The fredric brown collec.., p.100
The Fredric Brown Collection, page 100
I made myself comfortable with a magazine to read and Eve surprised me by taking not too long to get ready. And she looked gorgeous, and I told her so, when she came back to the living room. It was only six fifteen and I didn’t have to speed to get us to the Pump Room by seven. Ollie wasn’t there, but he’d reserved us a table and left word with the maître d’ that something had come up and he’d be a bit late.
He was quite a bit late and we were finishing our third round of Martinis when he showed up, very apologetic about being detained. We decided we’d have one more so he could have one with us, and then ate a wonderful meal. As an out-of-town guest who was presuming on their hospitality already, I insisted on grabbing the check. A nice touch, since it would go on Ollie’s bill anyway.
We discussed going on to a night club, but Eve said that Ollie looked tired—which he did—and if we went clubbing, would want to drink too much. We could have a drink or two at home—if Ollie would promise to hold to two. He said he would.
Since Ollie admitted that he really was a little tired, I had no trouble talking him into letting me do the driving again. Eve seemed more genuinely friendly than hitherto. Maybe it was the Martinis before dinner or maybe she was getting to like me. But it was an at-a-distance type of friendliness; my radar told me that.
Back home, I offered to do the bartending, but Eve overruled me and made our drinks. We were drinking them and talking about nothing in particular when I saw Ollie suddenly put down his glass and bend forward slightly, putting his right hand under his left arm.
Then he straightened up and saw that we were both looking at him with concern. He said, “Nothing. Just a little twinge, not an attack. But maybe to be on the safe side, I’ll take one—”
He took a little gold pillbox out of his pocket and opened it.
“Good Lord,” he said, standing up. “Forgot I took my last one just before I got to the Pump Room. Just as well we didn’t go night-clubbing, after all. Well, it’s okay now. I’ll fill it.”
“Let me—” I said.
But he looked perfectly well now and waved me away. “I’m perfectly okay. Don’t worry.”
And he went into the hallway, walking confidently, and I heard the door of his room open and close so I knew he’d made it all right.
Eve started to make conversation by asking me questions about the girl in Seattle whom I’d talked about, and I was answering and enjoying it, when suddenly I realized Ollie had been gone at least five minutes and maybe ten. A lot longer than it would take to refill a pillbox. Of course he might have decided to go to the John or something while he was there, but just the same, I stood up quickly, excused myself without explaining, headed for his room.
The minute I opened the door, I saw him and thought he was dead. He was lying face down on the rug in front of the dresser and on the dresser there wasn’t any little bottle of pills and there weren’t any amyl nitrite ampoules, either.
I bent over him, but I didn’t waste time trying to find out whether he was dead or not. If he was, the ampoule I’d got from Doc Kruger wasn’t going to hurt him. And if he was alive, a fraction of a second might make the difference of whether it would save him or not. I didn’t feel for a heartbeat or look at his face. I got hold of a handful of hair and lifted his head a few inches off the floor, reached in under it with my hand and crushed the ampoule right under his nose.
Eve was standing in the doorway and I barked at her to phone for an ambulance, right away quick. She ran back toward the living room.
10
OLLIE DIDN’T die, although he certainly would have if I hadn’t had the bright idea of appropriating that ampoule from Doc and carrying it with me. But Ollie was in bad shape for a while, and Uncle Am and I didn’t get to see him until two days later, Sunday evening.
His face looked gray and drawn and he was having to lie very quiet. But he could talk, and they gave us fifteen minutes with him. And they’d told us he was definitely out of danger, as long as he behaved himself, but he’d still be in the hospital another week or maybe even two.
But bad as he looked, I didn’t pull any punches. “Ollie,” I said, “it didn’t work, your little frame-up. I didn’t go to the police and accuse Eve of trying to murder you. On the other hand, I’ve given you this break, so far. I didn’t go to them and tell them you tried to commit suicide in a way to frame her for murder. You must love Dorothy and Jerry awfully much to have planned that.”
“I—I do,” he said. “What—made you guess, Ed?”
“Your hands, for one thing,” I said. “They were dirtier than they’d have been if you’d just fallen. That and the fact that you were lying face down told me how you managed to bring on that attack at just that moment. You were doing push-ups—about as strenuous and concentrated exercise as a man can take. And just kept doing them till you passed out. It should have been fatal, all right.
“And you knew the pills and ampoules had been on your dresser that afternoon, and that Eve had been home since I’d seen them and could have taken them. Actually you took them yourself. You came out in a taxi—and we could probably find the taxi if we had to prove this—and got them yourself. You had to wait till you were sure Eve and I would be en route downtown, and that’s why you were so late getting to the Pump Room. Now Uncle Am’s got news for you—not that you deserve it.”
Uncle Am cleared his throat. “You’re not married, Ollie. You’re a free man because your marriage to Eve Packer wasn’t legal. She’d been married before and hadn’t got a divorce. Probably because she had no intention of marrying again until you popped the question to her, and then it was too late to get one.
“Her legal husband, who left her ten years ago, is a bartender named Littleton. He found her again somehow and when he learned she’d married you illegally, he started blackmailing her. She’s been paying him two hundred a month, half the pinmoney allowance you gave her, for three years. They worked out a way she could mail him checks and still have her money seemingly accounted for. The method doesn’t matter.”
I took over. “We haven’t called copper on the bigamy bit, either, because you’re not going to prosecute her for it, or tell the cops. We figure you owe her something for having tried to frame her on a murder charge. We’ve talked to her. She’ll leave town quietly, and go to Reno, and in a little while you can let out that you’re divorced and free. And marry Dorothy and legitimize Jerry.
“She really will be getting a divorce, incidentally, but from Littleton, not from you. I said you’d finance that and give her a reasonable stake to start out with. Like ten thousand dollars—does that sound reasonable?”
He nodded. His face looked less drawn, less gray now. I had a hunch his improvement would be a lot faster now.
“And you fellows,” he said. “How can I ever—?”
“We’re even,” Uncle Am said. “Your retainer will cover. But don’t ever look us up again to do a job for you. A private detective doesn’t like to be made a patsy, be put in the spot of helping a frame-up. And that’s what you tried to do to us. Don’t ever look us up again.”
We never saw Ollie again, but we did hear from him once, a few months later. One morning, a Western Union messenger came into our office to deliver a note and a little box. He said he had instructions not to wait and left.
The envelope contained a wedding announcement. One of the after-the-fact kind, not an invitation, of the marriage of Oliver R. Bookman to Dorothy Stark. On the back of it was scribbled a note. “Hope you’ve forgiven me enough to accept a wedding present in reverse. I’ve arranged for the dealer to leave it out front. Papers will be in glove compartment. Thanks for everything, including accepting this.” And the little box, of course, contained two sets of car keys.
It was, as I’d known it would be, a brand-new Buick sedan, gray, a hell of a car. We stood looking at it, and Uncle Am said, “Well, Ed, have we forgiven him enough?”
“I guess so,” I said. “It’s a sweet chariot. But somebody got off on his time, either the car dealer or the messenger, and it’s been here too long. Look.”
I pointed to the parking ticket on the windshield. “Well, shall we take our first ride in it, down to the City Hall to pay the fine and get right with God?”
We did.
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.”
