Cat of Many Tails

8

Her name was Stella Petrucchi. She lived with her family on Thompson Street, less than a half a mile below Washington Square. She was 22 years of age; of Italian parentage; of the Roman Catholic faith.

For almost five years Stella Petrucchi had been employed as a stenographer in the same law office on Madison Avenue and 40th Street.

Her father had been in the United States for forty-five years. He was a wholesale fish merchant in Fulton Market. He came from Livorno. Stella’s mother was also from the province of Toscana.

Stella was the sixth of seven children. Of her three brothers, one was a priest and the two others were in business with George Petrucchi. Of her three sisters, the eldest was a nun of the Carmelite order, one was married to an Italian cheese and olive oil importer, the third was a student at Hunter College. All the Petrucchi children but the priest, who was the eldest, had been born in New York City.

They had thought at first that Stella was part of the immortal debris littering, the vicinity of Metropol Hall, overlooked in the streetcleaning. But the silk cord around the girl’s neck gave her the special distinction conferred by the Cat and they found that when they pulled her head back by the tumbled black hair and exposed her throat.

A pair of patrolmen had run across her body a block and a half from Metropol Hall at just about the time the Mayor was giving reporters the statistics of the carnage. It was lying on the cement of an alley between two stores, ten feet from the Eighth Avenue sidewalk.

She had been strangled, said the Medical Examiner’s man, some time before midnight.

The identification was made by Father Petrucchi and the married sister, Mrs. Teresa Bascalone. Mr. and Mrs. George Petrucchi collapsed on being informed of the tragedy.

A man, Howard Whithacker, 32, who gave a West 4th Street rooming house address, was closely questioned.

Whithacker was a very tall, lean, blackhaired man with closely set diamond black eyes, a horny skin, and Gothic cheekbones. He looked considerably older than the age he gave.

His occupation, he stated, was “unsuccessful poet.” On being pressed, he grudgingly admitted that he “kept body and soul together” by working as a counterman in a Greenwich Avenue cafeteria.

Whithacker said that he had known Stella Petrucchi for sixteen months. They had met in the cafeteria late one night the previous spring. She had been out on a date and had stopped in with her escort at two in the morning. The escort, “a deep Bronx troglodyte with handpainted mermaids on his tie,” had jeered at Whithacker’s midwestern speech. Whithacker had picked up a baked apple from the counter between them, leaned over, and crammed the apple into the offending mouth. “After that, Stella used to drop in almost every night and we became kind of friendly.”

He denied angrily having had an affair with the girl. When this line of questioning persisted, he became quite violent and had to be subdued. “She was a pure, sweet soul,” he yelled. “Sex with her was out of the question!”

Whithacker talked reluctantly about his background. He hailed from Beatrice, Nebraska. His people were farmers; the original stock had been Scotch — a great-grandfather had come up out of Kentucky in 1829 in a group of Campbellites. There was Pawnee blood in the family and a splatter of Bohemian and Danish. “I’m one of the percentage Americans,” said Howard Whithacker. “All decimal points. You know?” At home, he said, he attended the Disciples of Christ church.

He was a graduate of the University of Nebraska.

At the beginning of the war he had enlisted in the Navy, “winding up in the Pacific. I was blown into the water by a kamikaze who darn near made it. My ears still ring sometimes. It had a remarkable effect on my poetry.”

After the war, finding Beatrice confining, he went to New York — “financed by my brother Duggin, who thinks I’m poetry’s gift to Gage County, Nebraska.”

His sole published work since his arrival two years before consisted of a verse entitled “Corn in the Coral.” It had appeared in Greenwich Village’s newspaper, the Villager, in the spring of 1947; Whithacker produced a greasy clipping to prove it. “My brother Duggin is now convinced I’m not another John Neihardt. However,” he said, “I have received considerable encouragement from fellow-poets in the Village, and of course Stella adored me. We have regular 3 A.M. poetry-reading sessions in the cafeteria. I live Spartanly but adequately. The death of Stella Petrucchi leaves an empty pigeonhole in my heart; she was a dear child without a brain cell in her head.”

He denied indignantly having taken money from her.

As to the events of the night of September 22, Whithacker stated that Thursday night being his night off, he had met Stella outside her office building to take her to the Metropol Hall mass meeting. “A cat poem had been taking shape in my mind for some time,” he explained. “It was important that I attend. Stella, of course, always looked forward to our Thursday nights together.”

They had walked crosstown, stopping in at an Eighth Avenue spaghetti house “owned by a cousin of Stella’s father. I discussed the Citizens’ Action Teams movement with Mr. Ferriquancchi and we were both surprised to find that the subject made Stella extremely nervous. Ignazio said we oughtn’t to go if Stella felt that way and I offered to go alone, but Stella said no, she wanted to go, at last somebody was doing something about the murders. She said she asked the Virgin Mother every night to keep everyone she knew safe.”

They had managed to get into Metropol Hall and had found downstairs seats well to the front of the auditorium.

“When the stampede started, Stella and I tried to hold on to each other, but the damn cattle tore us apart. The last I saw of her she was being carried off in a crowd of lunatics, screaming something at me. But I couldn’t hear. I never saw her alive again.”

Whithacker had been lucky, suffering no more than a torn pocket and some pummeling.

“I crowded with a few other people in a doorway across from the Hall to keep out of harm’s way. When the worst was over I started searching for Stella. I couldn’t find her among the dead or injured at the Hall so I began looking along Eighth Avenue, the side streets, Broadway. I wandered around all night.”

Whithacker was asked why he had not telephoned to the Petrucchis; the family had been up all night frantic over Stella’s failure to come home. They had not known about her appointment with him.

“That’s the reason. They didn’t know about me. Stella said it was better that way. She said they were strict Catholics and it would only cause a ruckus if they found out she was going around with a non-Catholic. She didn’t mind her father’s cousin Ignazio knowing about us, she said, because Mr. Ferriquancchi is anti-Papist and nobody in the Petrucchi family has anything to do with him anyway.”

At 7:30 A.M. Whithacker had returned to Metropol Hall for another checkup, intending to telephone the Petrucchis “despite their religious scruples” if this last effort to locate Stella failed.

At his first question he was seized by the police.

“I must have passed the entrance to that alley a dozen times during the night,” Howard Whithacker said. “But it was dark, and how was I to know Stella was laid out in there?”

Whithacker was held “for further questioning.”

“No,” Inspector Richard Queen told reporters, “we have absolutely nothing on him. But we want to check his story, and so on.” The “and so on” was taken by the press — correctly — to refer both to related matters in the recent past and to a certain interesting wildness of eye, manner, and speech in Stella Petrucchi’s friend.

There was no medical evidence of rape or attempted rape.

The girl’s purse was missing; but it was found later, its contents intact, in the debris of the Hall. A gold religious medal on a fine chain about her neck had not been touched.

The strangling cord was of the familiar tussah silk, dyed salmon-pink. It had been knotted at the nape exactly as in the previous cases. Laboratory examination of the cord turned up nothing of significance.

It seemed clear that Stella Petrucchi had taken refuge in the alley after being hurled into the street with the rest of the Metropol audience. But whether the Cat had been waiting for her in the alley, or had entered with her, or had followed her in, there was no way of telling.

The probability was that she had suspected nothing until the clutch of the silk. She might well have entered the alley at the Cat’s invitation, assuming he caught up with her and offered to “protect” her from harm at the hands of the mob.

As usual, he had left no trail.

It was past noon when Ellery pulled himself up the stairs to find the door of the Queen apartment unlocked. Wondering, he went in; and the first thing he saw on entering his bedroom was a torn nylon stocking dangling from the seat of his ladder back chair. Over one of the chair posts was hooked a white brassiere.

He bent over his bed and shook her.

Her eyes popped open.

“You’re all right.”

Celeste shuddered. “Don’t ever do that again! For a split century I thought it was the Cat.”

“Is Jimmy...?”

“Jimmy’s all right, too.”

Ellery found himself sitting on the edge of his bed; the back of his neck throbbed again. “I’ve often dreamed about this situation,” he said, rubbing it.

“What situation?” She stretched her long legs stiff under the sheet, moaning, “Oh, I ache.”

“I know,” said Ellery. “This all happened in a Peter Arno drawing.”

“What?” said Celeste sleepily. “Is it still today?”

Her black hair coursed over his pillow in sweet poetic streams. “But exhaustion,” Ellery explained, “is the enemy of poetry.”

“What? You look kind of dilapidated. Are you all right?”

“I will be once I get the hang of sleeping again.”

“I am sorry!” Celeste clutched the sheet to her and sat up quickly. “I wasn’t really awake. Er, I’m not... I mean, I didn’t want to poke around in your bureau...”

“You cad,” said a stern voice. “Would you boot out an unclothed maiden?”

“Jimmy!” said Celeste happily.

Jimmy McKell was in the bedroom doorway, one arm about a large, mysterious-looking paper sack.

“Well,” said Ellery. “The McKell. Indestructible, I see.”

“I see you made it, too, Ellery.”

They grinned at each other. Jimmy was wearing one of Ellery’s most cherished sports jackets, which was too small for him, and Ellery’s newest tie.

“Mine were torn clean off me,” explained Jimmy. “How you feeling, woman?”

“Like September Morn at an American Legion convention. Would you two step into the next room?”

In the living room Jimmy scowled. “You look beat, old-timer. What’s with the Petrucchi girl?”

“Oh, you know about that.”

“Heard it on your radio this morning.” Jimmy set the sack down.

“What’s in that bag?”

“Some hardtack and pemmican. Your larder’d run dry. Have you eaten anything, bud?”

“No.”

“Neither have we. Hey, Celeste!” Jimmy shouted. “Never mind making with the clothes. Rustle us some breakfast!”

Celeste laughed from Ellery’s bathroom.

“You two seem awfully gay,” remarked Ellery, feeling for the armchair.

“Funny how it hits you.” Jimmy laughed, too. “You get mixed up in something like last night’s fandango and all of a sudden everything drops into the slot. Even stupidity. I thought I’d seen everything in the Pacific, but I hadn’t. The war was murder, all right, but Organized. You wear a uniform and you carry a gun and you take great big orders and somebody cooks your chow and you kill or get killed, all according to the book. But last night... tooth and claw. Man stripped to the bloody bones. Disintegration of the tribe. Every fellow-cannibal your enemy. It’s good to be alive, that’s all.”

“Hello, Celeste,” said Ellery.

Her clothes were macerated and although she had evidently brushed them and applied, pins to secret parts, they looked like hardening lava. Her legs were rowdy: she carried her stockings.

“I don’t suppose you’d have an old pair of nylons around, Mr. Queen?”

“No,” said Ellery gravely. “My father, you know.”

“Oh, dear. Well! I’ll fix you men something in a jiffy,” and Celeste went into the kitchen with the sack.

“Superior, hey?” Jimmy stared at the swinging door. “You’ll note, Brother Queen, that the lady made no apology for her appearance. Definitely superior.”

“How’d you two manage to keep together last night?” asked Ellery, closing his eyes.

“Now don’t cork off on us, Ellery.” Jimmy began setting the dropleaf table.

“Why, the fact is we didn’t.”

“Oh?” said Ellery, opening one eye.

“We lost each other right after I got to her. She doesn’t remember how she got out, and neither do I. We kept hunting for each other all night. I found her around 5 A.M. sitting on the steps of Polyclinic Hospital, bawling.”

Ellery closed the eye.

“How do you like your bacon, Mr. Queen?” called Celeste.

Jimmy said, “Are you there?” and Ellery mumbled something. “Curly and wet, he says! — What, Ellery?”

“The last word,” said Ellery, “was ‘bawling.’”

“Her eyes out. I tell you, I was touched. Anyway, we had some coffee at an allnight joint and then we went looking for you. But you’d disappeared. We thought you’d probably got out all right and gone home, so we came up here. Nobody home, so I said to Celeste, ‘He won’t mind,’ and I climbed up the fire escape. For an eye, Ellery, you’re very careless about your windows.”

“Go on,” said Ellery, when Jimmy stopped.

“I don’t know if I can explain it. Why we came, I mean. I don’t think Celeste and I said two dozen words to each other after we clutched this morning. I think we both realized your position for the first time and we wanted to tell you we’ve been a couple of firstclass schlemihls and didn’t quite know how to do it,” Jimmy straightened a spoon. “This thing is awfully gross,” he said to the spoon. “The war all over again. In another form. The individual doesn’t mean a damn. Human dignity gets flushed down the drain. You have to get up to your elbow in muck to hold on to it. I didn’t see that till last night, Ellery.”

“Neither did I.” Celeste was in the kitchen doorway with a piece of toast in one hand and a buttery knife in the other. Ellery thought, Piggott and Johnson lost them last night; they must have. “You were right, Mr. Queen. After what we saw last night you were right.”

“About what, Celeste?”

“About suspecting Jimmy and me. Jimmy and me or anybody.”

“I guess what we wanted to hear you say was ‘Come back, all is forgiven,’” grinned Jimmy. But then he began on the cutlery again.

“So you waited here for me.”

“When we heard the news we knew what was keeping you. I made Celeste set into your bed — she was dead on her feet — and I parked on the sofa in here. Anything to connect the Petrucchi girl with the others?”

“No.”

“What about this cornhusker-poet character? What’s his name?”

“Whithacker?” Ellery shrugged. “Dr. Cazalis seems interested in him and they’re going to examine him carefully.”

“I’m one hell of a newspaperman.” Jimmy banged a spoon down. “All right, I’ll say it. Do you want us back?”

“I don’t have anything for you to do, Jimmy.”

“For me!” cried Celeste.

“Or for you.”

“You don’t want us back.”

“I do. But I have no work for you.” Ellery got up, groping for a cigaret. But his hands dropped. “I don’t know where to turn. That’s the truth. I’m absolutely hung up.”

Jimmy and Celeste looked swiftly at each other. Then Jimmy said, “You’re also absolutely pooped. What you need is to slice a herring with Morpheus. Hey, Celeste! The coffee!”

Ellery awoke to the sound of a loud voice. He switched on the night light.

8:12

The voice was driving. Ellery crawled out of bed, pulled on his robe and slippers, and hurried to the living room.

The voice was the radio’s. His father was lying back in the armchair. Jimmy and Celeste crouched on the sofa in a nest of newspapers.

“You two still here?”

Jimmy grunted. His long chin was nuzzling his chest and Celeste kept rubbing her drawnup bare leg in a reassuring way.

The Inspector was all bones and gray wilt.

“Dad—”

“Listen.”

“—reported tonight,” said the voice. “A third-rail short circuit on the BMT subway at Canal Street caused a panic and forty-six persons were treated for injuries. Trains out of Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station are running from ninety minutes to two hours behind schedule. The parkways out of the City are a solid double line of cars as far north as Greenwich and White Plains. Traffic is clogged for a large area around the Manhattan approaches to the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and the George Washington Bridge. Nassau County authorities report that traffic conditions on the major Long Island parkways are out of control. New Jersey, Connecticut, and upstate New York police report—”

Ellery snapped the radio off.

“What is it?” he asked wildly. “War?” His glance flew to the windows, as if he expected to see a flaming sky.

“New York’s turned Malay,” said Jimmy with a laugh.

“The amok. They’ll have to rewrite the psychology books.” He began to get up, but Celeste pulled him back.

“Fighting? Panic?”

“That Metropol Hall business last night was just the beginning, Ellery.” The Inspector was fighting something, nausea or rage. “It snapped a vital part. Started a sort of chain reaction. Or maybe it was the Petrucchi murder on top of the panic and riot — that was bad timing. Anyway, it’s all over the City. Been spreading all day.”

“They’re running,” said Celeste. “Everybody’s running.”

“Running where?”

“Nobody seems to know. Just running.”

“It’s the Black Death all over again,” said Jimmy McKell. “Didn’t you know? We’re back in the Middle Ages. New York is now the pesthole of the Western Hemisphere, Ellery. In two weeks you’ll be able to shoot hyenas in Macy’s basement.”

“Shut up, McKell.” The old man’s head rolled on the back of his chair. “There’s a lot of disorder, son, a lot. Looting, holdups... It’s been particularly bad on Fifth Avenue, 86th around Lexington, 125th, upper Broadway, and around Maiden Lane downtown. And traffic accidents, hundreds of traffic accidents. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in New York.”

Ellery went to one of the windows. The street was empty. A fire engine screamed somewhere. The sky glowed to the southwest.

“And they say,” began Celeste.

“Who says?” Jimmy laughed again. “Well, that’s the point, my friends, whereupon today I’m proud to be one of the capillaries in the circulation system of organized opinion. We’ve really swung it this time, comrades.” He kicked a drooping newspaper. “Responsible journalism! And the blessed radio—”

“Jimmy,” said Celeste.

“Well, old Rip’s got to hear the news, hasn’t he? He’s slept through history, Miss Phillips. Did you know, sir, that there’s a citywide quarantine? It’s a fact. Or is it? That all schools will be shut down indefinitely — O happy day? That Father Knickerbocker’s chickens are to be evacuated to camps outside the metropolitan area? That all flights from La Guardia, Newark, and Idlewild have been nixed? That the Cat’s made of extremely green cheese?”

Ellery was silent.

“Also,” said Jimmy McKell, “Beldame Rumor hath it that the Mayor’s been attacked by the Cat, that the FBI’s taken over Police Headquarters, that the Stock Exchange positively will not open its doors tomorrow — and that’s a fact, seeing that tomorrow’s Saturday.” Jimmy unfolded himself. “Ellery, I went downtown this afternoon. The shop is a madhouse. Everybody’s busy as little beavers denying rumors and believing every new one that comes in. I stopped on my way back to see if Mother and Father are maintaining their equilibrium and do you know what? I saw a Park Avenue doorman get hysterics. Brother, that’s the end of the world.” He swiped his nose back-handedly, glaring. “It’s enough to make you cancel your membership in the human race. Come on, let’s all get drunk.”

“And the Cat?” Ellery asked his father.

“No news.”

“Whithacker?”

“Cazalis and the psychiatrists have been working on him all day. Still are, far as I know. But they’re not doing any backbends. And we didn’t find a thing in his West 4th Street flop.”

“Do I have to do it all by myself?” demanded Jimmy, pouring Scotch. “None for you, Celeste.”

“Inspector, what’s going to happen now?”

“I don’t know,” said the Inspector, “and what’s more, Miss Phillips, I don’t think I give an Irish damn.” He got up. “Ellery, if Headquarters calls, I’ve gone to bed.”

The old man shuffled out.

“Here’s to the Cat,” said Jimmy, lofting his glass. “May his giblets wither.”

“If you’re going to start toping, Jimmy,” said Celeste, “I’m going home. I’m going home anyway.”

“Right. To mine.”

“Yours?”

“You can’t stay up in that foul nest of underprivilege alone. And you may as well meet Father now and get it over with. Mother, of course, will be nightingale soup.”

“It’s sweet of you, Jimmy,” Celeste was all olive-pink. “But just impossible.”

“You can sleep in Queen’s bed but you can’t sleep in mine! What is this?”

She laughed, but she was angry. “It’s been the ghastliest and most wonderful twenty-four hours of my life, darling. Don’t spoil it.”

“Spoil it! Why, you proletarian snob!”

“I can’t let your parents think I’m some dead-end kid to be taken in off the streets.”

“You are a snob.”

“Jimmy.” Ellery turned from the fireplace. “Is it the Cat you’re worrying about?”

“Always. But this time the rabbits, too. It’s a breed that bites.”

“You can stop worrying about the Cat, at any rate. Celeste is safe.”

Celeste looked bewildered.

Jimmy said, “The hell you say.”

“For that matter, so are you.” Ellery explained the diminishing-age pattern of the murders. When he had finished he packed a pipe and lit it, watching them, and all the time they stood peering at him as if he were performing a minor miracle.

“And nobody saw that,” muttered Jimmy. “Nobody.”

“But what does it mean?” Celeste cried.

“I don’t know. But Stella Petrucchi was 22; and you and Jimmy being older than that, the Cat’s passed your age groups by.” Just relief, he thought, wondering why he was disappointed.

“May I print that, Ellery?” Jimmy’s face fell. “I forgot. Noblesse oblige.”

“Well, I think,” said Celeste defiantly, “that people ought to be told, Mr. Queen. Especially now, when they’re so frightened.”

Ellery stared at her. “Wait a minute.”

He went into his study.

When he returned he said,’ “The Mayor agrees with you, Celeste. Things are very bad... I’m holding a press conference at 10 o’clock tonight and I’m going on the air with the Mayor at 10:30. From City Hall. Jimmy, don’t double-cross me.”

“Thanks, pal. This descending-age business?”

“Yes. As Celeste says, it ought to quiet some fears.”

“You don’t sound hopeful.”

“It’s a question which can be more alarming,” said Ellery, “danger to yourself or danger to your children.”

“I see what you mean. I’ll be right back, Ellery. Celeste, come on.” He grabbed her arm.

“Just put me in a cab, Jimmy.”

“Are you going to be pork-headed?”

“I’ll be as safe on 102nd Street as on Park Avenue.”

“How about compromising in a — I mean on a hotel?”

“Jimmy, you’re wasting Mr. Queen’s time.”

“Wait for me, Ellery. I’ll go downtown with you.”

They went out, Jimmy still arguing.

Ellery shut the door after them carefully. Then he went back to the radio, turned it on, and sat down on the edge of the chair, like an audience.

But at the first blat of the newscaster he leaped, throttled the voice, and hurried to his bedroom.

It was afterward said that the press conference and radio talk of the Mayor’s Special Investigator on that topsyturvy night of Friday, September 23, acted as a brake on the flight of New Yorkers from the City and in a matter of hours brought the panic phase of the case to a complete stop. Certainly the crisis was successfully passed that night and never again reached a peak. But what few realized who were following the complex psychology of the period was that something comparably undesirable replaced it.

As people straggled back to the City in the next day or so, it was remarked that they no longer seemed interested in the Cat case. The cataract of telephone calls and in-person inquiries which had kept City Hall, Police Headquarters, and precincts all over the City swamped for almost four months ebbed to a trickle. Elected officials, who had been under continuous bombardment from their constituents, discovered that the siege had unaccountably lifted. For once, to their relief, ward politicians found their clubhouses deserted. Vox populi, which had kept the correspondence columns of the newspapers in an uproar, sank to a petty whisper.

An even more significant phenomenon was observed.

On Sunday, September 25, churches of all denominations throughout the City suffered a marked drop in attendance. While this fall from grace was deplored by the clergy, it was almost unanimously regarded by lay observers as an agreeable evil, considering “the recent past.” (Already the panic had dwindled to the size of a footnote in the City’s history, so dramatic was the change.) The unusually heavy church attendance during the summer, these observers said, had been inspired largely by Cat-generated fears and a panic flight to spiritual reassurance; the sudden wholesale defection could only mean that the panic was over, the pendulum had swung to the other extreme. Shortly, they predicted, church attendance would find itself back in the normal rhythm.

On all sides responsible people were congratulating one another and the City on “the return to sanity.” It was recognized that the threat to the City’s young people had to be guarded against, and special measures were planned, but everyone seemed to feel — in official quarters that the worst was over.

It was almost as if the Cat had been caught.

But there were contrary signs to be seen by those who were not blinded by sheer relief.

During the week beginning Saturday, September 24, Variety and Broadway columnists began to report an extraordinary increase in night club and theater attendance. The upswing could not be ascribed to seasonal change; it was too abrupt. Theaters which had not seen a full house all summer found themselves under the pleasant compulsion to rehire laidoff ushers and hall out ropes and S.R.O. signs. Clubs which had been staggering along were regarding their jammed dance floors with amazement; the famous ones were haughtily turning people away again. Broadway bars and eating places sprang to jubilant life. Florist shops, candy shops, cigar stores were crowded. Liquor stores tripled their sales. Scalpers, barkers, and steerers began to smile again. Bookmakers rubbed their eyes at the flow of bets. Sports arenas and stadiums reported record receipts and new attendance marks. Pool room and bowling alleys put on extra employees. The shooting galleries on Broadway, 42nd Street, Sixth Avenue were mobbed.

Overnight, it seemed, show business and its feedline subsidiaries began to enjoy boomtime prosperity. Times Square from sundown to 3 A.M. was roaring and impassable. Taxi drivers were saying, “It’s just like the war all over again.”

The phenomenon was not restricted to midtown Manhattan. It was simultaneously experienced by the entertainment districts of downtown Brooklyn, Fordham Road in the Bronx, and other localities throughout the five boroughs.

That week, too, advertising agency executives were bewildered by advance reports from their radio-polling services. At a time when most major radio shows had returned to the air to begin the fall and winter broadcasting cycles and an appreciable rise in listener-response should have become apparent, the advance ratings unaccountably dropped in the metropolitan area. All networks were affected. The independent stations with local coverage had Pulse and BMB make hasty special surveys and discovered that the bottom had fallen out of their program-response and listener-circulation tables. The most significant of all — in all surveys — were those showing the percentage of sets-in-use. They were unprecedentedly small.

A parallel drop was noted in television surveys.

New Yorkers were not listening to. the radio and watching the telecasts.

Account executives and broadcasting company vice-presidents were busy preparing explanations to their clients, chiefly masochistic. The truth seemed to have occurred to none of them, which was that radio and television sets could not be turned on in the home by people who were not there or why, if they were, were absent spiritually.

Police were puzzled by the abrupt rise in drunkenness and disorderly conduct cases. Routine raids on gambling houses bagged huge takes and a type of burgher clientele not ordinarily found throwing its money away. Marijuana and narcotics cases took a disturbing jump. The Vice Squad was compelled to put on a co-ordinated drive in an attempt to curb the sudden spread and acceleration of prostitution activities. Muggings, car thefts, holdups, common assaults, sex offenses increased sharply. The rise in juvenile delinquency was especially alarming.

And of peculiar interest was the reappearance all over the City of strangled alley cats.

It was evident to the thoughtful few that what had seemed a healthy loss of interest in the Cat case on the part of New Yorkers was not that at all. Fear had not died; the City was still in the mob mood and mob psychology was still at the panic stage; it had merely taken a new form and direction. People were now in flight from reality on a psychic rather than a physical level. But they were still fleeing.

On Sunday, October 2, an unsurprisingly large number of clergymen took as their texts Genesis XIX, 24–25. It was natural to cite Sodom and Gomorrah that day, and brimstone and fire were generously predicted. The ingredients of moral disintegration were all present in the melting pot, bubbling to the boil. The only trouble was that those whom the lesson would have profited were atoning for their wickedness in a less godly fashion, elsewhere.

By a sly irony the ninth life of the Cat proved the crucial one.

For the break in the case came with the ninth murder.

The body was found a few minutes after 1 A.M. on the night of September 29–30, exactly one week after the Cat Riots and less than two miles from the site of Stella Petrucchi’s murder. It lay sprawled in deep shadows on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History, at 77th Street and Central Park West. A sharpeyed patrolman spotted it on his rounds.

Death was by strangulation. A cord had been employed, of tussah silk, dyed blue as in the cases of Archibald Dudley Abernethy and Rian O’Reilly.

According to a driver’s license found in his untouched wallet, his name was Donald Katz, he was 21 years old, and he lived on West 81st Street. The address proved to be an apartment house between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. His father was a dentist, with offices at Amsterdam Avenue and West 71st Street near Sherman Square. The family was of the Jewish faith. The victim had an elder sister, Mrs. Jeanne Immerson, who lived in the Bronx. Donald was enrolled in extension courses in radio and television engineering. He had been, it seemed, a bright quixotic boy given to quick enthusiasms and dislikes; he had had many acquaintances and few friends.

The father, Dr. Morvin Katz, officially identified the body.

It was from Dr. Katz that police learned about the girl his son had been out with that evening. She was Nadine Cuttler, 19, of Borough Park, Brooklyn, a student at the New York Art Students’ League. Brooklyn detectives picked her up during the night and she was brought to Manhattan for questioning.

She fainted on viewing the body and it was some time before she could give a coherent story.

Nadine Cuttler said that she had known Donald Katz for almost two years. “We met at a Palestine rally.” They had had “an understanding” for the past year, during which period they had seen each other three or four times a week. “We had practically nothing in common. Donald was interested in science and technology, and I in art. He was politically undeveloped; not even the war taught him anything. We didn’t even agree about Palestine. I don’t know why we fell in love.”

The previous evening, Miss Cuttler stated, Donald Katz had met her at the Art Students’ League after her classes and they had walked down Seventh Avenue from 57th Street, stopping in at Lum Fong’s for a chow mein dinner. “We fought over the check. Donald had juvenile ideas about this being a man’s world, and that women ought to stay home and have babies and smooth their husbands’ brows when the men came home after an important day, and all that sort of thing. He got very angry with me because I pointed out to him it was my turn to pay. Finally, I let him pay the check just to avoid a scene in public.”

Afterward, they had gone dancing in a little Russian night club on 52nd Street, The Yar, across from 21 and Leon and Eddie’s.

“It was a place we liked very much and often went to. They knew us there and we called Maria and Lonya and Tina and the others by their first names. But last night it was crowded and after a while we left. Donald had had four vodkas and didn’t touch any of the zakuska, so when we hit the air he got lightheaded. He wanted to go clubbing, but I said I wasn’t in the mood and instead we strolled back uptown on Fifth Avenue. When we got to Fifth and 59th, Donald wanted to go into the Park. He was feeling very... gay; the drinks hadn’t worn off. But it was so dark in there, and the Cat...”

At this point Nadine Cuttler broke down.

When she was able to continue, the girl said: “I found myself awfully nervous. I don’t know why. We’d often talked about the Cat murders and neither of us ever felt a personal threat, I’m sure of it. We just couldn’t seem to take it seriously, I mean really seriously. Donald used to say the Cat was anti-Semitic because in a City with the biggest Jewish population in the world he hadn’t strangled a single Jew. Then he’d laugh and contradict himself and say the odds were the Cat was Jewish because of that very fact. It was a sort of joke between us which I never thought very funny, but you couldn’t take offense at anything Donald said, not really, he...” She had to be recalled to her story.

“We didn’t go into the Park. We walked crosstown on Central Park South, sticking to the side of the street where the buildings are. On the way Donald seemed to sober up a bit; we talked about the murder of the Petrucchi girl last week and the Cat Riots and the stampede out of the City, and we agreed it was a funny thing but it was usually the older people who lost their heads in a crisis while the young ones, who had most to lose, kept theirs... Then, when we got to Columbus Circle, we had another quarrel.”

Donald had wanted to take her home, “even though we’d had an absolute compact for months that on weeknight dates I’d go back to Brooklyn by myself. I was really exasperated with him. His mother didn’t like him to get in late; it was the only basis on which I allowed myself to see him so often. Why didn’t I let him, why didn’t I let him?”

Nadine Cuttler cried again and Dr. Katz quieted her, saying that she had nothing to condemn herself for, that if it was Donald’s fate to become a victim of the Cat nothing would have changed the result. The girl clung to his hand.

There was little more to her story. She had refused to let the boy accompany her to Brooklyn and she had urged him to hop a cab and go right home, because “he was looking sick and besides I didn’t like the idea of his being alone on the streets in that condition. That made him even madder. He didn’t even... kiss me. The last I saw of him was when I was going down the subway steps. He was standing at the top talking to somebody, I think a taxi driver. That was about 10:30.”

The taxi driver was found. Yes, he remembered the young couple’s tiff. “When the girl sails off down the steps I open my door and say to this kid, ‘Better luck next time, Casanova. Come on, I’ll take you home.’ But he was sore as a boil. ‘You can take your cab and shove it,’ he says to me. ‘I’m walking home.’ And he crossed the Circle and turns into Central Park West. Headed uptown. He was pretty rocky on his pins.”

It seemed clear that Donald Katz had tried to carry out his intention, walking uptown along the west side of Central Park West from Columbus Circle for almost a mile to 77th Street, just four blocks short of his home. There seemed no question but that the Cat had followed him all the way. perhaps had followed the couple all evening, although nothing developed from inquiries made at Lum Fong’s and The Yar, and the taxi driver could not recall having seen anyone acting suspiciously as Donald Katz left him. The Cat had undoubtedly bided his time, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. The opportunity had come at 77th Street. On the steps of the Museum, at the spot where Donald was found, there was a mess of regurgitated matter; some of it was on Donald’s coat. Apparently as he was passing the Museum his intoxication reached the stage of nausea and Donald had sat down on the steps in a dark place and he had been ill.

And the Cat had approached him from the side and got behind him as he sat retching.

He had struggled violently.

Death occurred, said the Medical Examiner, between 11 P.M. and midnight.

No one heard screams or choked cries.

The most thorough examination of the body, the clothing, the strangling cord, and the scene turned up nothing of importance.

“As usual,” said Inspector Queen at the dawn’s early light, “the Cat’s left not a clue.”

But he had.

The fateful fact emerged obliquely during the morning of the 30th in the Katz apartment on West 81st Street.

Detectives were questioning the family, going through the familiar motions of trying to establish a connection between Donald Katz and the persons involved in the previous eight murders.

Present were the boy’s mother and father; their daughter; the daughter’s husband, Philbert Immerson. Mrs. Katz was a lean brown-eyed woman of bitter charm; her face was undressed by weeping. Mrs. Immerson, a chubby young woman without her mother’s mettle, sobbed throughout the interview; Ellery gathered from something Mrs. Immerson said that she had not got along with her young brother. Dr. Katz sat by himself in a corner, as Zachary Richardson had sat on the other side of Central Park three and a half weeks before; he had lost his son, there would be no others. Donald’s brother-in-law, a balding young man with a red mustache, wearing a sharp gray business suit, stood away from the others as if to avoid being noticed. He had freshly shaved; his stout cheeks were perspiring under the talcum.

Ellery was paying little attention to the automatic questions and the surcharged replies; he was dragging himself about these days and it had been a particularly depleting night. Nothing would come of this, he felt sure, as nothing had come of any of the others. A few slight alterations in the pattern — Jewish instead of Christian, seven days since the last one instead of seventeen, or eleven, or six — but the bulk features were the same: the strangling cord of tussah silk, blue for men, salmon-pink for women; the victim unmarried (Rian O’Reilly was still the baffling single exception); the victim listed in the telephone directory — Ellery had checked that immediately, and the ninth victim younger than the eighth who had been younger than the seventh who had been...

“—no, I’m positive he didn’t know anybody of that name,” Mrs. Katz was saying. Inspector Queen was being perversely insistent about Howard Whithacker, who had disappointed the psychiatrists. “Unless, of course, this Whithacker was somebody Donald met in training camp.”

“You mean during the war?” asked the Inspector.

“Yes.”

“Your son in the war, Mrs. Katz? Wasn’t he too young?”

“No. He enlisted on his eighteenth birthday. The war was still on.”

The Inspector looked surprised. “Germany surrendered in May, I think it was, of 1945 — Japan in August or September. Wasn’t Donald still 17 in 1945?”

“I ought to know my own son’s age!”

“Pearl.” Dr. Katz stirred in his corner. “It must be that driving license.”

The Queens both made the slightest forward movement.

“Your son’s license, Dr. Katz,” said Inspector Queen, “gives his birth date as March 10, 1928.”

“That’s a mistake, Inspector Queen. My son made a mistake putting down the year on his application and never bothered to have it corrected.”

“You mean,” asked Ellery, and he found himself clearing his throat, “you mean Donald was not 21 years old, Dr. Katz?”

“Donald was 22. He was born on March 10, 1927.”

“22,” said Ellery.

“22?” The Inspector sounded froggy, too. “Ellery. Stella Petrucchi.”

Abernethy, 44. Violette Smith, 42. Rian O’Reilly, 40. Monica McKell, 37. Simone Phillips, 35. Beatrice Willikins, 32. Lenore Richardson, 25. Stella Petrucchi, 22. Donald Katz... 22.

For the first time the diminishing-age sequence had been broken.

Or had it?

“It’s true,” Ellery said feverishly in the hall, “it’s true that up to now the age drop’s been in years. But if we found...”

“You mean this Katz boy might still be younger than Stella Petrucchi,” mumbled his father.

“In terms of months. Suppose the Petrucchi girl had been born in January of 1927. That would make Donald Katz two months younger.”

“Suppose Stella Petrucchi was born in May of 1927. That would make Donald Katz two months older.”

“I don’t want to think about that. That would... What month was she born in?”

“I don’t know!”

“I don’t remember seeing her exact birth date on any report.”

“Wait a minute!”

The Inspector went away.

Ellery found himself pulling a cigaret to pieces. It was monstrous. Fat with meaning. He knew it.

The secret lay here.

But what secret?

He tried to contain himself as he waited. From somewhere he heard the Inspector’s voice, in tones of manhood. God bless the shade of Alexander Graham Bell. What secret?

Suppose it turned out that Donald Katz had been older than Stella Petrucchi. By so little as one day. Suppose. What could it mean? What could it mean?

“Ellery.”

“Well!”

“March 10, 1927.”

“What?”

“Father Petrucchi says his sister Stella was born on March 10, 1927.”

“The same day?”

They glared at each other.

Later they agreed that what they did was reflexive; on its merits it promised nothing. Their inquiry was a sort of conditioned response, the detective organism reacting to the stimulus of another un-comprehended fact by calling into play the nerves of pure habit. The futility of any conscious consideration of the identical-natal day phenomenon was too painfully apparent. In lieu of explanation — even of reasonable hypothesis — the Queens went back to fundamentals. Never mind what the fact might mean; first, was it a fact?

Ellery said to his father, “Let’s check that right now,” and the Inspector nodded and they went down into West 81st Street and climbed into the Inspector’s car and Sergeant Velie drove them to the Manhattan Bureau of Vital Records and Statistics of the Department of Health.

Neither man uttered a sound on the ride downtown.

Ellery’s head hurt. A thousand gears were trying to mesh and failing to do so. It was maddening, because he could not rid himself of the feeling that it was all so very simple. He was sure there was a rhythmic affinity in the facts but they were not functioning through a silly, aggravating failure of his perceptive machinery.

Finally, he shut the power off and was borne blank-minded to their destination.

“The original birth certificates,” said Inspector Queen to the Registrar of Records. “No, we don’t have the certificate numbers. But the names are Stella Petrucchi, female, and Donald Katz, male, and the date of birth in each case is, according to our information, March 10, 1927. Here, I’ve written the names down.”

“You’re sure they were both born in Manhattan, Inspector?”

“Yes.”

The Registrar came back looking interested. “I see they were not only born on the same day, but—”

“March 10, 1927? In both cases?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, Dad. Not only born on the same day, but what?”

“But the same doctor delivered them.”

Ellery blinked.

“The same... doctor delivered them,” said his father.

“May I see those certificates, please?” Ellery’s voice was cracked again.

They stared at the signatures. Same handwriting. Both certificates signed:

“Now, son, let’s take it easy,” Inspector Queen was saying, his hand muffling the phone. “Let’s not jump. We don’t know a thing. We’re just bumbling around. We’ve got to go slow.”

“I’ll go as I damn please. Where’s that list?”

“I’m getting it. They’re getting it for me—”

“Cazalis, Cazalis. Here it is! Edward Cazalis. I told you it was the same one!”

“He delivered babies? I thought—”

“Started his medical career in the practice of obstetrics and gynecology. I knew there was something queer about his professional history.”

“1927. He was still doing O.B. work as late as 1927?”

“Later! Here. It says—”

“Yes, Charley!”

Ellery dropped the medical directory. His father began writing as he listened. He wrote and wrote. It seemed as if he would never stop writing.

Finally, he did.

“Got ’em all?”

“Ellery. It just isn’t reasonable that all of them—”

“Would you please get the original birth certificates,” Ellery said, handing the Inspector’s paper to the Registrar, “of the people listed here?”

“Dates of birth...” The Registrar ran his eye down the list. “All Manhattan born?”

“Most of them. Maybe all of them. Yes,” said Ellery. “I think all of them. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be ‘sure’ of it?” snarled his father. “What do you mean, ‘sure’? We know about some of them, but—”

“I’m sure of it. All born in Manhattan. Every last one. See if I’m wrong.”

The Registrar went away.

They kept walking around each other like two dogs.

The clock on the wall crept along.

Once the Inspector said in a mutter: “This could mean... You know this could mean...”

Ellery turned around, baring his teeth. “I don’t want to know what this ‘could’ mean. I’m sick of thinking of ‘possibilities.’ First things first, that’s my motto. I just invented it. One thing per time. Step by step. B follows A, C follows B. One and one make two, and that’s the limit of my arithmetic until I have to add two more.”

“Okay, son, okay,” said the Inspector; after that he muttered to himself.

And then the Registrar came back.

He was looking baffled, inquisitive, and uneasy.

Ellery set his back against the office door. “Give it to me slowly, please. One at a time. Start with Abernethy. Abernethy, Archibald Dudley—”

“Born May 24, 1905,” said the Registrar. Then he said. “Edward Cazalis, M.D.”

“Interesting. Interesting!” said Ellery. “Smith. Violette Smith.”

“Born February 13, 1907,” said the Registrar. “Edward Cazalis, M.D.”

“Rian O’Reilly. Is good old Rian O’Reilly there, too?”

“They’re all here, Mr. Queen. I really... Born December 23, 1908. Edward Cazalis. M.D.”

“And Monica McKell?”

“July 2, 1912. Edward Cazalis, M.D. Mr. Queen...”

“Simone Phillips.”

“October 11, 1913. Cazalis.”

“Just ‘Cazalis’?”

“Well, of course not,” snapped the Registrar. “Edward Cazalis, M.D. See here, I really don’t see the point of going through this name by name, Inspector Queen. I said they’re all here—”

“Give the boy his head,” said the Inspector. “He’s been reined in a long time.”

“Beatrice Willikins,” said Ellery. “I’m especially interested in Beatrice Willikins. I should have seen it, though. Birth is the universal experience along with death; the two always played footsie under God’s table. Why didn’t I see that at once? Beatrice Willikins.”

“April 7, 1917. The same doctor.”

“The same doctor,” nodded Ellery. He was smiling, a forbidding smile. “And that was a Negro baby, and it was the same doctor. A Hippocratic physician, Cazalis. The god of the maternity clinic, no doubt, on alternate Wednesdays. Come all ye pregnant, without regard for color or creed, fees adjusted according to the ability to pay. And Lenore Richardson?”

“January 29, 1924. Edward Cazalis, M. D.”

“And that was the carriage trade. Thank you, sir, I believe that completes the roll. I take it these certificates are the untouchable trust of the Department of Health of the City of New York?”

“Yes.”

“If anything happens to them,” said Ellery, “I shall personally come down here with a derringer, sir, and shoot you dead. Meanwhile, no word of this is to get out. No whisper of a syllable. Do I make myself clear?”

“I don’t mind telling you,” said the Registrar stiffly, “that I don’t like either your tone or your attitude, and—”

“Sir, you address the Mayor’s Special Investigator. I beg your pardon,” said Ellery, “I’m higher than the much-abused kite. May we use your office and your telephone for a few minutes — alone?”

The Registrar of Records went out with a bang.

But immediately the door opened and the Registrar stepped back into his office, shut the door with care, and said in a confidential tone, “A doctor who would go back to murder the people he himself brought into the world — why, gentlemen, he’s nothing but a lunatic. How in hell did you let him weasel his way into your investigation?”

And the Registrar stamped out.

“This isn’t,” said the Inspector, “going to be easy.”

“No.”

“There’s no evidence.”

Ellery nibbled a thumbnail on the Registrar’s desk.

“He’ll have to be watched day and night. Twenty-four out of twenty-four. We’ve got to know what he’s doing every minute of every hour of the day.”

Ellery continued to nibble.

“There mustn’t be a tenth,” said the Inspector, as if he were explaining something abstruse, top-secret, and of global importance. Then he laughed. “That cartoonist on the Extra doesn’t know it but he’s run out of tails. Let me get to that phone, Ellery.”

“Dad.”

“What, son?”

“We’ve got to have the run of that apartment for a few hours.” Ellery took out a cigaret.

“Without a warrant?”

“And tip him off?”

The Inspector frowned.

“Getting rid of the maid ought to present no problem. Pick her day off. No, this is Friday and the chances are she won’t be off till the middle of next week. I can’t wait that long. Does she sleep in?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to get in there over the weekend, if possible. Do they go to church?”

“How should I know? That cigaret won’t draw, Ellery, because you haven’t lit it. Hand me the phone.”

Ellery handed it to him. “Whom are you going to put on him?”

“Hesse. Mac. Goldberg.”

“All right.”

“Police Headquarters.”

“But I’d like to keep this thing,” said Ellery, putting the cigaret back into his pocket, “exclusive and as far away from Centre Street as you can manage it.”

His father stared.

“We really don’t know a thing... Dad.”

“What?”

Ellery uncoiled from the desk. “Come right home, will you?”

“You going home?”

But Ellery was already closing the door.

Inspector Queen called from his foyer, “Son?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s all set—” he stopped.

Celeste and Jimmy were on the sofa.

“Hello,” said the Inspector.

“We were waiting for you, Dad.”

His father looked at him.

“No. I haven’t told them yet.”

“Told us what?” demanded Jimmy.

“We know about the Katz boy,” began Celeste. “But—”

“Or has the Cat walked again?”

“No.” Ellery scrutinized them. “I’m ready,” he said. “How about you?”

“Ready for what?”

“To go to work, Celeste.”

Jimmy got up.

“Sit down, Jimmy.” Jimmy sat down. “This time it’s the McCoy.”

Celeste grew quite pale.

“We’re on the trail of something,” said Ellery. “Exactly what, we’re still not sure. But I think I can say that for the first time since the Cat got going there’s something encouraging to work on.”

“What do I do?” asked Jimmy.

“Ellery,” said the Inspector.

“No, Dad, it’s safer this way. I’ve thought it over very carefully.”

“What do I do?” asked Jimmy again.

“I want you to get me a complete dossier on Edward Cazalis.”

“Cazalis?”

“Dr. Cazalis?” Celeste was bewildered. “You mean—”

Ellery looked at her.

“Sorry!”

“Dossier on Cazalis,” said Jimmy. “And?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, please. As I said, we don’t know where we are... Jimmy, what I want is an intimate sketch of his life. Trivial details solicited. This isn’t just a Who’s Who assignment. I could do that myself. As a working newspaperman you’re in a perfect position to dig up what I want, and without arousing suspicion.”

“Yes,” said Jimmy.

“No hint to anyone about what you’re working on. That goes in spades for your people at the Extra. When can you start?”

“Right away.”

“How long will it take you?”

“I don’t know. Not long.”

“Do you suppose you could have a good swatch of it for me by... say... tomorrow night?” _

“I can try.” Jimmy rose.

“By the way. Don’t go near Cazalis.”

“No.”

“Or anyone connected with him closely enough so that word might get back to him that somebody’s asking questions about him.”

“I understand.” Jimmy lingered.

“Yes?” said Ellery.

“What about Celeste?”

Ellery smiled.

“Got you, got you,” said Jimmy, flushing. “Well, folks...”

“Celeste has nothing to do yet, Jimmy. But I do want you to go home, Celeste, pack a bag or two, and come back here to live.”

“What?” said the Inspector and Jimmy together.

“That is, Dad, if you have no objection.”

“Er, no. None at all. Glad to have you, Miss Phillips. The only thing is,” said the Inspector, “if I’m to get any rest I’d better stake out my bed right now. Ellery, if there’s a call — anything at all — be sure and wake me.” And he retreated to his bedroom rather hurriedly.

“Live here, you said,” said Jimmy.

“Yes.”

“Sounds tasty, but is it kosher?”

“Mr. Queen.” Celeste hesitated.

“On second thought,” said Jimmy, “this is a very delicate situation. It raises all sorts of possible conflicts.”

“I’m going to need you, Celeste — when I do — on a moment’s notice.” Ellery frowned. “I can’t predict when it will be. If it’s late at night and you weren’t at my fingertips—”

“No, sir,” said Jimmy, “I can’t say I’m wild about this development.”

“Will you be quiet and let me think?” cried Celeste.

“I should tell you, too, that it may be quite dangerous.”

“So taking it all in all,” said Jimmy, “I don’t think it’s such a hot idea, darling. Do you?”

Celeste ignored him.

“I’ll say it’s dangerous! It’s also downright immoral! What will people say?”

“Oh, muffle it, Jimmy,” said Ellery. “Celeste, if my plans work out you’re going to be right up there on the razor’s edge. Now’s the time for you to jump off. If you’re going to do any jumping at all.”

Celeste rose. “When do I move in?”

Ellery grinned. “Sunday night will do.”

“I’ll be here.”

“You’ll have my room. I’ll bed down in the study.”

“I hope,” said Jimmy bitterly, “you’ll both be very happy.”

He watched Jimmy boost Celeste rudely into a taxi and then shamble angrily up the street. Ellery began wandering about the living room. He felt exhilarated. Jumpy. Finally, he sat down in the armchair. The hand that cut the cord. Tightened it. The end flows from the beginning.

The circular madness of paranoia.

God in the fingertips.

Was it possible?

Ellery had the feeling that he sat on the brink of a vast peace.

But he had to wait.

From some stronghold he had to summon the reserve to wait.