A CAT WALKS

 

 

It all started with one cat, one small gray cat. It ended with nine of them. Gray cats all---because at night all cats are gray---and some of them were alive and others dead. And there was a man without a face, but the cats didn't do that.

It started at ten o'clock in the morning. Miss Weyburn must have been waiting for the shop to open, because she came in as soon as I'd put up the shades and unlocked the door. I knew her name was Miss Weyburn because she'd given it to me three days before when she'd come in to leave her cat with us. And she was such a honey that I remembered her name almost as well as I remembered my own or that of the shop. Incidentally, it's the Bon Ton Pet Shop, and I think it's a silly name myself, but my mother has a half interest in it, and you know how women are. It was all I could do to keep it from being a pet shoppe, and to avoid that I settled for the Bon Ton part with scarcely more of a murmur than would have caused the neighbors to send in a riot call.

I smiled at her and said, “Good morning, Miss Weyburn.”

She had one of our business cards in her hand and said, “Good morning, Mr.---”

She sort of glanced at the card, so I put in quickly: “Don't let the name on the card fool you; I'm not Bon Ton. The name is Phil Evans. Very much at your service. And I hope that---”

“I came to get my cat, please.”

I nodded, and stalled. “I remember; you left a cat to be boarded while you were out of town, didn't you? I'm very fond of cats, myself. So many people prefer dogs, but there's something about a cat---a kind of quiet dignity and self-respect. Dogs seem to lack it. They're boisterous and haven't any subtlety. They---”

“I would like,” she said firmly, “to have my cat. Now. To take out.”

“Yes, ma'am; with or without mustar--- Now, don't get mad! Please. I'll get it. Let's see; it was a small gray cat, I recall. I presume you want the same one. What is its name?”

And then the way she was looking at me made me decide that I'd better get it for her right away and try to resume the conversation afterward. So I went to the back room where we keep most of the pets, and went to the cage where Miss Weyburn's cat had been.

The cage was empty. The door was closed and latched, so it couldn't have got out by itself. But it wasn't there.

Incredulously, I opened the door of the cage to look in; which was silly, because I could see through the netting perfectly well that the cage was empty.

And so were the cages on either side. In fact, Miaow Alley---the row of cat cages---was a deserted street. There weren't any cats. Neither Miss Weyburn's nor the four other cats, our own cats, which had been there yesterday.

I looked around the room quickly, but everything else was O.K. I mean, all the dogs were there, and the canaries chirping as usual, and the big parrot that we have to keep out of sight in the back room until he's forgotten a few of the words somebody taught him.

But there weren't any cats.

I was too surprised, just then, to be worried. I went to the staircase between the back room and the store, and yelled up, “Hey, ma!” and she came to the head of the stairs.

The girl up front said, “Is something wrong with Cinder, Mr. . . . uh . . . Evans?”

I smiled at her reassuringly, or tried to. I said, “Not at all. I . . . I just don't know which cage my mother put him in.”

Ma was coming down the stairs and I said to her, “Listen, ma, when you fed the cats this morning, did you---”

“Cats? Why, Phil, there aren't any cats. I told you at breakfast, while you were reading that paper, that you'd have to arrange to get some. Weren't you even listening?”

“But, ma! That little gray cat! It wasn't ours; surely you didn't---”

“Not ours? Why, I thought you told me---”

By that time she was in the store, and she caught the stricken look on Miss Weyburn's face, and got the idea. Meanwhile, I was deciding that I'd never again read at the table while ma was talking to me and sometimes answer “Uh-huh” without being sure what she was saying. But that good resolution wasn't doing any good right at the moment.

Our customer was getting white around the gills and red around the eyes, and her voice sounded like she was trying to keep from crying and wouldn't succeed much longer. She said, “But how could you have---” And she was looking at me, and I had to stand there and look back because there wasn't any mouse hole around for me to crawl into.

I gulped. “Miss Weyburn, it looks like we've . . . I've pulled an awful boner. But we'll find that cat and get it back for you. Somehow. Ma, do you know who you sold it to? Was there a sales slip or anything?”

Ma shook her head slowly. “No, the man paid cash. For all of them. And he was such an odd-looking---”

“All of them?” I echoed. “You mean one guy bought all our cats?”

“Yes, Phil. I told you, at breakfast. It was late yesterday afternoon, after you left at four o'clock. You got home so late last night that I didn't have a chance to tell you until---”

“But, ma, what would one guy want with five cats? We had four besides Miss Weyburn's. Did he say what he wanted them for?”

Ma leaned her elbows on the counter. “He wanted a dozen,” she said. “Like I told you. And he said he had a big farm and it was overrun with field mice, and that he liked cats and decided to get several of them while he was at it.”

I looked at her aghast. “The Siamese? Don't tell me he paid twenty-five bucks for that Siamese to hunt mice on a farm?”

“Phil, you know that cat was only three-quarters Siamese,” said ma, “and that you told me to take fifteen, or even less, if we could get it. And the others were all ordinary cats, and he offered twenty-five for the five of them and I took it.”

“But haven't you any idea who he was, or where his farm is, or anything about him?”

“Hm-m-m,” said ma thoughtfully. “He said his name was---yes, that was it, Smith. Didn't mention his first name. Nor where he lived. Let's see---he was short and stocky, about the size and build of Mr. Workus, say. But he was bald; he didn't wear a hat. And he had a reddish mustache and wore dark glasses.”

“That sounds like a disguise,” said Miss Weyburn.

Ma blinked. “Why should anyone disguise himself to buy cats?”

“But, ma,” I protested, “there must have been something screwy about the guy. Dark glasses and a name like ‘Smith’ and--- Heck, if he wanted cats for mousing, he could have got 'em for nothing. Why pay a fancy price?”

I turned to our customer. “Listen, Miss Weyburn,” I said, “I'll check into this, and I'll find your cat, if it's possible. But if I can't---well, were you awfully attached to it? Or if I got you a beautiful thoroughbred Angora or Siamese kitten, would you be---”

Tears were running down her cheeks, and I said hastily, “Please don't cry! If it's that important, I'll find your cat if I have to . . . to go to China for it. And if I don't, you can have our whole store, and---” And me with it, I wanted to say, but it didn't seem the proper time and place to say it.

“I don't want your d-darned store. I want---”

“Listen, ma,” I said, “you'll watch the store for the rest of the day, won't you? I'm going out to hunt---”

“Sure, Phil.” Ma gave me a knowing look. “But first you go back and finish currying that pony, and let me talk to Miss Weyburn.”

I got the idea, because we didn't have a pony to curry. So I made myself scarce out the back door for about ten minutes, and gave ma a chance to stop the girl crying. Ma can talk; she can convince almost anybody of almost anything, and when I came in again the girl wasn't crying, and she looked less mad and more cheerful.

“Well,” I said, “if you'll tell me where I can get in touch with you, miss, I'll let you know the minute I find---”

“I'm going with you,” she interrupted. And I didn't object to that, at all. I said, “That's swell. I'll get the car out of the garage and bring it around front.”

And five minutes later, we were driving downtown. First, we stopped at the offices of the two local newspapers and arranged to put in ads addressed to a Mr. Smith who had purchased five cats the day before.

And then I turned the car down Barclay Street.

“Where are we going now?” Miss Weyburn wanted to know.

“Police station,” I told her. “Those personal ads were just in case this Smith guy is what he said he was. But there seems to be a faint smell of fish about a guy wanting a dozen cats, and it's just possible that the police may know of him as a nut, or something.”

“But---”

“It won't cost anything to try, will it?” I pointed out. “And Lieutenant Granville is a good friend of mine. If he's in---”

And he was. We walked into his office and I said, “Hi, Hank. This is Miss Weyburn. We wanted to talk about a cat. Her cat. A small gray---”

“Stolen?”

“Well, not exactly. I mean if it was, I'm the one who stole it. I was boarding it for her and it was sold by mistake.”

Hank glowered at me. “I got real trouble. I'm working on a murder case that happened night before last and there aren't any leads and we're against a blank wall, and you come in and want me to hunt a cat.”

“If you're up against a blank wall,” I pointed out, quite reasonably, “then there's nothing you can do for the moment, and you might as well be human and listen to us.”

“Shut up,” said Hank. “Miss Weyburn, if Phil sold a cat that belongs to you, he's responsible. Do you want to bring charges against him?”

“N-no.”

Hank looked at me again. “Well, then what do you want me to do?”

“You yahoo,” I said, “I want you to listen. And then, if possible, be helpful.” And before he could interrupt again, I managed to tell him the story.

He looked thoughtful. “Checked the pound yet?”

“Why, no---but why would anyone buy a cat, or cats, and then take them to the pound?”

“Not that, Phil. But the guy might have tried to get cats there. You said he originally wanted a dozen. Well, it sounds silly to buy cats by the dozen, but it's not illegal. Anyway, he got only five from you. Maybe he kept on trying, or maybe he'd been to the pound first. Maybe he left his address there.”

I nodded. “Thanks,” I said. “That might be a lead. Hank, I knew there must be some reason why they made you a detective. We'll go to the pound, and we'll go to Workus' pet shop, too. And meanwhile, if you should happen to hear anything---”

“Sure,” Hank agreed. “I'll let you know. And, Miss Weyburn, anytime you want to have this guy here put in jail, just let me know and sign a complaint, and I'll be glad to---”

But I got the girl out before Hank could give her any more ideas, and when we got out of the station, I glanced at my watch and saw that it was after noon.

So we stopped in the restaurant across the street, and when we'd ordered, she asked, “Who is this Mr. Workus you mentioned?”

“He runs the other pet shop in town,” I explained. “If this Smith wasn't satisfied with five cats, he probably went there next. Anyway, we'll try.”

“And if he didn't leave an address at the pound or at the other pet shop?”

Well, she had me there, but I ducked answering, and tried to keep the conversation on more cheerful topics while we ate.

Hank strolled into the restaurant while we were having coffee, and I motioned him over to a seat at our table. He grinned and said, “Well, any more news on the cat-astrophe?”

“This isn't funny,” I told him. “Miss Weyburn is attached to that cat. That beagle I sold you last fall, Hank---would you think it a joke if something happened to it?”

He reddened a bit and said, “Sorry, Miss Weyburn. I didn't mean to---”

“That's all right, lieutenant,” she said. “What's the important case you're working on?”

“Guy named Blake. Somebody burglarized the Dean laboratories night before last. Blake was the watchman, and they killed him.”

“Laboratories?” I asked. “What'd they steal?”

Hank shook his head. “We haven't made a check-up yet; not thorough enough to tell if anything gone. But there isn't a single clue. Even the F.B.I, men---” He broke off.

“Huh?” I said. “What would the F.B.I, be doing on a burglary-and-murder case?”

Hank looked uncomfortable. He said. “They aren't here on that. Something else. I didn't mean that the Dean burglary was an F.B.I, case.”

“In other words,” I suggested, “do I think it will rain tomorrow?”

He grinned sheepishly. “That's the general idea.”

By that time the waitress was there to take Hank's order, and Miss Weyburn and I left and headed first for the pound. We drew a blank. They hadn't had any cats for several days. There'd been two inquiries about cats the day before, but both by phone calls, and no record had been made. Nor could the man who'd taken the calls remember any helpful details.

So I headed the car for the far side of town. Pete Workus was alone in his shop when we went in. I knew him only slightly; he'd been in business there only a year or so.

“Hello, Pete,” I said. “This is Miss Weyburn. We're trying to trace a man who bought five cats at our place yesterday. He wanted more than that, and I thought maybe he came here.”

Workus nodded. “He did. Or anyway, there was a guy here who bought us out of cats, so I suppose it's the same one. I sold him three of them.”

“Did he leave a name and address?”

Workus leaned an elbow on the counter and rubbed his chin. “Uh, I guess he gave me his name, but I don't remember. It was a common name, I think.”

“Smith?”

“Yeah, I guess that was it. But not his address. Anyway, he doesn't want any more cats, Evans, so you can stop hunting for him. I offered to get him some more, but he figured he had enough with what I sold him. Come to think of it, he mentioned your place; he said he got five from you, and he'd got one somewhere else, and with the three I had, he figured nine would be enough.”

“I don't want to sell him any more cats,” I said. “What happened is that we sold him one too many, by mistake. Miss Weyburn's cat. And I got to get it back for her.”

“Hm-m-m, that's tough. Well, I hope you find him then; but I don't know how to help you.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “you can add to the description of him that we have.”

Workus closed his eyes to think. “Well, he was maybe five feet seven or eight inches, about a hundred and seventy pounds---”

I nodded. “That fits ma's description. And he wore dark glasses while he was here?”

“Yes, yellowish sun glasses. He didn't wear a hat, and he was bald, and he had a mustache. That's . . . that's all I can remember about him. Say, Evans, while you're here will you take a look at a puppy of mine? I hear you're something of a vet, and maybe you can tell me whether it's got distemper or not.”

“Sure,” I said. “Be glad to. Where is he?”

“Back this way.” He opened the door to the room behind the shop, and I went in after him. I turned around to ask the girl if she minded waiting a few minutes, but she was following us. She said, “May I watch?”

“Sure,” I told her, and we followed Workus into the back room.

He was leading the way back past a row of cages when it happened. Up at shoulder height, a small brown monkey arm darted out through the bars of one of the upper cages, and grabbed.

Workus swore suddenly as his hair vanished into the monkey cage. Then, his face a bit red, he said, “Excuse my language, miss. But that's the second time that d-darned monkey caught me napping.”

He opened the door of the cage and reached in to recover his toupee, which the now-frightened and jabbering monkey had dropped just behind the bars.

I hadn't known, until now, that Workus wore a toupee; and I'd jumped a bit at the apparent spectacle of a man being scalped. For under the toupee, Workus was completely bald.

“Say,” I said, half jokingly and half seriously, “it wasn't by any chance you who bought these cats of ours, was it? If you left off your toupee and hat, and put on dark glasses and a mustache---”

Workus had closed the door of the monkey cage, and was adjusting the toupee on his head. He looked at me strangely. “Are you crazy, Evans? Or joking? Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

“I haven't any idea,” I said cheerfully. And I hadn't. But something was beginning to buzz at the back of my mind, and without stopping to think it over, I went on talking. “But one thing does strike me funny. My mother described the mysterious Mr. Smith as being about your height and weight. Now what made her say that? She's seen you only a few times in her life. But, in thinking what the man who bought the cats was like, she used your name. Doesn't it seem that it might have been because---sort of subconsciously---she saw through the disguise, and recognized your walk, or your voice, or something?”

Workus was frowning. He said, “Are you accusing me of---”

“I'm not accusing you of anything. If it was you, there's nothing criminal about buying cats. All we want is Miss Weyburn's cat back, and we'll . . . I'll pay for it. That sale wasn't legal, anyway. We can get a writ of replevin for the animal. But I hope we won't have to go to the police.”

And having gone that far, I decided to bluff it on out, and added, “Or will we?”

He didn't answer at all for a moment. Then, quite suddenly and surprisingly, he grinned at us. “O.K.,” he said. “You win. It was me. And I'll see that you get your cat back, Miss---Weyburn, is it? I'll give you a note to the man who has it, and his address.”

He crossed toward the desk at one side of the room, and I turned and looked at Miss Weyburn, and said: “See? The Bon Ton Pet Shop gets results. Even if we have to turn into a detective agency. We get our cat. Like the Northwest---”

But she was looking past me, toward Workus. Suddenly, at the startled look on her face, I whirled around. Workus was holding a gun on us. A .38 automatic that looked like a cannon when seen from the front. He said, “Don't move.”

For a moment, I thought he was crazy. But I lifted my hands shoulder-high, and I tried to make my voice calm and reasonable. I said, “What's the idea? In the first place, Workus, you can't get away with this. And in the second---”

“Be quiet, Evans. Listen, I don't want to kill you unless I have to, and if you're reasonable, maybe I won't have to. But I can't let you out of here; you'd go to the police and they just might decide to investigate what you told them. Even if you got your cat back, you might.”

“Listen,” I said. “What's all this about? Am I crazy, or are you? Why this fuss about cats?”

“If you knew that, I'd have to kill you. Still want to know?”

“Well,” I said, “if you put it that way, maybe not. But---about holding us here. How long---”

“Tomorrow. I'm through here, and leaving town after tonight. Tomorrow I won't care what you tell the cops. I'll be clear.”

I grunted. “But dammit---” I turned my head toward the girl. “I'm sorry, Miss Weyburn. Looks like I got you in a mess.”

She managed a fleeting smile. “It isn't your fault. And---”

The sound of a door opening behind me made me start to turn my head farther around, but Workus' voice barked, “Look this way.” And the snick of the safety catch on the automatic backed it up, and I turned.

“You first, Evans,” Workus snapped. “Put your hands behind you to be tied.”

I obeyed, and somebody behind me did a good job of tying my wrists. Then a blindfold was tied over my eyes and a clean handkerchief from my own pocket used as a gag. When, on instructions, I sat down and leaned back against the wall, my ankles, too, were tied.

Then, after Miss Weyburn had been similarly tied and placed beside me, I heard the footsteps of Workus going back to the store at the front. The other man opened and closed a door, and I heard his steps on stairs, but don't know whether he was going up or down them.

And then, for a long time, nothing happened.

I tried, experimentally, to reach the knots in the cord that bound my wrists, but couldn't touch them, even with the tip of one finger. I might have been able to loosen the cord by rolling around until I found a rough edge somewhere to rub it against, but every ten or fifteen minutes, all afternoon, I'd hear Workus' footsteps coming to the door to look in at us, or coming on into the back room on some errand or other. So, for the present, there was nothing I could do---except wait and hope for the best.

Time passed, but slowly. Very slowly. You'd think that in a spot like that, you'd have enough to worry about to keep you from getting bored. But after an hour or two, you haven't. You can be worried, or afraid, or mad, just so long and no longer. It begins to taper off; an hour or two passes like a year or two, and you begin to wish something would happen, almost anything. Time becomes an unendurable vacuum.

I don't know how long it was before I got the idea of opening communication with the girl beside me in code. But suddenly I thought of the old idea of communicating by taps or touches; one for A, two for B, three for C and so on through the alphabet. If she got the idea---

I wriggled over a few inches until my right elbow touched her left. By nudges, I spelled out C-A-N U U-N-D-E-RS-and she saved me from spelling out the rest of the “understand” by cutting in with Y-ES.

It was a slow and painful method of communication, and I prefer talking and listening, but it helped pass the time and it didn't matter how slow it was, because we had more time than we knew what to do with. And often we could shorten it by interrupting a question in the middle as soon as there was enough of it to guess the rest.

It didn't take long to find out that neither of us could make any intelligent guess as to the motive and purpose of our captors. We decided that if a reasonable chance of escape should offer itself, we should take it rather than trust too completely to Workus' stated intention to let us go the next day. But that for the present, we'd better make the best of it.

Then---for chivalrous, if unromantic, reasons---I moved farther away from her. I had discovered that I entertained other company. Undoubtedly, I was too near the monkey cage, and undoubtedly Workus was too stingy with his flea powder. I probably got only a couple of them, but they moved around and gave the impression of a legion.

But time did pass, and after a while I heard Workus closing up the shop and pulling down the shades. He didn't leave, though, but remained up front, still looking in on us occasionally. The man who'd gone up or down the stairs rejoined Workus; then first one and then the other left by the back door and returned after a while. Probably they had gone out to eat; one at a time, while the other remained on guard.

After a while my trained fleas seemed to have left me, and it was lonesome alone, so I slid over next to the girl again. I spelled out O-K and tried to figure out how to put a question mark after it and couldn't, but she spelled back Y-E-S W-H-E-R-E W-E-R-E-, U, and I spelled F-L-E-A-S, and she came back N-O T-H-A-N-KS, which didn't make sense, but then probably my answer hadn't made sense to her.

Then---it must have been close to nine o'clock---the two men came into the back room together. One of them took my shoulders and one of them my feet and I was carried out the back door and into what I judged to be Workus' truck; a light delivery van with a closed body. A minute later the girl was put in with me and the back door of the truck closed and latched.

The engine started and I hit my head a resounding thump as the car jerked into motion.

It lurched through the roughly paved alley. Out on the streets, the motion wasn't so bad. But from time to time we hit bumps and went around corners. I tried to brace myself, sitting up and leaning against a side of the truck body, but it didn't work. The only way to avoid frequent head thumpings was to lie flat.

Apparently the girl had made the same discovery, because I found her lying beside me, and we found that by lying close together we minimized the jouncing and rolling. We didn't try our code of signaling, because the joggling of the moving truck would have made it impossible.

After an hour or so the truck hit a rough driveway again, went along it what seemed quite a distance, and stopped. From the time we'd been traveling, I judged that we were well out in the country somewhere; but I couldn't have made the wildest guess as to our direction from town.

Then the ignition went off, and the truck stopped and stood still. I heard the doors on either side of the truck cab slam, but Miss Weyburn was spelling out something by nudging my elbow and I concentrated on that and got: R U A-L-L R-I-T-E, and answered Y-E-S, and then it occurred to me that spelling out that question and answer had taken quite a bit of time, and why hadn't Workus and the other chap opened the back of the truck to take us out?

But maybe they weren't going to. Maybe they intended merely to leave us here in the truck while they accomplished their business---whatever it was---in this place, and they'd get rid of us later.

And that meant that we might have quite a bit of time here.

There was one possible way of our getting loose from those all-too-efficiently tied cords around our wrists. A way I'd thought of, but which hadn't been practicable in the back room of Workus' pet shop, with him looking back at us frequently. But now---

As quickly as I could, I spelled out: L-I-E O-N S-I-D-E W-I-L-L T-R-Y U-N-T-I-E.

She got the idea, for instead of trying to answer, she immediately rolled over with her back toward me and held out her bound wrists.

My fingers were almost numb from lack of proper circulation, but I started right in on the knotted cord about her wrists, and the effort of trying to untie it gradually restored my hands to normal.

It was a tough knot; we'd been tied with ordinary heavy wrapping twine, I found. Several turns of it, and then a knot that was made up of four square knots, well tied; each had been pulled as tight as possible before the next one was made.

But one at a time, they gave way. It was slow business, because my own wrists were tied crosswise and I could reach the knots of the girl's bindings with the fingers of only one hand at a time. It must have taken me nearly half an hour before the inner knot gave way and I felt the cord itself slip as she pulled her wrists apart.

A moment later she took off my gag and blindfold and then whispered, “I'll have you loose in a minute, Mr. Evans.”

“Phil, now,” I whispered back, as she started work on the cords on my wrists. “What's your name?”

“Ellen.” With both her hands free, she could make faster progress than I had on her bindings. “Got any idea where we are?”

“No, but it must be way out in the country. No street lights or anything. And listen; isn't that frogs?”

It was dark inside that truck, but when my wrists came free and I sat up to start on the knots at my ankles---while Ellen did the same with hers---I could see a dim, gray square that was the back window of the truck.

“Listen,” Ellen said. “Did you hear---”

It was the distant yowling of a cat. Of several cats. Once my ears were attuned to the sound, I could hear it quite plainly.

I whispered, “Is it Cinder? Can you recognize his . . . uh . . . voice?”

“I think so. I'm almost sure. There---my ankles are---”

The cords on my own ankles came loose at the same moment, and I crawled to the back of the truck. The twin doors were latched from the outside, and I reached through the barred window, but I couldn't get enough of my arm through to reach down and turn the handle.

Ellen joined me, and her more slender arm solved the problem.

We stepped down, cautiously, into the unknown. We stood there, listening.

Frogs. Crickets. And cats.

There was a thin sliver of new moon playing hide and seek among high cumulus clouds, fast drifting, although down on the ground there didn't seem to be a breath of wind.

We were standing on grass between two wheel ruts that were a crude sort of driveway. It led, ahead past the front of the truck, to what looked like a big, ramshackle barn.

And a dozen yards the other direction was a building that looked like a farmhouse. An abandoned farmhouse, judging from its state of disrepair and the high grass and weeds about it. There was a dim light in one room that seemed to be the kitchen.

I took Ellen's arm and whispered, “The driveway to the road leads back past the house. Shall we risk that---or try the other way?”

“You decide. But let's--- Isn't that the way the cats are?” She pointed away from the house, out past the dark barn; and the distant caterwauling did seem to come from that direction.

As far as danger was concerned, it seemed a toss-up. Past the house was probably the direction of the nearest road. But if we made a sound as we went by the house, we'd never reach safety. And, too, if they came to the truck and found us gone, that's the direction they'd figure we took.

“This way,” I said, and led around the truck and past the barn. It would be farther, that way, to the next road. But we'd have a better chance of making it.

We went around the side of the barn farthest from the house, and on the farther side we came upon a dimly defined path, one that we could barely follow.

We found that the feline serenade grew louder as we progressed. The path led through a brief patch of woods, and then, quite suddenly, started downhill.

It was there that we saw the man without a face. I was in the lead, and I heard footsteps. They seemed to come toward us from the direction in which we were heading. I stopped walking so abruptly that Ellen ran into me, but I grabbed her before she could make a sound.

“Back, and step carefully,” I whispered. “Somebody's coming.”

We were only a few steps out of the woods through which the path had run, and I led her back to it and then off the path among the trees.

And then, peering from the edge of the woods well to one side of the path, we watched in the direction in which we'd been walking.

There was a moment of comparatively bright moonlight, and in it we saw a man---or something---coming along the path toward us. He was about twenty yards away when we saw him. The figure was tall and thin and seemed to be that of a man, but---well, there just didn't seem to be any face where a face should have been. A blank area with two huge blanked circles that were too large for eyes.

I felt Ellen's fingers constrict suddenly about my arm. And then that damn sliver of moon slid behind clouds again, and we were staring into gray nothingness.

The footsteps paused. There was a faint click and a circle of yellow leaped out on the path. The faceless man had turned on a flashlight, and its beam danced ahead of him as he came on into the woods and passed us. But there wasn't enough reflected light from it to give us another look at whoever held it.

We waited several minutes, not quite daring to whisper, until we were sure that he was well past us back toward the house. Then I said, “Come on, let's get this over with. Unless you'd rather try back the other way?”

She whispered, “No, I'd rather go on this way. Even if it wasn't for Cinder being this way---”

We groped our way back to the path and out of the woods again into the downhill stretch of the path.

We were quite close to the source of the caterwauling now, and I noticed something puzzling. Fewer cats seemed to be making the noise.

Then, quite suddenly, the sliver of moon came out brightly from behind the clouds and, with our eyes accustomed to a greater darkness, we could see comparatively well.

The path leveled off and we were standing on a flat area at the bottom of a valley. Quite near it was a wooden box, an ordinary small crate from a grocery. There were slats nailed across one side to make it into a crude cage. And---if my ears told me aright---there was a cat inside it.

Five feet ahead was another such box, and five feet beyond that---yes, a whole row of crude soap-box cages, each five feet from the next. Nine of them.

The reappearance of the moon left us standing in the open, and my first impulse was to duck for cover---but there wasn't any in sight. There wasn't any human being in sight, either---fortunately, or we'd have been seen right away.

I heard Ellen gasp, and then she ran past me to the nearest wooden cage. She bent down, and then turned as I joined her. “It isn't Cinder,” she said. “But let it out, anyway. I don't know what on earth---”

I didn't know, either. Ellen was going on to the next cage. If we'd used our common sense, we'd have run like hell and come back later, with the police, to rescue the cats. But---well, there we were, and we didn't. I reached down and pulled loose one of the carelessly nailed slats of the box, and a gray streak went past me and vanished.

From the second cage, Ellen said, “Here he is!” and she herself was tearing a slat loose from the box, eagerly. When I got there she was cuddling a small gray cat in her arms, and it snuggled up to her, purring.

“Swell,” I said. “Let's get going. We'll come to a farm or a road or something, and--- But wait!”

“Phil, those other cats---”

“You're darn right,” I told her. “I'm going to let them out first. I don't know why, but---”

It wasn't even a hunch; as yet I hadn't made a guess what it was all about. But it was instinctive; I love animals and I wasn't going to run off and leave seven more cats in those cages. It was quixotic, maybe, to risk sticking around to let them go, but it wouldn't take more than two minutes to do it, and we'd been there longer than that already and nobody had challenged us.

I ran to the next cage and released the cat that was in it. And the next.

Then the fifth of the nine. Nothing ran out of that one, and I reached a hand in and said, “What the hell---” The cat in it was dead.

I felt a little dizzy from bending over. I straightened up, and still felt dizzy. But I went to the sixth cage. It was harder to pull apart than the others, took me almost a minute. And the cat in it was dead, too. I looked toward the others, wondering if I was going to find all dead cats from there on; four live cats in a row and then the rest of the row of nine---

And quite suddenly I felt absurdly silly, as one feels in a dream sometimes, and wondered what I was doing here finding live cats and dead cats---and my mind was going around in dizzy circles, and when I stood up body swayed dizzily, too, and I couldn't get my balance.

Yes, I got it, then, and I tried to run. But too late. My feet wouldn't mind what I wanted them to do, and my knees went rubber and I didn't even feel pain from the impact of the ground hitting me as I went down.

As though from a great distance I heard a voice call, “Phil,” and saw Ellen running toward me. I tried to motion her back and to call out to her to run away---but then things slipped away from under me, and I wasn't there any more. My last sensation before I completely lost consciousness was a tugging at my shoulders, as though someone was trying to drag me back to safety.

Then a steady light hurt my eyes, and I found I was lying on a wooden floor, so I knew that I had been unconscious for a while and was just coming to. There were voices.

Workus' voice and that of another man, an uninflected, monotonous voice. It was saying: “Yes, it is satisfactory. Reached to the cats in the first five cages; that's twenty-five feet. And only half a pound I put in the water pail. Think of half a ton!”

“But this guy and girl,” I heard Workus saying. “It didn't kill them like it ought to. The girl's O.K. and Evans is coming to, already. So---”

“Naturally, fool. I was on the way back and pulled them out in time. He couldn't have been in it more than three minutes, probably much less. And less than that for her, which is why she came out first. If it'd been five---”

Workus growled. “I still don't see why you didn't just leave them there that long.”

“You see nothing. The bodies, of course. I want to keep on living here, even if an agent comes nosing around later. You are giving up your shop to go south, but I stay here. Nor would we want those bodies found dead anywhere else, dead of the gas.”

I opened my eyes in time to see Workus nod assent. He said, “We shoot them, then? Sure, we've got their car. The bodies can be found in it, on the road miles from here.”

“Yes,” said the monotonous voice, and I turned my head to look toward the man who'd spoken.

I'd never seen him before, but he was worth looking at. He was tall and almost ridiculously thin, but his face was what drew my eyes. The skin was stretched so tightly over the bones that his head looked almost like a skull.

Pasty-white skin, and across the forehead was a vivid red scar that looked like a saber wound. It ran down into one empty eye socket uncovered by any patch or effort at concealment. The other eye turned upon me piercingly. “Our friend has come back,” he said. “Peter, you take care of them.”

The automatic was in Workus' hand. He said, “Here? But---”

“Here, yes,” said the man with one eye. “They escaped once. We'll take no chances again.” He grinned mirthlessly at me. “And if you hadn't escaped, you would have been freed---probably. But now, no.”

I was able, for the first time since I'd seen him, to wrench my gaze away from his face enough to notice other things about him. First, that there was a gas mask slung about his neck, a type of mask which, when worn, covered all of the face except the eyes---which were huge circles of glass. He, then, had been the “faceless” man we'd seen on the path. He'd worn the mask, then.

Out of a corner of my eye, I saw Ellen sitting on a chair against the wall. The little gray cat was still in her arms, and her head was bent down over it, gently rubbing its fur with her chin. She smiled at me, a tremulous little smile that took real courage to produce. She said, “Well, Phil, we did find my cat.”

Workus said, “Stand up, if you want, Evans. If you'd rather not take it lying down.”

And I found, surprisingly, that I didn't want to take it lying down. Sounds funny that you'd feel that way when you're going to be shot, anyway. You'd think it doesn't matter how, but, somehow, it does.

I got up slowly, first to one knee, trying to take in as much of the room as I could in a quick glance around. Not that I expected to find a weapon in reach, or to see the United States marines coming through the doorway, or anything like that. But just in case.

If there was any way out of death for Ellen and myself, it would have to be tried within the next dozen seconds, and it wasn't going to cost anything to try. Maybe if I lunged for Workus before I got completely to my feet---

But it wouldn't have worked. He was six feet away; he'd be able to fire twice at point-blank range before I could get there. And he was ready for it.

There didn't seem to be anything that offered a chance of succeeding. There wasn't any furniture within reach. There were several chairs; the nearest was the one Ellen was sitting on. A kitchen table and a cupboard, but on the other side of the room. The back door was closed, and the one-eyed man stood beside it, as though ready to leave as soon as Workus had obeyed his orders.

The light was from an electric bulb in the center of the ceiling, out of reach overhead. And there was a telephone---somehow it gave the impression of being newly installed---on the table. Also out of reach. Two windows, the bottom sash of one of them was raised.

Nothing within reach. Not a chance that I could see. Nothing remotely resembling a weapon. Except---

I started talking before I'd quite reached my feet. Workus had no reason to be in a hurry to shoot us; he'd probably let me finish whatever I started to say, as long as I didn't move closer to him.

“O.K., Workus,” I said. “But we shouldn't have to die in vain, should we? After we went to all this trouble to get Miss Weyburn's cat, does it have to die, too?”

He was staring at me as though he thought I was crazy---and maybe I was crazy to think I could get away with this, but I figured that as long as I had him puzzled, he'd hold the trigger. I didn't, of course, wait for him to answer. I kept right on: “Look, if I'm giving up my life for a cat, you ought to be sport enough to let the cat go. And anyway, you can't shoot Miss Weyburn while she's holding---” She wasn't holding the cat any more, though, because I'd just turned around and taken it from her, and I was turning with it in my hands toward the open window.

As though I were going to drop the cat out the window; but I didn't. I'd timed my turn and synchronized the motion of my arms for the throw, and even before the man with one eye yelled, “Hey!” and the automatic in Workus' hands went off, the cat was sailing through the air at Workus' face.

He pulled the trigger all right, but he ducked while he was doing it, and the bullet missed me by inches. It's not easy to shoot straight when there's a cat hurtling at one's face, its claws out ready to grab the first available object to stop its flight.

And I was going in toward Workus behind the cat, and almost as fast. Swinging a roundhouse right as I went; aiming at his stomach as the biggest and hardest to miss target for a blow I couldn't take time to aim carefully.

The cat caught its claws in the shoulder of his coat and then jumped on down to the floor just as my fist made connections. The blow had all my weight and the force of my run behind it. He didn't pull the trigger a second time, and I heard the automatic clatter to the floor as he started to fall.

I didn't take time to go after that gun; I whirled toward the man standing by the door and I was starting toward him almost before I'd finished my blow at Workus.

The one-eyed man was bringing a pistol---which had been, apparently, in his hip pocket---around and up. But things had happened too fast, and he hadn't reached for it soon enough. Or maybe he'd fumbled in getting it out of his pocket. Anyway, I got there before he could lift and aim it. I didn't take time to swing at him; I simply ran smack into him with a straight arm that caught him full in the face and smacked his head against the door behind him so hard that I thought, from the sound of it, that I'd killed him.

I whirled back to see if Workus was going for the gun he'd dropped, but he was sitting on the floor, doubled up and groaning in pain, and Ellen had the gun.

I said, “Atta girl,” and then picked up the other gun and put it in my pocket and went for the phone. I called Hank Granville's home number and got a sleepily grunted “hello” after a minute or two.

“Hank,” I said, “this is Phil. Say, about that Dean-laboratory burglary and murder. Was the secrecy because they'd been working on an odorless lethal gas? Something in solid form that you drop in water like carbide, and it---”

“Hey!” Hank sounded suddenly very wide awake. “Phil, for God's sake where'd you find that out? It's supposed to be---”

“Yeah,” I cut in. “Secret. But a guy by the name of Workus who had a front as a pet-shop owner, and another guy, got it. Dunno whether they got it to peddle to a foreign power, or what, but they weren't sure they had the right stuff and they wanted to test just how good it was. That's what they wanted cats for; to see how far a given quantity of it would spread.”

“The hell! Phil, this is big! If you're right--- Where the devil are you?”

“I don't know,” I told him. “Somewhere in the country. But I got both guys here, and everything's under control. I'll leave this receiver off the hook and you can get the call traced and come out with the Maria. So long.”

And without waiting for him to answer, I put the receiver down on the table and crossed over to Ellen. She'd just picked up the little gray cat, which looked a bit ruffled, but unhurt. She was soothing and petting it and talking baby talk to it.

I said, “Gosh, I'm sorry I had to throw it, but--- Maybe I can make friends with it again.”

And I reached out a doubtful hand, not knowing whether I'd get clawed or not. But I wasn't. Ellen smiled at me, and the cat began to purr. And I put my arms around Ellen and she had to put the cat down because it was in the way. I hoped it would be a long time before the police got there and I felt like purring myself.