with another man.

The Inspector took a Negro lieutenant aside, and the detective nodded and went over to the bench on which the girl’s father was seated, beside Ellery.

“Pap, who do you figure did the girl in?”

The aged man mumbled something.

“What?”

“He says,” said Ellery, “that his name is Frederick Willikins and his father was a slave in Georgia.”

“That’s fine, that’s okay, Pap, but what man was she messing around with? White man?”

The old man stiffened. They could see him struggle with something. Finally he drew back his brown skull, like a snake, and struck.

The Negro detective stooped and wiped the old man’s spittle from his shoe.

“I guess old Pappy here figures I insulted him. On two counts.”

“It’s important.” The Inspector moved toward the bench.

“Better let me, Inspector,” said the detective. “He’s got a spitting eye.” He stooped over the old man again. “Okay, Pap, your daughter was a gal in a million. Now you want to bring down the wrath on the one who give it to her, don’t you?”

He mumbled again.

“I think he said, Lieutenant,” said Ellery, “something about the Lord providing.”

“Not in Harlem,” said the detective. “Pap, you keep your mind on this. All we want to know is, did your girl Bea know some white?”

The old man did not answer.

“It’s all this pale hide around here,” said the Negro lieutenant apologetically. “Pap, who is he? What did he look like? Bea ever tell a white skin off?”

The brown skull drew back again.

“Better save that juice,” growled the lieutenant. “Come on, Pappy, all I want is one answer to one question. Bea had a phone. Did a white man keep calling her up?”

The withered lips drew back in a tormented grin. “She has truck with a white, I kill her with my own two hands.” Then he shrank into the corner of the bench.

“Say.”

But the Inspector was shaking his head. “He’s 80 if he’s a day, Lieutenant. And look at his hands. All crippled up with arthritis. He couldn’t strangle a sick kitten,”

Ellery got up. “There’s nothing here. I need a few hours’ sleep, Dad. And so do you.”

“You go along home, Ellery. If, I get a chance I’ll stretch out on a cot upstairs. Where will you be tonight?”

“At Headquarters,” said Ellery. “With those files.”

On the morning of August 27 the Cat was at his old stand on the editorial page of the New York Extra doing a brisk business in fear. But business can be brisker, and during the day the circulation manager of the Extra earned a bonus, the reason for which became evident on the morning of the 28th. In that issue the Cat moved over to Page 1, cartoonically speaking, on a longterm lease; a new tenancy so successful that by midmorning not a copy was to be found on any newsstand in the City.

And, as if to celebrate his leasehold, he waved a new tail.

It was ingenious. At first glance — there was no caption — the picture advertised a new horror: There were the six numbered tails and the giant-sized seventh, a scratchline arrogance. The reader seized the paper and hunted in vain among the headlines. Puzzled, he returned to the drawing; whereupon he saw it as it was, the noose shaped by the great tail numbered 7 being no noose at all but a question mark.

In the places of authority there was sharp disagreement as to precisely which question the question mark marked. The Extra’s editor, in an interesting telephone conversation with the Mayor on the afternoon of the 28th, protested in a wide-eyed tone of voice that the question was, obviously, Is the Cat going to claim a seventh victim? — a logical, ethical, public-service, newsworthy query, the editor said, arising smack from the facts of record. The Mayor replied carbolically that it seemed to him, and to a great many other New Yorkers who had seen the cartoon and who were even now harrying the City Hall and Police Headquarters telephone operators, that the question it posed was, crudely and brutally, Who’s going to be the Cat’s seventh victim? — executed, moreover, in a drooling-whiskered, chop-licking style which was distinctly not in the public service, quite the contrary, and which he, the Mayor, might have expected from an opposition newspaper which was incapable of subordinating dirty politics to the public interest. The editor retorted that he, the Mayor, ought to know, as he was lugging around a rather large bundle of soiled laundry himself, and the Mayor shouted, “What do you mean by that slanderous remark?”, at which the editor replied that he yielded to no man in his admiration for the rank and file of New York’s Finest but everybody who knew the score knew that the Mayor’s appointee, the present Commissioner, was an old party fire-horse who couldn’t catch a pop fly let alone a desperate criminal, and if the Mayor was so deletedly concerned about the public interest why didn’t he appoint somebody sharp to the top police post? — then maybe the people of the City of New York could go back to sleeping nights. What was more, this was a suggestion the Extra intended to toss off in its lead editorial tomorrow — “in the public interest, Mr. Mayor, you understand.” With which the editor of the Extra hung up to receive a circulation report that left him glowing.

He glowed too soon.

As the Mayor angrily sniffed the green carnation in his lapel, the Commissioner said, “Jack, if you want my resignation—”

“Don’t pay any attention to that rag, Barney.”

“It has a lot of readers. Why not cross it up before that editorial hits the streets tomorrow?”

“By firing you? I’ll be damned if I will.” And the Mayor added thoughtfully, “And I’ll be damned if I won’t, too.”

“Exactly,” said the Commissioner, lighting a cigar. “I’ve given the whole situation a lot of thought. Jack, what New York needs in this crisis is a hero, a Moses, somebody who’ll capture their imaginations and—”

“Distract their attention?”

“Well...”

“Come on, Barney, what’s on your mind?”

“Well, you appoint this fellow something like... well, like Special Cat Catcher for the Mayor.”

“Pied Piper of Gotham, hm?” muttered His Honor. “No, that was rats. We’ve got plenty of those, too.”

“No connection with the P.D. A roving assignment. Sort of advisory. And you could break the story just too late for the Extra to yank that editorial.”

“Don’t you mean, Barney,” murmured the Mayor, “that you want me to appoint a fall guy who’ll absorb the heat and take all the raps, while you and the Department get off the spot and back to everyday operations?”

“Well, it’s a fact,” said the Commissioner, looking critically at his cigar, “that the men, from the brass down, have been thinking more of headlines than results—”

“Suppose this fellow,” asked the Mayor, “beats you to the Cat?”

The Commissioner laughed.

Rather abruptly, the Mayor said, “Barney, whom did you have in mind?”

“A real glamor boy, Jack. Native New Yorker, no political ax to grind, nationally known as a crime investigator, yet he’s a civilian. He can’t refuse, because I softened him up first by dropping the whole hot potato in his old man’s lap.”

The Mayor slowly brought his swivel chair back to the vertical.

The Commissioner nodded.

The Mayor reached for his private line. “Barney,” he said, “this time I think you’ve outfoxed yourself. Oh, Birdy. Get me Ellery Queen.”

“I’m overcome, Mr. Mayor,” said Ellery. “But certainly my qualifications—”

“I can’t think of a better man to become Special Investigator for the Mayor. Should have thought of it long ago. I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Queen—”

“Yes,” said Ellery.

“Sometimes a case comes along,” said the Mayor, one eye on his Police Commissioner, “that’s so off the trail, so eccentric, it licks even the finest cop. I think this Cat business needs the kind of special talents you’ve demonstrated so brilliantly in the past. A fresh and unorthodox approach.”

“Those are kind words, Mr. Mayor, but wouldn’t a thing like this create hard feeling on Centre Street?”

“I think I can promise you, Mr. Queen,” said His Honor dryly, “the full co-operation of the Department.”

“I see,” said Ellery. “I suppose my father—”

“The only one I’ve discussed this with is the Commissioner. Will you accept?”

“May I take a few minutes to think it over?”

“I’ll be waiting here at my office for your call.”

Ellery hung up.

“Special Investigator to the Mayor,” said the Inspector, who had been listening on the extension. “They’re really getting fussed.”

“Not about the Cat,” Ellery laughed. “The case is getting too torrid to touch and somebody’s looking for a potential burnt sacrifice to stand up and take the heat.”

“The Commissioner...”

“He’s really played that angle, hasn’t he?”

The Inspector scowled. “Not the Mayor, Ellery. The Mayor’s a politician, but he’s also an honest man. If he fell for this, it’s for the reason he gave you. Why not do it?”

Ellery was silent.

“All this would do would make it official...”

“And tougher.”

“What you’re afraid of,” said his father deliberately, “is being committed.”

“Well, I’d have to see it through.”

“I hate to get personal, but doesn’t that make two of us? Ellery, the move might be important in another way.”

“How?”

“Just the act of your taking this job might scare the Cat off. Thought of that?”

“No.”

“The publicity alone—”

“I meant no, it won’t.”

“You underestimate your rep.”

“You underestimate our kitty. I have the feeling,” said Ellery, “that nothing can scare him off.”

His voice conveyed such a burdensome knowledge that the Inspector started. “For a second there you had me thinking...” But then he said slowly, “Ellery, you’ve spotted something.”

Between them lay the archaeology of murder. Detail photographs of the victims, full and side views. General views of the scenes of the crimes, interiors, exteriors, closeups, from various angles. Cross-sketchings, neatly compass-directed and drawn to specified scale. The file of appurtenant fingerprints. A whole library of reports, records, assignments, details of work complete with notations of time, place, names, addresses, findings, questions and answers and statements and technical information. And, on a separate table, res gestae evidence, the originals.

Nowhere in this classified heterogeneity had a recognizable clue been discovered.

In a sharper tone the Inspector said, “Have you?”

Ellery said, “Maybe.”

The Inspector opened his mouth.

“Don’t ask me any more. Dad. It’s something, but where it may lead...” Ellery looked unhappy. “I’ve spent forty-eight hours on this. But, I want to go over it again.”

Inspector Queen said into his phone, “Get the Mayor. Tell him Ellery Queen.”

He sounded at peace for the first time in twelve weeks.

The news burst upon the City with a roar that soothed even the Police Commissioner. The noise was largely jubilant. The Mayor’s mail increased fivefold and the City Hall switchboard was unable to handle the volume of telephone calls. Commentators and columnists approved. It was noted that within twenty-four hours the gross number of false alarm police calls had been reduced by half and the strangulation of alley cats all but stopped. A small section of the press scoffed, but its collective voice was too feeble to register against the applause. As for the New York Extra, Ellery’s appointment caught it with the issue containing its editorial blast all but run off; and although in a followup edition the paper excoriated the Mayor for “undermining the morale of the finest police force in the world,” the Mayor’s announcement took the sting out of the charge.

“Mr. Queen’s appointment,” the Mayor’s handout had said in part, “in no way conflicts with, weakens, or is an expression of lack of confidence in, the regular police authority. The homicide record of the New York Police Department speaks for itself. But in view of the rather peculiar nature of this particular series of homicides, I have felt it advisable to enlist the aid of an expert who has specialized in unusual crimes. The suggestion that Ellery Queen be appointed Special Investigator came from the Police Commissioner himself, with whom Mr. Queen will work in the closest co-operation.”

The Mayor repeated his statement over the air the same night.

At City Hall, after the swearing-in ceremony, punctuated by flashlight shots of the Mayor and Ellery Queen, of Ellery Queen and the Police Commissioner, of the Police Commissioner and the Mayor, and of the Mayor, the Police Commissioner, and Ellery Queen, Ellery read a prepared statement.

“The Cat has been at large in Manhattan for almost three months. In that period he has murdered six people. The file on six homicides weighs just about as much as the responsibilities I have accepted in taking this post. But while I have a great deal of catching up to do, I am sufficiently familiar with the facts to feel justified in stating even at this time that the case can and will be solved and the killer caught. Whether he will be caught before he commits another murder remains, of course, to be seen. But if the Cat should claim another victim tonight, I ask everyone to bear in mind that more New Yorkers are killed by automobiles in one day on our streets than the Cat has killed in three months.”

Immediately he finished reading the statement, Ellery was asked by the reporter for the Extra if he was not already “withholding information”: “Did you mean by saying ‘I am sufficiently familiar with the facts to feel justified in stating that the case will be solved’ that you’ve got a hot lead?”

Ellery smiled faintly and said: “I’ll stand on my statement as read.”

In the next few days his course was puzzling. He did not act like a man who has found something. He did not act at all. He retired to the Queen apartment and remained invisible to the public eye. As for the public ear, he took his telephone off the cradle, leaving Inspector Queen’s direct line to Headquarters as his sole contact with the City. The Queen front door he kept locked.

It was not quite what the Commissioner had planned, and Inspector Queen heard rumblings of his discontent. But the old man merely continued to lay reports before Ellery as they came in, without comment or question. One of these concerned the marijuana-smoking trumpet player detained in the Beatrice Willikins investigation: the musician’s story had been substantiated and he had been released. Ellery scarcely glanced at the report. He balanced on his coccyx chainsmoking as he studied the lunar topography of his study ceiling, that epic issue between the Queens and their wily landlord. But the Inspector knew that Ellery was not thinking of the unattainable calcimine.

During the evening of August 31, however, Ellery was back at the reports. Inspector Queen was about to leave his office after another day which had contrived to be both full and empty when his private line came to life and he picked up the phone to hear his son’s voice.

“I’ve been going over the reports on the cords again—”

“Yes, Ellery.”

“I was thinking of a possible way to determine the Cat’s manual preference.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“The technique worked out years ago on the Continent by the Belgian, Goddefroy, and others.”

“With rope?”

“Yes. The surface fibers will lie in the direction opposite to that of the pulling or other motions involving friction.”

“Well, sure. We’ve settled a few hanging cases that way where the question was suicide or murder. What of it?”

“The Cat loops the silk cord around his victim’s neck from behind. Before he can start pulling and tightening the noose, he’s got to cross the ends over each other. Theoretically, therefore, there ought to be a point of friction where the noose crosses itself at the nape of the neck.

“In two of these cases, O’Reilly and Violette Smith, the neck photos show that during the stranglings — before knots were tied — the two ends of the cord did make contact in crossing.”

“Yes.”

“All right. He’s pulling with both hands, one to each end of the cord, in opposite directions. But unless he’s ambidextrous, he’s not pulling with equal force. One hand will tend to hold, while the other — his favored hand — will tend to pull. In other words, if he’s right-handed the end of the cord held by his left hand ought to show a point of friction, and the end of the cord held by his right hand ought to show a line of friction. Vice versa if he’s lefthanded. Tussah silk is coarse-fibered. There may be observable effects.”

“It’s a thought,” muttered the Inspector.

“Call me back when you find out, Dad.”

“I don’t know how long it’ll take. The lab’s been overworked and it’s late. You’d better not wait up. I’ll stick around here till I find out.”

The Inspector made several telephone calls, leaving word that he was to be notified the moment a finding was made. Then, because he had a couch hauled into his office several weeks before, he stretched out on it thinking he would close his eyes for just a few minutes.

When he opened them, the September 1 sun was pouring in speckled splendor through his dusty windows.

One of his phones was ringing.

He tottered over to his desk.

“What happened to you?” asked Ellery.

“I lay down for a cat nap last night and the next thing I knew the phone was ringing.”

“I was about to call a policeman. What about those cord findings?”

“I haven’t... Wait, the report’s on my desk. Damn it, why didn’t they wake me?” After a moment, the Inspector said: “Inconclusive.”

“Oh.”

“Their opinion is that O’Reilly and the Smith woman thrashed about from side to side during the attacks just enough to make the Cat alternate his pull from one hand to the other and back. In a sort of seesaw movement. Maybe O’Reilly was only stunned and fought back. Anyway, there’s no point of friction determinable. What slight friction areas are detectable in the silk are about equally divided between right and left.”

“And there you are.” But then Ellery said in an altogether different tone, “Dad, come right home.”

“Home? I’m just starting my day, Ellery.”

“Come home.”

The Inspector dropped the phone and ran.

“What’s up?” Inspector Queen was breathing hard from his sprint up the stairs.

“Read these. They came in this morning’s mail.” The Inspector sat down slowly in the leather armchair. One envelope bore the brash imprint of the New York Extra, the address typewritten; the other was small, pinkish, and secretive-looking and it had been addressed by hand.

From the Extra envelope he took a slip of yellow scratch-pad paper.

“Monica McKell’s kid brother!”

“Read the other one.”

The notepaper of the second letter matched the envelope. This was elegance unaccustomed, a yearning after effect. The hand was hurried and a bit wretched.

“Simone Phillip’s sister.” The Inspector laid the two letters down on an endtable, carefully. “Going to see them?”

“Yes. I phoned the Phillips girl at her home and I reached McKell at his paper. They both sound pretty young. I’ve seen some of McKell’s stuff on the Cat cases under the name of Leggitt, but nothing that connected him personally with any of them. Did you know Leggitt and McKell were the same man?”

“No.” The Inspector seemed disturbed by his ignorance. “I’ve seen him, of course, but in the McKell home on Park Avenue. I suppose being a legman is the thing to do just now in his set. Did they say what they wanted?”

“Celeste Phillips said she’d rather tell me in person. I told McKell if it was an interview he was after for that ragbag he works for I’d heave him out on his ear, but he assured me it was personal.”

“Both in the same morning,” muttered the Inspector. “Did either mention the other?”

“No.”

“When are they due?”

“I violated a cardinal rule of the Manual. I’m seeing them at the same time. 11 o’clock.”

“Five of! I’ve got to shower, shave, and get into clean clothes.” The old man, hurrying to his bedroom, added over his shoulder, “Hold them here. By force, if you have to.”

When the refurbished man emerged, his son was gallantly applying the flame of a lighter to a cigaret held by two slim gloved fingers to two female lips of distinction. She was sleekly modish from her hairdo to her shoetips, but young — the New York woman as she would like to be, but not quite grown up to it. The Inspector had seen girls like her on Fifth Avenue in the late afternoons, alone and unapproachable, the healthy raw material of youth covered by a patina of chic. But she was never upper crust; there was no boredom in her. Vogue just graduated from Seventeen, and very beautiful.

The Inspector was confused. It was Celeste Phillips. But what had happened to her?

“Hello, Miss Phillips.” They shook hands; her grip was quick, withdrawing. She wasn’t expecting me, he thought; Ellery didn’t say I was home. “I almost didn’t recognize you.” It was incredible; less than two weeks. “Please sit down.”

Over her shoulder as she turned he glimpsed Ellery being quizzical. The Inspector recalled his description of Simone Phillip’s sister and he shrugged in reply. It was impossible to see this spick-and-span girl against the smeary background of the flat on 102nd Street. Yet she still lived there; Ellery had reached her there. Inspector Queen decided that it was the clothes. Probably borrowed for the occasion from that dress shop she models in, he thought. The rest was makeup. When she got home and returned the finery and washed her face she would be again the Cinderella he remembered. Or would she? He was really not so sure. The sunny shallows under her bright black eyes, which had replaced the purple deeps he remembered, would not blot off with a towel. And certain planes then in her face had... been buried with her sister?

By the pricking of my thumbs...

“Don’t let me interrupt anything,” said the Inspector with a smile.

“Oh, I was just telling Mr. Queen how impossible the apartment situation still is.” Her fingers were unclasping and reclasping the catch on her bag with a life of their own.

“You’re intending to move?” At the Inspector’s glance the fingers flew to a stop.

“As soon as I can find another place.”

“Yes, you’ll be starting a new life,” the Inspector nodded. “Most people do. In cases like this.” Then he said, “Did you get rid of the bed?”

“Oh, no. I sleep in it.” She said very quickly, “I’ve been sleeping on a cot for years. Simone’s bed is so comfortable. She’d want me to. And then... I’m not afraid of my sister, you see.”

“Well,” said Ellery. “That’s a good healthy attitude. Dad, I’d just about got round to the point of asking Miss Phillips why she wanted to see me.”

“I want to help, Mr. Queen.”’ She had a Vogue voice this morning, too. So careful.

“Help? In what way?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even...” She covered her distress with a Vogue smile. “I don’t understand it myself. Sometimes you feel you just have to do something. You don’t know why.”

“Why did you come, Miss Phillips?”

She twisted in the chair. But then she snapped forward and she was no longer a figure in a magazine but a very young woman stripped all but bare. “I pitied my sister terribly. She was a cripple in more ways than one. Anybody would be, chained to a bed so long. Absolutely helpless. I hated myself for not being a cripple, too. I always felt so guilty.

“How can I explain it?” she cried. “Simone wanted to live. She was, oh, greedy about it. She was interested in everything. I had to tell her how people in the streets looked, what the sky was like on a cloudy day, the garbage men, the lines of wash across the court. She kept the radio going from morning to night. She had to know all about the movie stars and the society people, who was getting married, who was getting divorced, who was having a baby. When I went out with some man, which wasn’t too often, I had to tell her what he said, how he said it — what his line was, the passes he made, how I felt about the icky phase of going out.

“And she hated me. She was jealous. When I came home from work I used to wipe the makeup off before I stepped into the house. I never... dressed or undressed in front of her if I could help it. Only — she’d make me. She seemed to like being jealous; she’d get a kick out of it.

“And then there were other times when she’d cry and I knew she loved me very much.

“She was right,” Celeste Phillips said in a hard voice. “There was no justice in her being a cripple. It was a punishment she didn’t deserve and she was determined not to give up. She wanted to live much more than I do. Much more.

“Killing her wasn’t — wasn’t fair.

“I want to help find the one who killed her. I don’t understand it and I can’t believe yet that it really happened to us — to her... I’ve got to be part of his punishment. I can’t just stand around doing nothing. I’m not afraid or kittenish or silly. Let me help, Mr. Queen. I’ll carry your briefcase, run errands, type letters, answer your phone — anything. Whatever you say. Whatever you think I can do.”

She looked down at her white doeskins, blinking angrily.

The Queens kept looking at her.

“I’m really awfully, terribly sorry,” said a voice, “but I rang and rang—”

Celeste jumped up and ran to the window. A long wrinkle ran like a crack from one shoulder to the opposite hip and the young man in the doorway seemed spellbound by it. As if he half-expected a shell to fall off.

He said again, “I can’t tell you how sorry,” not taking his eyes from her back, “but I lost a sister by that route myself. I’ll come back later.”

Celeste said, “Oh!” and she turned around quickly.

They stared at each other across the room.

Ellery said, “Miss Phillips and — I gather — Mr. McKell.”

“Ever see New York the way it’s going to look the day after God Almighty strikes us all dead because He’s sick and tired of us? — I mean, Wall Street on Sunday morning?” Jimmy McKell was saying to Celeste Phillips ten minutes later. As far as he was concerned, the Almighty had already begun, with the Queens. “Or Big Liz coming up the bay? Or the mid-Hudson from the Yonkers ferry in June? Or Central Park from a Central Park South penthouse looking north any old time? Ever taste a bagel? Halvah? Chopped liver with chicken fat and a slice of black radish? Shish kebab? Anchovy pizza?”

“No,” said Celeste primly.

“This is ridiculous.” He waved his absurd arms. He looks like young Abe Lincoln, thought Ellery. All length and enthusiasm, awkward and lovely. An ugly, humorous mouth and eyes not so frank as his voice. His brown suit was positively disreputable. 25 or 26. “And you call yourself a New Yorker, Celeste?”

Celeste stiffened. “Maybe, Mister McKell, being poor all my life has something to do with it.” She has the French heritage of middleclass propriety, Ellery thought.

“You sound like my saintly father in reverse,” said James Guymer McKell. “He never ate a bagel, either. Are you anti-Semitic?”

“I’m not anti-anything,” gasped Celeste.

“Some of my father’s best friends are anti-Semitic,” said young McKell. “Listen, Celeste, if we’re going to be friends you’ve got to understand that my father and I—”

“I’ve got my own tender heart to thank for this,” said Celeste coldly. “That and the fact that my sister—”

“And mine.”

She said, flushing, “I’m sorry.”

Jimmy McKell flung a grasshopper leg up and over. “I live on a legman’s stipend, my girl, and not because I like it, either. It’s that or go into oil with my father. I wouldn’t go into oil if I was — if I was a Portuguese sardine.”

Celeste looked suspicious but interested.

“I thought, McKell,” remarked the Inspector, “that you lived with your people in that Park Avenue museum.”

“Yes,” smiled Celeste. “How much board do you pay?”

“Eighteen bucks a week,” said Jimmy, “just about enough to buy the butler’s cigars. And I don’t know that I’m getting my money’s worth. For my silken flop, with running hot toddies, I have to take long sermons on class distinction, a Communist in every garage, how we must rebuild Germany, what this country needs is a Big Businessman in the White House, my-boy-marry-into-Steel, and that grand old favorite, The Unions Be Damned. The only reason I stay to take it is that I’m kind of sentimental about my mother. And now that Monica...”

“Yes?” said Ellery.

Jimmy McKell looked around. “What? Say, I’ve kind of forgotten what I came for, haven’t I? It’s that old debbil sex again. Pin-up GI McKell, they used to call me.”

“Tell me about your sister,” said Celeste suddenly, pinching her skirt forward.

“Monica?” He pulled a cigaret with the texture of a prune from his pocket, and a large match. Celeste covertly watched him light up and lean forward in a jackknife, one eye cocked against the smoke, his elbows on his shanks and an overgrown hand tossing the match stump up and down. Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck, Celeste thought. And — yes — the teeniest dash of Raymond Massey around the mouth. Young-wise and boy-old. Homely and sweet. Probably had every woman in New York running after him. “A good joe. Everything they said about Monica was true, yet they never got to know her. Least of all father or mother. It was her own fault; she was misery-misery-misery inside, and she put up a front to cover it that was tougher to get through than a tank trap. Monica could be mean, and cruel, and toward the end she was getting worse.”

He tossed the match into an ashtray. “Father had always spoiled her rotten. He taught her what power was and he gave her his own contempt for people. His attitude toward me’s always been different; he made me toe the line from the start. We used to have some pretty rough times. Monica was a grown woman when I was still in knee pants, and it was Monica who slugged it out with father in my defense. He never could stand up to Monica.

“Mother was always afraid of her.”

Jimmy hooked a garter-revealing leg over the arm of the chair. “My sister grew up — as long as you’re asking — without a slum kid’s chance to find out what she really wanted out of life. Whatever it was, it wasn’t what she had, and that’s what made my father into an even meaner old man than he’d ordinarily have been, because in his view she had everything. I found out by spending three years in the Army as a dough-foot, two of them crawling around the Pacific mosquito parks on my belly. Monica never did find out. The only outlet she had was kicking the rules in the pants. And all the time, underneath, she was scared and mixed up... It’s a funny deal, Celeste,” said Jimmy suddenly, staring at her.

“Yes... Jimmy?”

“I know a lot about you.” She was startled at that. “I’ve been covering the Cat cases since the Abernethy murder — I get special privileges at the Bastille because they find me useful for dirt-digging purposes in the upper crust. I actually talked to you after your sister was murdered.”

“You did? I didn’t...”

“Naturally, I was just one of the vultures, and you were pretty numb. But I remember thinking at the time that you and I had a lot in common. We were both way out of our class and we both had sisters who were cripples and whom we loved and understood and who got the same nasty, sickening deal.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been meaning to look you up when you’d had a chance to unpack the bags under your eyes and get your defenses up a little. I was thinking about you when I walked up those stairs.”

Celeste looked at him.

“Cross my heart and hope to die in the oil business.” Jimmy grinned, but only for an instant. He turned abruptly to Ellery. “I run off at the mouth, Queen, but only when I’m with fellow-workers. I’m a great lover of humanity and it comes out here. But I also know how and when to button up. I was interested — as a reporter — when Abernethy, Violette, and O’Reilly were knocked off; when my own sister got it, it got personal. I’ve got to be on the inside in this cat race. I’m no boy genius, but I’ve learned to toddle around this town and I think you can use me. If my newspaper connection rules me out, I’ll quit today. Myself, I think it’s an advantage; gives me entree I wouldn’t have otherwise. But that’s strictly up to you. Maybe before you say no I ought to go on record before witnesses that I wouldn’t write anything for that lousy bedsheet I work for that you nixed. Do I get the job?”

Ellery went to the mantelpiece for a pipe. He took a long time filling it.

“That makes two questions, Mr. Queen,” said Celeste in a tense voice, “you haven’t answered.”

Inspector Queen said, “Excuse us a minute. Ellery, I’d like to talk to you.”

Ellery followed his father into the study and the Inspector shut the door. “You’re not considering it.”

“Yes.”

“Ellery, for God’s sake. Send them home!”

Ellery lit his pipe.

“Are you out of your mind? A couple of hopped-up kids. And they’re both connected with the case!”

Ellery puffed.

“Look here, son. If it’s help you want, you’ve got the entire Department on call. We’ve got a flock of ex-GIs who’d give you everything this youngster could and a lot more — they’re trained men. If you want a pretty girl, there’s at least three I can think of right now in the Policewomen’s Bureau who’d give the Phillips number a run for her money. And they’re trained, too.”

“But they’re not,” said Ellery thoughtfully, “connected with the case.”

The Inspector blinked. Ellery grinned and went back to the living room.

“Very unorthodox,” he said. “I’m inclined to go for it.”

“Oh, Mr. Queen.”

“What did I tell you, Celeste?”

The Inspector snarled from the doorway, “Ellery, I’ve got to phone my office,” and he slammed the door.

“But it might be dangerous.”

“I know some judo,” said Jimmy helpfully.

“It’s not funny, McKell, Maybe very dangerous.”

“Listen, son.” Jimmy was growling. “The little folks we kids played tag with in New Guinea didn’t wrap a cord around your neck. They cut it. But you’ll notice mine is still in one piece. Of course, Celeste here — that’s different. Inside work, I’d say. Something exciting, useful, and safe.”

“How about Celeste’s speaking for herself, Jimmy?”

“Go on, Miss Alden.”

“I’m scared,” said Celeste.

“Sure you are! That’s what I—”

“I was scared when I walked in and I’ll be scared when I walk out. But being scared won’t stop me from doing anything I can to help catch Simone’s murderer.”

“Well, now,” began Jimmy.

“No,” she said. Distinctly.

Jimmy reddened. He mumbled, “My mistake,” and dug another refugee cigaret from his pocket.

“And we’ve got to have something else understood,” said Ellery, as if nothing had happened. “This is no fraternity of rollicking companions, like the Three Musketeers. I’m Big Chief Plotto and I take nobody into my confidence. I give unexplained orders. I expect them to be carried out without protest, without questions, in confidence... and without consultation even between yourselves.”

They looked up at that.

“Perhaps I should have made that part of it clear first. You’re not coworkers in this little QBI. Nothing as cosy as that. You’re accountable always and solely to me, what I give you to do is your personal assignment not to be communicated to each other or anyone else; and for the support of this declaration I expect you to pledge your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor if any. If you feel you can’t join me under these conditions, say so now and we’ll write this session off as a pleasantly wasted hour.”

They were silent.

“Celeste?”

She clutched her bag. “I said I’d do anything. I accept.”

But Ellery persisted. “You won’t question your instructions?”

“No.”

“No matter what they happen to be?”

“No.”

“No matter how unpleasant or incomprehensible?”

“No,” said Celeste.

“And you agree not to disclose your instructions to anyone?”

“I agree, Mr. Queen.”

“Even to Jimmy?”

“To anybody.”

“Jimmy?”

“You’re a tougher boss than the human oak knot who holds down the city desk at the Extra.”

“Amusing,” smiled Ellery, “but it doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m in.”

“On those precise terms?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ellery looked at them for a moment.

“Wait here.”

He went quickly into his, study, shutting the door.

As Ellery began to write on a tablet, his father came in from his bedroom. The old man stood at the desk watching, his lips pushed out.

“Anything new downtown, Dad?” murmured Ellery, writing.

“Just a call from the Commissioner asking—”

“Asking what?”

“Just asking.”

Ellery tore the sheet off the pad, put it into a plain envelope, sealed the envelope, and wrote on its face, “J.”

He began to write on another sheet.

“Nothing at all, hm?”

“Oh, it’s not all Cat,” said the Inspector, watching. “Murder on West 75th and Amsterdam. Double header. Betrayed wife trails hubby to apartment and lets both sinners have it. With a pearl-handled job, 22.”

“Anybody I know?” Ellery cheerfully tore the second sheet off the pad.

“Dead woman was a nightclub dancer, Oriental numbers a specialty. Dead man was a wealthy lobbyist. Wife’s a society woman prominent in church affairs.”

“Sex, politics, society, and religion,” said Ellery as he sealed the second envelope. “What more could anyone ask?” He wrote on the envelope, “C.”

“It’ll take the heat off for a few days, anyway.” As Ellery got up his father demanded, “What’s that you just wrote?”

“Instructions to my 87th Street Irregulars.”

“You’re really going through with this Hollywood dam-foolery?”

Ellery went back to the living room.

The Inspector paused in the doorway again, bitterly.

To Celeste Ellery handed the sealed envelope marked “C,” to Jimmy the sealed envelope marked “J.”

“No, don’t open them now. Read, destroy, and report back to me here when you’re ready.”

Celeste was a little pale as she tucked her envelope into her bag. Jimmy crammed his into his outside pocket, but he kept his hand there.

“Going my way, Celeste?”

“No,” said Ellery. “Leave separately. You first, Jimmy.

Jimmy jammed his hat on and loped out.

To Celeste the room seemed empty.

“When do I go, Mr. Queen?”

“I’ll tell you.”

Ellery went to one of the windows. Celeste settled back again, opened her bag, took out a compact. The envelope she did not touch. After a while she replaced the compact and shut her bag. She sat looking at the dark fireplace. Inspector Queen, in the study doorway, said nothing at all.

“All right, Celeste.”

About five minutes had passed. Celeste left without a word.

“Now,” exploded the Inspector, “will you tell me what you wrote in those damned notes?”

“Sure.” Ellery was watching the street. “As soon as she comes out of the house.”

They waited.

“She stopped to read the note,” said the Inspector.

“And there she goes.” Ellery strolled over to the armchair. “Why, Dad,” he said, “in Celeste’s note I instructed her to find out all she can about Jimmy McKell. In Jimmy’s note I instructed him to find out all he can about Celeste Phillips.”

Ellery relit his pipe, puffing placidly.

“You conniver,” breathed his father. “The one thing I didn’t think of, and the only thing that makes sense.”

“If Heaven drops a date, the wise man opens his mouth. Chinese proverb.”

The Inspector launched himself from the jamb, steaming around the room like Scuffy the Tugboat.

“Beautiful,” he chortled. “They’ll have to head for each other like two—” He stopped.

“Cats?” Ellery took the pipe from his mouth. “That’s just it, Dad. I don’t know. This could be brutal. But we can’t take chances. We simply mustn’t.”

“Oh, it’s ridiculous,” snapped the old man. “A couple of romantic kids.”

“I thought I detected the inspectorial nose twitch once or twice during Celeste’s true confession.”

“Well, in this business you suspect everybody at least once. But when you stop to think about it, you—”

“You what? We don’t know a thing about the Cat. The Cat may be male, female, 16, 60, white, black, brown, or purple.”

“I thought you told me a few days ago that you’d spotted something. What was it, a mirage?”

“Irony really isn’t your long suit, Dad. I didn’t mean something about the Cat himself.”

The Inspector shrugged. He started for the door.

“I meant something about the Cat’s operations.”

The old man pulled up, turned around.

“What did you say?”

“The six murders have certain elements in common.”

“Elements in common?”

Ellery nodded.

“How many?” The Inspector sounded choked.

“At least three. I can think of a fourth, too.”

His father ran back. “What, son? What are they?”

But Ellery did not answer.

After a moment the Inspector hitched his trousers up and, very pale, marched out of the room.

“Dad?”

“What?” His angry voice shot in from the foyer.

“I need more time.”

“For what? So he can wring a few more necks?”

“That was below the belt. You ought to know these things can’t be rushed sometimes.”

Ellery sprang to his feet. And he was pale, too. “Dad, they mean something. They must! But what?”