SATAN-ONE-AND-A-HALF

 

 

Maybe you know how it is, when a man seeks solitude to do some creative work. As soon as he gets solitude, he finds it gives him the willies to be alone. Back in the middle of everything, he thought, “If I could only get away from everybody I know, I could get something done.” But let him get away-and see what happens.

I know; I'd had solitude for almost a week, and it was giving me the screaming meamies. I'd written hardly a note of the piano concerto I intended composing. I had the opening few bars, but they sounded suspiciously like Gershwin.

Here I was in a cottage out at the edge of town, and that cottage had seemed like what the doctor ordered when I rented it. I'd given my address to none of my pals, and so there were no parties, no jam sessions, no distractions.

That is, no distractions except loneliness. I was finding that loneliness is worse than all other distractions combined.

All I did was sit there at the piano with a pencil stuck behind my ear, wishing the doorbell would ring. Anybody.

Anything. I wished I'd had a telephone put in and had given my friends the number. I wished the cottage would turn out to be haunted. Even that would be better.

The doorbell rang.

I jumped up from the piano and practically ran to answer it.

And there wasn't anybody there. I could see that without opening the door, because the door is mostly glass. Unless someone had rung the bell and then run like hell to get out of sight.

I opened the door and saw the cat. I didn't pay any particular attention to it though. Instead, I stuck my head out and looked both ways. There wasn't anybody in sight except the man across the street mowing his lawn.

I turned to go back to the piano, and the doorbell rang again.

This time I wasn't more than a yard from the door. I swung around, opened it wide, and stepped outside.

There wasn't anybody there, and the nearest hiding place— around the corner of the house — was too far away for anybody to have got there without my seeing him. Unless the cat.

I looked down for the cat and at first I thought it, too, had disappeared. But then I saw it again, walking with graceful dignity along the hallway, inside the house, toward the living room. It was paying no more attention to me than I had paid to it the first time I'd looked out the door.

I turned around again and looked up and down the street, and at the trees on my lawn, at the house next door on the north, and at the house next door on the south. Each of those houses was a good fifty yards from mine and no one could conceivably have rung my bell and run to either of them.

Even leaving out the question of why anyone should have done such a childish stunt, nobody could have.

I went back in the house, and there was the cat curled up sound asleep in the Morris chair in the living room. He was a big, black cat, a cat with character. Somehow, even asleep, he seemed to have a rakish look about him.

I said, “Hey,” and he opened big yellowish-green eyes and looked at me. There wasn't any surprise or fear in those handsome eyes; only a touch of injured dignity. I said, “Who rang that doorbell?” Naturally, he didn't answer.

So I said, “Want something to eat, maybe?” And don't ask me why he answered that one when he wouldn't answer the others. My tone of voice, perhaps. He said, “Miaourr ...” and stood up in the chair.

I said, “All right, come on,” and went out into the kitchen to explore the refrigerator. There was most of a bottle of milk, but somehow my guest didn't look like a cat who drank much milk. But luckily there was plenty of ground meat, because hamburgers are my favorite food when I do my own cooking.

I put some hamburger in a bowl and some water in another bowl and put them both on the floor under the sink.

He was busily working on the hamburger when I went back into the front hallway to look at the doorbell.

The bell was right over the front door, and it was the only bell in the house. I couldn't have mistaken a telephone bell because I didn't have a phone, and there was a knocker instead of a bell on the back door. I didn't know where the battery or the transformer that ran the bell was located, and there wasn't any way of tracing the wiring without tearing down the walls.

The push button outside the door was four feet up from the step. A cat, even one smart enough to stand on its hind legs, couldn't have reached it. Of course, a cat could have jumped for the button, but that would have caused a sharp, short ring. Both times, the doorbell had rung longer than that.

Nobody could have rung it from the outside and got away without my seeing him. And, granting that the bell could be short-circuited from somewhere inside the house, that didn't get me an answer. The cottage was so small and so quiet that it would have been impossible for a window or a door to have opened without my hearing it.

I went outside again and looked around, and this time I got an idea. This was an ideal opportunity for me to get acquainted with the girl next door — an opportunity I'd been waiting for since I'd first seen her a few days ago.

I cut across the lawn and knocked on the door.

Seeing her from a distance, I'd thought she was a knockout. Now, as she opened the door and I got a close look, I knew she was.

I said, “My name is Brian Murray. I live next door and I-”

“And you play with Russ Whitlow's orchestra.” She smiled, and I saw I'd underestimated how pretty she was.

Strictly tops. “I was hoping we'd get acquainted while you were here. Won't you come in?”

I didn't argue about that. I went in, and almost the first thing I noticed inside was a beautiful walnut grand piano. I asked, “Do you play, Miss—?”

“Carson. Ruth Carson. I give piano lessons to brats with sticky fingers who'd rather be outside playing ball or skipping rope. When I heard Whitlow on the radio a few nights ago, the piano sounded different. Aren't you still—?”

“I'm on leave,” I explained. “I had rather good luck with a couple of compositions a year ago, and Russ gave me a month off to try my hand at some more.”

“Have you written any?”

I said ruefully, “To date all I've set down is a pair of clef signs. Maybe now ...” I was going to say that maybe now that I'd met her, things would be different. But that was working too fast, I decided.

She said, “Sit down, Mr. Murray. My uncle and aunt will be home soon, and I'd like you to meet them. Meanwhile, would you care for some tea?”

I said that I would, and it was only after she'd gone out into the kitchen that I realized I hadn't asked the question I'd come to ask. When she came back, I said:

“Miss Carson, I came to ask you about a black cat. It walked into my house a few minutes ago. Do you know if it belongs to anybody here in the neighborhood?”

“A black cat? That's odd. Mr. Lasky owned one, but outside of that one, I don't know of any around here.”

“Who is Mr. Lasky?”

She looked surprised. “Why, didn't you know? He was the man who lived in that cottage before you did. He died only a few weeks ago. He — he committed suicide.”

The faintest little shiver ran down my spine. Funny, in a city, how little one knows about the places one lives in. You rent a house or an apartment and never think to wonder who has lived there before you or what tragedies have been enacted there.

I said, “That might explain it. I mean, if it's his cat. Cats become attached to people. It would explain why the cat—”

“I'm afraid it doesn't,” she said. “The cat is dead, too. I happened to see him bury it in your back yard, under the maple tree. It was run over by a car, I believe.”

The phone rang, and she went to answer it. I started thinking about the cat again. The way it had walked in, as though it lived there — it was a bit eerie, somehow. If it were my predecessor's cat, that would explain its apparent familiarity with the place. But it couldn't be my predecessor's cat. Unless he'd had more than one ...

Ruth Carson came back from the hallway. She said,

“That was my aunt. They won't be home until late tonight, so probably you won't get to meet them until tomorrow. That means I'll have to get my own dinner, and I hate to eat alone.

Will you share it with me, Mr. Murray?”

That was the easiest question I'd ever had to answer in my life.

We had an excellent meal in the breakfast nook in the kitchen. We talked about music for a while, and then I told her about the cat and the doorbell.

It puzzled her almost as much as it had puzzled me. She said, “Are you sure some child couldn't have rung it for a prank, and then ducked out of sight before you got there?”

“I don't see how,” I said. “I was just inside the door the second time it rang. Tell me about this Mr. Lasky and about his cat.”

She said, “I don't know how long he lived there. We moved here just a year ago, and he was there then. He was rather an eccentric chap, almost a hermit. He never had any guests, never spoke to anyone. He and the cat lived there alone. I think he was crazy about the cat.”

“An old duck?” I asked.

“Not really old. Probably in his fifties. He had a gray beard that made him look older.”

“And the cat. Could he possibly have had two black cats?”

“I'm almost positive he didn't. I never saw more than the big black torn he called Satan. And there was no cat around during the week after it was killed.”

“You're positive it died?”

“Yes. I happened to see him burying it, and it wasn't in a box or anything. And it was almost the only time I ever heard him speak; he was talking to himself, cursing about careless auto drivers. He took it hard. Maybe—”

She stopped, and I tried to fill in the blank. “You mean that was why he committed suicide a week later?”

“Oh, he must have had other reasons, but I imagine that was a factor. He left a suicide note, I understand. It was in the papers, at the time. There was one particularly unhappy circumstance about it. He wrote the note and then took poison. But before the poison had taken effect, he regretted it or changed his mind; he telephoned the police and they rushed an ambulance and a doctor — but he was dead when they got there.”

For an instant I wondered how he could have phoned the police from a house in which there was no telephone. Then I remembered that there had been one, taken out before I moved in. The rental agency had told me so, and that the wiring was already there in case I wanted one installed. For privacy's sake I'd decided against having it done.

We'd finished our meal, and I insisted on helping with the dishes. Then I said, “Would you like to meet the cat?”

“Of course,” she said. “Are you going to let him stay?”

I grinned. “The question seems to be whether he's going to let me stay. Come on; maybe you can give me a recommendation.”

We were right by her kitchen door, so we cut across the back yards into my kitchen. All the hamburger I'd put under the sink was gone. The cat was back in the Morris chair, asleep again. He blinked at us as I turned on the light.

Ruth stood there staring at him. “He's a dead ringer for Mr. Lasky's Satan. I'd almost swear it's the same. But it couldn't be!”

I said, “A cat has nine lives, you know. Anyway, I'll call him Satan. And since the question arises whether he's Satan One or Satan Two, let's compromise. Satan One-and-a-Half.

So, Satan One-and-a-Half, you've got the only comfortable chair in this room. Mind giving it up for a lady?”

Whether he minded or not, I picked him up and moved him to a straight chair. Satan One-and-a-Half promptly jumped down to the floor from his straight chair, went back to the Morris, and jumped up on Ruth's lap.

I said, “Shall I shut him in the kitchen?”

“No, don't. Really, I like cats.” She was stroking his fur gently, and the cat promptly curled into a black ball of fur and went to sleep.

“Anyway,” I said, “he's got good taste. But now you're stuck. You can't move without waking him, and that would be rude.”

She smiled. “Will you play for me? Something of your own, I mean. Did you mean it literally when you said you'd composed nothing since you've been here, or were you being modest?”

I looked down at the staff paper on the piano. There were a few bars there, an opening. But it wasn't any good. I said, “I wasn't being modest. I can compose, when I have an idea. But I haven't had an idea since I've been here.”

She said, “Play the 'Black Cat Nocturne.' ”

“Sorry, I don't know—”

“Of course not. It hasn't been written yet.”

Then I got what she was talking about, and it began to click.

She said, “A doorbell rings, but nobody is there. The ghost of a dead black cat walks in and takes over your house.

It—”

“Enough,” I said, very rudely. I didn't want to hear anymore. All I needed was the starting point.

I hit a weird arpeggio in the base, and it went on from there. Almost by itself, it went on from there. My fingers did it, not my mind. The melody was working up into the treble now, with a soft dissonant thump-thump in the accompaniment that was like a cat walking across the skin of a bass drum and— The doorbell rang.

It startled me and I hit about the worst discord of my career. I'd been out of the world for maybe half a minute, and the sudden ring of that bell was as much of a jolt as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on me.

I saw Ruth's face; it, too, was startled looking. And the cat lying in her lap had raised its head. But its yellow-green eyes, slitted against the light, were inscrutable.

The bell rang again, and I shoved back the piano bench and stood up. Maybe, by playing, I'd hypnotized myself into a state of fright, but I was afraid to go to that door. Twice before, today, that doorbell had rung. Who, or what, would I find there this time?

I couldn't have told what I was afraid of. Or maybe I could, at that. Down deep inside, we're all afraid of the supernatural. The last time that doorbell had rung, maybe a dead cat had come back. And now — maybe its owner .. .

I tried to be casual as I went to the door, but I could tell from Ruth's face that she was feeling as I did about it. That damn music! I'd picked the wrong time to get myself into a mood. If I went to the door and nobody was there, I'd probably be in a state of jitters the rest of the night.

But there was someone there. I could see, the moment I stepped from the living room into the hallway, that there was a man standing there. It was too dark for me to make out his features, but, at any rate, he didn't have a gray beard.

I opened the door.

The man outside said, “Mr. Murray?”

He was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a very round face. Right now it was split by an ingratiating smile. He looked familiar and I knew I'd seen him before, but I couldn't place him. I did know that I didn't like him; maybe I was being psychic or maybe I was being silly, but I felt fear and loathing at the sight of him.

I said, “Yes, my name is Murray.”

“Mine's Haskins. Milo Haskins. I'm your neighbor across the street, Mr. Murray.”

Of course, that was where I'd seen him. He'd been mowing the lawn over there this afternoon, when the cat came.

He said, “I'm in the insurance game, Mr. Murray.

Sometime I'd like to talk insurance with you, but that isn't what I came to see you about tonight. It's about a cat, a black cat.”

“Yes?”

“It's mine,” he said. “I saw it go in your door today, just before I went in the house. I came over just as soon as I could to get it.”

“Sorry, Mr. Haskins,” I told him. “I fed it and then let it out the back door. Don't know where it went from here.”

“Oh,” he said. He looked as though he didn't know whether or not to believe me. “Are you sure it didn't come back in a window or something? Would you mind if I helped you look around?”

I said, “I'm afraid I would mind, Mr. Haskins. Good night.”

I stepped back to close the door, and then something soft rubbed against my leg. At the same instant, I saw Haskins's eyes look down and then harden as they came up and met mine again.

He said, “So?” He bent and held out a hand to the cat.

“Here, kitty. Come here, kitty.”

Then it was my turn to grin, because the cat clawed his fingers.

“Your cat, eh?” I said. “I thought you were lying, too, Haskins. That's why I wouldn't give you the cat. I'll change my mind now; you can have him if he goes with you willingly. But lay a hand on him, and I'll knock your block off.”

He said, “Damn you, I'll—”

“You'll do nothing but leave. I'll stand here, with the door open, till you're across the street. The cat's free to follow you, if he's yours.”

“It's my cat! And damn it, I'll—”

“You can get a writ of replevin, tomorrow,” I said. “That is, if you can prove ownership.”

He glared a minute longer, opened his mouth to say something, then reconsidered and strode off down the walk. I closed the door, and the cat was still inside, in the hallway.

I turned, and Ruth Carson was in the hallway too, behind me. She said, “I heard him say who he was and what he wanted, and when the cat jumped down and went toward the door, I—”

“Did he see you?” I asked.

“Why, yes. Shouldn't I have let him?”

“I — I don't know,” I said. I did know that I wished he hadn't seen her. Somehow, somewhere, I sensed danger in this. There was danger in the very air. But to whom, and why?

We went back into the living room, but I didn't sit on the piano bench this time; I took a chair instead. Music was out for tonight. That ringing doorbell and the episode that had followed had ended my inclination to improvise as effectively as though someone had chopped up the piano with an ax.

Ruth must have sensed it; she didn't suggest that I play again.

I said, “What do you know about our pleasant neighbor, Milo Haskins?”

“Very little,” she said. “Except that he's lived there since before we moved into the neighborhood last year. He has a wife — a rather unpleasant woman — but no children. He does sell insurance. Mostly fire insurance, I believe.”

“Does he own a cat, that you know of?”

She shook her head. “I've never seen one. I've never seen any black cat in this neighborhood except Mr. Lasky's, and—”

She turned to look at Satan One-and-a-Half, who was lying on his back on the rug, batting a fore-paw, at nothing apparently.

I said, “Cat, if you could only talk. I wish I knew whether—” I stood up abruptly. “To what side of that maple tree and how far from it did Mr. Lasky bury that cat?”

“Are you going to ... ?”

“Yes. There's a trowel and a flashlight in the kitchen, and I'm going to make sure of something, right now.”

“I'll show you, then.”

“No,” I said. “Just tell me. It might not be pleasant. You wait here.”

She sat down again. “All right. On the west side of the tree, about four feet from the trunk.”

I found the trowel and the flashlight and went out into the yard.

Five minutes later I came in to report.

“It's there,” I told her, without going into unpleasant details. “As soon as I wash up, I'd like to use your phone. May I?”

“Of course. Are you going to call the police?”

“No. Maybe I should — but what could I tell them?” I tried to laugh; it didn't quite go over. This wasn't funny.

Whatever else it was, it wasn't funny. I said, “What time do you expect your aunt and uncle home?”

“No later than eleven.”

I said, “For some reason, this Haskins is interested in that cat. Too interested. If he sees us leave here, he might come in and get it, or kill it, or do whatever he wants to do with it. I can't even guess. We'll sneak out the back way and get to your place without his seeing us, and we'll leave the lights on here so he won't know we've left.”

“Do you really think something is — is going to happen?”

“I don't know. It's just a feeling. Maybe it's just because the things that have happened don't make sense that I have an idea it isn't over yet. And I want you out of it.”

I washed my hands in the kitchen, and then we went outside. It was quite dark out there, and I was sure we couldn't be seen from the front as we cut across the lawn between the houses.

We'd left the light burning in her kitchen. I said, “I noticed before where your phone is. I'll use it without turning on the light. I just want to see if I can get any information that will clear this up.”

I phoned the News and asked for Monty Billings who is on the city desk, evenings. I said, “This is Murray. Got time to look up something for me?”

“Sure. What?”

“Guy named Lasky. Committed suicide at 4923

Deverton Street, three or four weeks ago. Everything you can find out. Call me back at—” I used my flashlight to take the number off the base of the phone — “at Saunders 4848.”

He promised to call back within half an hour and I went out into the kitchen again. Ruth was making coffee for us.

“I'm going back home after that phone call comes,” I told her. “And you'd better stay here. Your uncle has a key, of course?”

She nodded.

“Then lock all the doors and windows when I leave. If you hear anyone prowling around or anything, phone for the police, or yell loud enough so I can hear you.”

“But why would anyone—?”

“I haven't the faintest idea, except that Haskins knows you were at my place. He might think the cat is here, or something. I haven't anything to work on except a hunch that something's coming. I don't want you in on it.”

“But if you really think it's dangerous, you shouldn't...”

We'd argued our way through two cups of coffee apiece by the time the phone rang.

It was Monty. He said, “It was three weeks ago last Thursday, on the fourteenth at around midnight. Police got a frantic call from a man who said he'd taken morphine and changed his mind and would they rush an ambulance or a doctor or something. Gave his name as Colin Lasky, and the address you mentioned. They got there within eight minutes, but it was too late.”

“Left a suicide note, I understand. What was in it?”

“Just said he was tired of living and he'd lost his last friend the week before. The police figured out he meant his cat. It had been killed about that time, and nobody knew of him having any friend but that. He'd lived there over ten years and hadn't made any friends. Hermit type, maybe a little wacky. Oh, yeah — and the note said he preferred cremation and that there was enough money in a box in his bureau to cover it.”

“Was there?”

“Yes. There was more than enough; five hundred and ten dollars, to be exact. There wasn't any will, and there wasn't any estate, except the money left over after the cremation, and some furniture. The landlord, the guy who owned the house and had rented it to Lasky, made the court an offer for the furniture and they accepted it. Said he was going to leave it in the house, and rent the place furnished.”

I asked, “What happens to the money?”

“I dunno. Guess if no heir appears and no claims are made against the estate, the state keeps it. It wouldn't amount to very much.”

“Did he have any source of income?”

“None that could be found. The police guess was that he'd been living on cash capital, and the fact that it had dwindled down to a few hundred bucks was part of why he gave himself that shot of morphine. Or maybe he was just crazy.”

“Shot?” I asked. “Did he take it intravenously?”

“Yes. Say, the gang's been asking about you. Where are you hiding out?”

I almost told him, and then I remembered how close I had come this evening to getting a composition started. And I remembered that I wasn't lonesome any more, either.

I said, “Thanks, Monty. I'll be looking you up again some of these days. If anyone asks, tell 'em I'm rooming with an Eskimo in Labrador. So long.”

I went back to Ruth and told her. “Everything's on the up and up. Lasky's dead, and the cat is dead. Only the cat is over in my living room.”

I went across the back way, as I had come, and let myself in at the kitchen door. The cat was still there, asleep again in the Morris chair. He looked up as I came in, and damn if he didn't say “Miaourr?” again, with an interrogative accent.

I grinned at him. “I don't know,” I admitted. “I only wish you could talk, so you could tell me.”

Then I turned out the lights, so I could see out better than anyone outside could see in. I pulled a chair up to the window and watched Ruth's house.

Soon the downstairs light went out, and an upstairs one flashed on. Shortly after that I saw a man and woman who were undoubtedly Ruth's uncle and aunt let themselves in the front door with a key. Then, knowing she was no longer alone over there, I made the rounds of my own place.

Both front and back doors were locked, with the key on the inside of the front door, and a strong bolt in addition to the lock was on the back door. I locked all the windows that would lock; two of them wouldn't.

On the top ledge of the lower pane of each of those two windows, I set a milk bottle, balanced so it would fall off if anyone tried to raise the sash from the outside. Then I turned out the lights.

Yellow eyes shone at me from the seat of the Morris chair. I answered their plain, if unspoken, question. “Cat, I don't know why I'm doing this. Maybe I'm crazy. But I think you're bait, for someone, or something. I aim to find out.”

I groped my way across the room and sat down on the arm of his chair. I rubbed my hand along his sleek fur until he purred, and then, while he was feeling communicative, I asked him, “Cat, how did you ring that doorbell?” Somehow there in the quiet dark I would not have been too surprised if he had answered me.

I sat there until my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and I could see the furniture, the dark plateau of the grand piano, the outlines of the doorways. Then I walked over to one of the windows and looked out. The moon was on the other side of the house; I could see into the yard, but no one outside would be able to see me standing there.

Over there, diagonally toward the alley, in the shadow of the group of three small linden trees— Was that a darker shadow? A shadow that moved slightly as though a man were standing there watching the house?

I couldn't be sure; maybe my eyes and my imagination were playing tricks on me. But it was just where a man would stand, if he wanted to keep an eye on both the front and back approaches of the cottage.

I stood there for what seemed to be a long time, but at last I decided that I'd been mistaken. I went back to the Morris chair. This time I put Satan One-and-a-Half down on the floor and used the chair myself. But I'd scarcely settled myself before he had jumped up in my lap. In the stillness of the room, his purring sounded like an outboard motor. Then it stopped and he slept.

For a while there were thoughts running through my mind. Then there were only sounds — notes. My fingers itched for the piano keys, and I wished that I hadn't started this damnfool vigil. I had something, and I wanted to turn on the lights and write it down. But I couldn't do that, so I tried memorizing it.

Then I let my thoughts drift free again, because I knew I had what I'd been trying to get. But my thoughts weren't free, exactly. They seemed to belong to the girl, Ruth Carson. . . .

I must have been asleep, because she was sitting there in the room with me, but she wasn't paying any attention to me.

We were both listening respectfully to the enormous black cat which was sitting on the piano while it told us how to ring doorbells by telekinesis.

Then the cat suggested that Ruth come over and sit on my lap. She did. A very intelligent cat. It stepped down from the top of the piano onto the keyboard and began to play, by jumping back and forth among the keys. The cat led off with

“La Donna e Mobile” and then — of all tunes to hear when the most beautiful girl in the world is sitting on your lap — he started to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Of course Ruth stood up. I tried to stand, too, but I couldn't move. I struggled, and the struggle woke me.

My lap was empty. Satan One-and-a-Half had just jumped off. It was so quiet that I could hear the soft pad of his feet as he ran for the window. And there was a sound at the window.

There was a face looking through the glass — the face of a man with a white beard!

My hunch had been right. Someone had come for the cat.

Lasky, who was dead of morphine, had come back for his black cat which had been run over by an auto and was buried in the back yard. It didn't make sense, but there it was. I wasn't dreaming now.

For an instant I had an eerie feeling of unreality, and then I fought through it and jumped to my feet. The cat, at least, was real.

The window was sliding upward. The cat was on its hind feet, forepaws on the window sill. I could see its alert head with pointed black ears silhouetted against the gray face on the other side of the window.

Then the precariously balanced milk bottle fell from the upper ledge of the window. Not onto the cat, for it was in the center, and I'd made the bottle less conspicuous by putting it to one side. While the window was still open only a few inches, the milk bottle struck the floor inside. It shattered with a noise that sounded, there in the quiet room, like the explosion of a gigantic bomb.

I was running toward the window by now, and jerking the flashlight out of my pocket as I ran. By the time I got there, the man and the cat were both gone. His lace had vanished at the sound of the crash, and the cat had wriggled itself through the partly open window and vanished after him.

I threw the window wide, hesitating for an instant whether or not to vault across the sill into the yard. The man was running diagonally toward the alley, and the cat was running with him. Their course would take them past the linden trees where I'd thought, earlier, I'd seen the darker shadow of a watcher.

Half in and half out of the window, still undecided whether this was my business or not, I flipped the switch of my flashlight and threw its beam after the fleeing figure.

Maybe it was my use of that flashlight that caused the death of a man. Maybe it wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Maybe the man with the beard would have run past the watcher in the trees without seeing him. And certainly, as we learned afterward, the watcher had no good reason to have made his presence known.

But there he was, in the beam of my flashlight — the second man, the one who'd been hiding among the lindens. It was Milo Haskins.

The bearded man had been running away from the house; now at the sight of Haskins standing there between him and the alley, directly in his path, he pulled up short. His hand went into a pocket for a gun.

So did Haskins's hand, and Haskins fired first. The bearded man fell.

There was a black streak in the air, and the cat had launched itself full at the pasty moonface of Milo Haskins. He fired at the cat as it flew through the air at his face, but he shot high; the bullet shattered glass over my head. The bearded man's gun was still in his hand, and he was down, but not unconscious. He raised himself up and carefully shot twice at Haskins.

I must have got out of the window and run toward them, for I was there by that time. Haskins was falling. I made a flying grab at the bearded man's automatic, but the man with the beard was dead. He'd fired those last two shots, somehow, on borrowed time.

I scooped up Haskins's revolver. The cat had jumped clear as he had fallen; it crouched under the tree.

I bent over Haskins. He was still alive but badly hurt.

Lights were flashing on in neighboring houses, and windows were flying up. I stepped clear of the trees and saw Ruth Carson's face, white and frightened, leaning out of an upper window of her house.

She called, “Brian, are you all right? What happened?”

I said, “I'm all right. Will you phone for a police ambulance?”

“Aunt Elsa's already phoning the police. I'll tell her.”

 

 

• • •

 

 

We didn't learn the whole story until almost noon the next day, when Lieutenant Decker called. Of course we'd been making guesses, and some of them were fairly close.

I let Lieutenant Becker in and he sat down — not in the Morris chair — and told us about it. He said, “Milo Haskins isn't dying, but he thought he was, and he talked. Lasky was Walter Burke.” He stopped as though that ought to make sense to us, but it didn't, so he went on:

“He was famous about fifteen years ago — Public Enemy Number Four. Then no one heard of him after that. He simply retired, and got away with it.

“He moved here and took the name of Lasky, and became an eccentric cuss. Not deliberately; he just naturally got that way, living alone and liking it.”

“Except for the cat,” I said.

“Yeah, except for the cat. He was nuts about that cat.

Well, a year or so ago, this Haskins found out who his neighbor across the street was. He wrote a letter to the police about it, put the letter in a deposit box, and started in to blackmail Lasky, or Burke.”

“Why a letter to the police?” Ruth asked. “I don't see—”

I explained that to her. “So Lasky couldn't kill him and get clear of the blackmail that way. If he killed Haskins, the letter would be found. Go on, Lieutenant.”

“Burke had to pay. Even if he ran out, Haskins could put the police on his trail and they might get him. So he finally decided to fool Haskins — and everybody else — into thinking he was dead. He wanted to take the cat with him, of course, so the first thing he did was to fake its death. He boarded it out to a cat farm or cat kennel or whatever it would be, and got another black cat, killed it, and buried it so people would notice. Also that gave color to the idea of his committing suicide. Everybody knew he was crazy about the cat.

“Then, somewhere, maybe by advertising, he found a man about his age and build, and with a beard. He didn't have to resemble Lasky otherwise, the way Lasky worked it.

“I don't know on what kind of a story Lasky got the other guy here, but he did, and he killed him with morphine.

Meanwhile, he'd written the suicide note, timed his phone call to the police telling them he'd taken morphine, and then ducked out — with, of course, the balance of his money.

When the police got here, they found the corpse.”

“But wouldn't they have got somebody to identify it?”

The lieutenant shrugged. “I suppose, technically, they should have. But there wasn't any relative or friend to call in. And there didn't seem to be any doubt. There was the suicide note in Lasky's handwriting, and he'd phoned them. I guess it simply never occurred to anyone that further identification was necessary.

“And none of his neighbors, except maybe Haskins, knew him very well. He'd probably trimmed the other guy's beard and hair to match his, and probably if any neighbor had been called down to the morgue, they might have made identification. A man always looks different anyway, when he's dead.”

I said, “But last night why did Haskins—?”

“Coming to that,” said the lieutenant. “Somehow the cat got lost from Lasky. I mean Burke. Maybe he just got around to calling for it where it'd been boarded, and found it had got away, or maybe he lost it himself, traveling, before it got used to a new home. Anyway, he figured it'd find its way back here, and that's why he took the risk of coming back to get it.

See?”

“Sure. But what about Haskins?” I asked.

“Haskins must have seen the cat come back,” said the lieutenant.

I nodded, remembering that Haskins had been mowing his lawn when I'd gone to the door.

“He realized it was Lasky's cat and that Lasky had tricked him. If the cat was alive, probably Lasky was too.

He figured Lasky would come back for the cat, and he watched the house for that reason. First he tried to get you to give him the cat by saying it was his. He figured he'd have an ace in the hole if he had the cat himself.

“He didn't intend to kill Lasky; he had no reason to. He just wanted to follow him when he left, and find out where he was and under what identity, so he could resume the blackmail. But Lasky saw him there when you turned on the flashlight. Lasky went for a gun. Haskins had brought one because he knew he was dealing with a dangerous man. He beat Lasky, I mean Burke, to the draw. That's all.”

That explained everything — except one thing. I said,

“Haskins was too far away to have rung my doorbell. Burke wasn't there. Who rang it?”

“The cat,” said Lieutenant Becker simply.

“Huh? How?  The button was too high for it to—”

The lieutenant grinned. He said, “I told you Lasky was crazy about that cat. It had a doorbell of its own, down low on one side of the door frame, so when he let it out it wouldn't have to yowl to get back in. It could just ring the bell with its paw. He'd taught it to do that when it wanted in.”

“I'll be damned,” I said. “If I'd thought to look—”

“Black cats look pretty much alike,” said the lieutenant, “but that was how Haskins knew this was Lasky's cat. From across the street he saw it ring that trick doorbell.”

I looked at the cat and said, “Satan,” and he opened his eyes. “Why didn't you explain that, damn you?” He blinked once, and then went back to sleep. I said, “The laziest animal I ever saw. Say, Lieutenant, I take it nobody's going to claim him.”

“Guess not. You and your wife can buy a license for him if you want to keep him.”

I looked at Ruth to see how she liked being mistaken for my wife. There was a slight flush in her cheeks that wasn't rouge.

But she smiled and said, “Lieutenant, I'm not—”

I said, “Can't we get two licenses while we're at it?” I wasn't kidding at all; I meant it. And Ruth looked at me and I read something besides surprise in her face — and then remembered the lieutenant was still around.

I turned to him. “Thanks for starting this, Lieutenant, but I don't need a policeman to help me the rest of the way — if you know what I mean.”

He grinned, and left.