Читать книгу The Cat MEGAPACK ® - Andrew Lang - Страница 6

SEVEN SAW MURDER, by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

Julie found Pinkney Street mildly terrifying that night. It was a narrow street filled with old people who shut themselves up at dusk.

The street lamps came at every other intersection, and their yellow rays were blunted from thrusting at impenetrable darkness—a darkness that was one part night and another part broad-leafed maples spaced precisely along the sidewalk.

Julie was afraid of the dark and not much else. She was not afraid of the sort of men who step from doorways and follow women. Julie had been a model in Chicago and then a “cover girl” before she had married Harvey.

She knew something about men who became annoying and what to do about it. But she was afraid of darkness and the unseen things and even the small sounds they made.

She wasn’t afraid of Harvey’s Uncle Charley Pedlow; wasn’t afraid to ask Uncle Charley to lend Harvey some money. Charley Pedlow had an enormous amount of money, even though he lived on Pinkney Street in what was just a degree better than a shack. Harvey had said that he didn’t know just how much money Uncle Charley had, but he was sure it was more than some of the social reformers thought any man ought to have.

Harvey wouldn’t ask his uncle for money. Harvey’s pride got in the way. Besides, he had several times made it clear that he had no use for the man because of his reputation for selfishness, mercilessness in financial deals, and his annoying eccentricity.

Julie smiled as she thought of Harvey and walked briskly across an unlighted intersection. Randolph Street, that was. Now you counted four houses from the corner, and Uncle Charley’s was the one that looked like a squat “A” on top of a flat “H.”

The house sat thirty feet back from the sidewalk. Two maples dwarfed it, shrouded it, reduced it to something you could pass every day without noticing.

Julie had never been there, but Harvey had pointed it out to her. She had met Uncle Charley just twice—both times unavoidably.

She stopped on the sidewalk and stared in at the house. Somebody was standing on the stoop at the south side of Uncle Charley’s door—a scarcely discernible figure pancaked against the wall, watching her.

“Is that you, Mr. Pedlow?” she called nervously.

The shadowy figure moved a little. Something metallic dropped to the stoop, rang like a cracked bell. Whoever it was, there on the stoop, turned and ran into the shadows along the south side of the house.

Julie shivered and pulled the silver fox pelts closer about her throat. She had worn the furs chiefly because of what they did for her morale, but she was glad of them now for another reason; the June night had suddenly become chill.

She clutched her large handbag under her arm, drew a long breath, took resolute steps up the brick approach walk and onto the stoop. She could find no bell-push in the dark, so she knocked.

In a little while, she heard footsteps through the paper-thin walls. There was a slim show of yellow light, soon blotted out by the advancing figure of a man. A key turned over, a knob rattled, and the door opened far enough to allow a shaggy gray head to thrust out.

Julie spoke hurriedly.

“Mr. Pedlow. I’m Harvey’s wife.”

“Well, well!” Uncle Charley sounded highly pleased. He opened the door fully, clicked on the ceiling light of the living room.

He was a tall, gaunt man of fifty-five. His shoulders were pulled down to a slope by wide blue suspenders. He wore brown wool pants so much larger around the waist than he was that there was a sort of Kangaroo pouch in front. He clung to the door frame and swayed over Julie. He was chuckling and she realized he’d been drinking.

“I don’t remember your name,” he said.

“Julie.”

“Sure,” he said with an attempt at heartiness. “Sure, it’s Julie. You come right in, Julie, and have a chair.” He backed unsteadily, spread his arms in a wide gesture.

“Thanks,” she said, and then she added, “Uncle Charley.”

There was one chair to have, a lopsided platform rocker. An oak library table occupied the center of the floor. On it was a pottery lamp connected to the ceiling fixture. A couch covered with artificial leather was the only other piece of furniture. The ragged carpet on the floor was felted with cat hairs.

Of course, there were cats. Julie counted five of the creatures without trying, and then there were two more. She remembered that one of the things Harvey held against Uncle Charley was his love of cats.

“Nasty little insincere animals, cats,” was Harvey’s opinion. “They’ll go to anybody who feeds them.”

Julie rather liked cats, but not to the extent that Uncle Charley did. Seven cats, ranging from a half-grown calico that was pretending that Julie was frightening, to a huge gray Tom with one eye and a chewed ear.

“Like cats, Julie?” Uncle Charley asked.

She said that she did. She took her eyes off the ugly gray tom who was acting coy around the platform of the rocker, and looked at Uncle Charley.

Uncle Charley wasn’t exactly beautiful. He had yellowish eyes like the yellow cat that was rubbing on his pants legs. A four-day gray beard stubble sprouted from his hollow cheeks. His nose was almost thin enough to have an edge on it.

Uncle Charley looked right back at her and grinned. It wasn’t exactly a nice grin. The grin somehow reminded her of the shadowy figure she had seen lurking around Uncle Charley’s front door.

“By the way, did someone leave here just before I arrived?” she queried.

“Leave?” Uncle Charley shook his head. He kept looking at her. She wasn’t sorry that he found her attractive. But there was such a thing as carrying appreciation too far. She pulled her fur a little closer around her neck and gave the navy blue skirt of her suit a prim tug.

“I came to talk to you about Harvey,” she said quickly. “Harvey and his new business.”

“Harvey?” Uncle Charley made a face as though he wasn’t pleased to be reminded of Harvey. “Oh, Harvey.” He winked at Julie. “Which reminds me—”

He went stumbling back through the cased opening into the dining room. A black cat lurked there in the shadows and yowled. Uncle Charley opened the kitchen door and disappeared into the room beyond.

A white cat came out of the dining room and straight toward Julie as if bent on something important. It sat down six feet in front of the patent rocker and began to wash its face.

The calico half-kitten came romping out from the couch, its hind parts making more rapid progress than its forelegs. An alley tiger intercepted the calico and batted it for a loop. The ugly gray cat rubbed against Julie’s ankles and purred like Harvey’s electric razor on a cold morning. He left short gray hairs clinging to the smooth surface of Julie’s stockings.

“Go away,” she said to the battle-scarred veteran, and suppressed an uneasy shudder. For no reason at all, her nerves were tight with strain.

Uncle Charley emerged from the kitchen with two fingers stuck down inside two water tumblers he was carrying and a squat bottle of brandy in his other hand.

“Speaking of Harvey always reminds me to take a drink,” he said. “A puritan, Harvey.”

“You just don’t know him,” Julie said. “I don’t think you ever tried very hard to know him.”

“Ha!” Uncle Charley put the glasses down on the library table and poured a generous portion into each tumbler. “Here you are, Julie.” He handed her a glass. “This is mighty good stuff.”

It was, in spite of the memory of Uncle Charley’s none-too-clean fingers. It tasted like the brandy that was served in the Stork Club.

“Harvey doesn’t drink,” Uncle Charley said.

“Sometimes,” she contradicted. At Christmas Harvey would drink, or when he was in Chicago entertaining some business associate.

“Harvey doesn’t know he’s alive,” Uncle Charley said. Then he started looking at her again.

“About Harvey’s new business,” she said. “You know what he did, don’t you? He started a soft drink bottling plant. He put all his money into equipment.”

“Ha!” Uncle Charley sat down on the library table. “Soft drinks. Like Harvey. A blasted Puritan.”

“We can’t all drink brandy,” Julie reminded him. “And there’s money in it.”

Uncle Charley refilled his glass. He practically leered at Julie.

“To our better acquaintance, my dear.”

Julie took a deep breath and lunged into her subject. She didn’t understand quite what it was all about, but soft drink production had been curtailed. It had to do with sugar and the war, and you got a certain percent of the sugar you had used the year before and, of course, Harvey’s business hadn’t been running the year before.

“Put his money on the wrong horse,” Uncle Charley said. “A stupid fool!”

“He’s not!”

“Didn’t make any mistake when he hooked you, though,” Uncle Charley said. “But what you can see in him, I don’t know.”

Julie frowned, wet her smooth curving lips, and plunged on with a hint of desperation getting into her tone.

“Harvey needs some money,” she blurted. “He could remodel his plant and manufacture something for the war effort. He’s tried banks and they won’t lend him anything on his present equipment.”

“No credit,” Uncle Charley said. “He can’t borrow any money from me.”

Julie put her glass down on the floor because there was no place else to put it. The gray cat immediately became interested.

“He’s not asking you for money, Uncle Charley,” she said. “I am. Of course, you mustn’t let him know that.”

“That’s different. That’s entirely different.” Uncle Charley chuckled. “You’ve got credit with me, pet.”

Other men of fifty-five had looked at Julie that same way and implied the same thing with different words. They had offered her everything from a mink coat to a tropic cruise, and they had been very little different from Uncle Charley. Dressed different, heavens knows.

Julie’s lips thinned and curled at the outer extremities. Disgust narrowed her long blue eyes.

“Uncle Charley, be your age!”

Uncle Charley put down his glass. He blinked at her.

“So you think I’m old? Just a dozen, fifteen years older than that milksop you’re married to.”

He took a step toward Julie. She stood up. It was obvious that she was going to have some trouble with Uncle Charley. He reached out to paw her shoulder, chuckling.

“Guess I know you models,” he said.

“You’re sure about that?” And then she clipped the side of Uncle Charley’s gaunt face.

It wasn’t a slap. It was a blow from a small, hard fist. It rocked Uncle Charley back so that he stepped on the paw of the white cat. He didn’t seem to hear his pet’s pained cry.

“You—you hit me,” he said, but not whining. “You’ve got spirit. Picture Harvey married to a girl with spirit. I like girls with spirit.”

She turned her back on him and stepped indignantly to the door. Harvey had been entirely right in his declaration that his uncle was a rather poor specimen of a man. She had reached for the doorknob when Uncle Charley suddenly uttered a roar that was halfway between rage and drunken laughter. She wheeled, and he lunged.

He caught her in a bearlike embrace and did his best to kiss her. She felt the sandpaper of his cheek against hers, and that spurred her to get her right arm free. Her purse was in her right hand and it had a heavy natural wood frame that was all the rage that season because of the metal shortage.

She hit Uncle Charley on the side of the head with the wooden section of the purse. And then Uncle Charley was completely at her feet without knowing about it. Julie pressed back against the door and stared down at the long, thin figure on the floor.

“Uncle Charley,” she cried faintly.

Uncle Charley didn’t move. She stamped her foot angrily.

“Uncle Charley!”

He still didn’t move. Cautiously she knelt beside him. This could be a trick intended to get her sympathy. She flipped off her glove and pressed a thumb against Uncle Charley’s throat to discover a strong, rapid pulse.

Julie sighed with relief. He was just knocked out, and the chances were the brandy had hit him harder than she had.

She looked away from Uncle Charley because seven pairs of slitted eyes drew her gaze. There were the cats sitting in a semi-circle, staring at her. They were very unemotional about it.

Julie straightened. She felt that she ought to call a doctor for Uncle Charley. But in a small town like this, the very fact that she had visited Uncle Charley after dark while her husband was away would be frowned upon. The town, she was certain, already talked about her, because the town, like Uncle Charley, thought it knew models. No, she’d better leave him where he was, to sleep it off.

Opening the door quietly, she looked up and down the dark street. She went out on the stoop and made no sound closing the door. She tiptoed to the sidewalk, turned to the south, and ran.

Four blocks down Pinkney Street she turned east, walked to Harrison Street, to the neat, modern red brick bungalow she shared with Harvey. Their neighbors on the north were Dr. and Mrs. John Palet, and as Julie was unlocking her door, she sent an apprehensive glance toward the Palet house. The blinds were down, but Julie had a sneaking suspicion that Mrs. Palet might be peering around the edge of a shade of one of the windows.

Mrs. Palet was always watching her neighbors. A large, unattractive and spiteful woman, Mrs. Palet. She had—or so Harvey said—a tongue that was tied in the middle and wagged at both ends.

Julie unlocked the door carefully. When she was inside and the light was on, she double-locked herself in and drew a long breath. Harvey wouldn’t be back from Washington until tomorrow night. She wished tonight was tomorrow.

She was in bed by eleven with a night lamp burning in the front bedroom. But it was absolutely futile to try and sleep.

She lay there and stared at the ceiling. She worried about Uncle Charley. She worried about telling Harvey what she had done. He wouldn’t like her going to Uncle Charley in the first place. And he’d be furious with Uncle Charley for acting the way he had. It might be better to just keep the whole thing a secret.

* * * *

The following day, Tuesday, Julie walked to the grocery the long way, around and up Pinkney Street. She kept on the side of the street opposite Uncle Charley’s house and was very much relieved to see a plumber’s truck parked in front of the shabby house.

A downspout from the eaves was disconnected, and the plumber was working on the drainage tile at the south end of the stoop. Uncle Charley, of course, must be all right this morning. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to call a plumber.

That afternoon, Julie fixed icebox rolls for dinner. For Harvey, really. He wouldn’t be home until the eight o’clock train, but she was going to put off dinner that long and have steak and butterscotch pie and just about everything he liked.

At five o’clock, the front doorbell took her out of the kitchen with flour on her hands. Dr. John Palet, the veterinarian from next door, was on the porch. Both of the doctor’s hands were occupied with a large sheet of newspaper that looked on the point of bursting beneath the weight of half a dozen or so plants and the dirt that came with their roots.

“Heliotrope,” Dr. Palet said without preamble.

He was a meek little man with a bald head and watery blue eyes. Knowing his wife as she did, Julie felt sorry for him. His passion for flowers and particularly heliotrope was the source of much gentle amused comment among the townspeople.

“For me?” Julie clapped her hands.

“Uh huh.” Dr. Palet gave her an oddly penetrating glance that surprised and bewildered Julie. “Mrs. Palet doesn’t care for heliotrope. Can’t just let them die, can I?”

“Of course not,” Julie said. “And thanks so much.”

She put her hands out for the plants, wondering just what she would do with them now that she had them. Cooking she had learned. but gardening—after spending most of her life in an apartment—was something of a mystery.

Dr. Palet, however, wouldn’t hand her the plants.

“They ought to go in right away. I see you’re busy, so I’ll plant ’em for you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t trouble you.”

“No trouble at all. Like to grub in the earth, just put them here and there along the front, huh?” Dr. Palet nodded his bead to indicate where he wished to plant. “They’ll look nice in front of the shrubbery.”

She thanked him again. Dr. Palet backed from the door, bowing, his eyes clinging strangely to hers.

“It’s a perennial,” he said in a flustered manner.

“How nice!” Julie said.

She hoped that was the right answer. She went back to the kitchen and whistled while she worked. She was well acquainted with that adage about whistling girls and crowing hens, but she didn’t think there was anything to it.

* * * *

An hour or more rolled by before the telegraph company phoned her a message from Harvey:

WILL NOT BE BACK UNTIL END OF WEEK. HAVE FINE OPPORTUNITY FOR GOVERNMENT POSITION.

LOVE, HARVEY.

Julie sank down in the kitchen stool. There was just enough good news in the brief message to buoy up sinking disappointment. It was unfortunate that Harvey couldn’t have let her know earlier. The steak would keep in the freezer compartment, but there was the pie and all those rolls.

She would take most of the rolls and the biggest part of the pie over to Dr. and Mrs. Palet, she decided.

* * * *

Mrs. Palet, large and too obviously permanented, stood on her back steps and peeked under the napkin at Julie’s rolls.

“My, these look real nice,” she said.

Dr. Palet took the pie from Julie’s hands, and smiled at his wife.

“Harvey is a very lucky man, don’t you thing so, my dear?”

“Why, yes,” she answered. “We all know that Julie is a model wife.”

She got in a side glance at Dr. Palet that had a point and two edges on it. Then she smiled at Julie and asked when Harvey would be back. Harvey, Julie told them, would be away until the weekend.

“For goodness sake, what do you do with your time, Julie?” And Mrs. Palet added with malice, “Especially at night. I’d think you’d go crazy with loneliness.”

Julie said that she got along very well and always found small tasks about the house to occupy her attention. She was glad when she finally broke away from the Palets and hurried back to her own kitchen.

* * * *

She slept quite soundly that night and the next. It was on Thursday that the thing happened that really exiled sleep. It was something that had really occurred on Monday, but Thursday’s evening paper told about it in staring headlines:

CHARLES H. PEDLOW FOUND DEAD IN HOME

Julie scowled at that for a moment until she realized that Charles H. Pedlow was Harvey’s Uncle Charley. Then her startled eyes quickly scanned the story, picking out significant details of the report.

The police suspected foul play.… Someone had tinkered with the lock of Mr. Pedlow’s front door.… A bruise on the side of Mr. Pedlow’s head where his assailant had struck him.… Mr. Pedlow had fallen near the front door and a doorstep had penetrated the frontal part of his skull, resulting in his death.… Coroner Michel placed the time of death at sometime Monday night.…

Julie looked away from the paper, her lips parted. Something that was pretty close to a scream ached in her throat. No, it couldn’t be! She hadn’t killed Uncle Charley!

Her frantic eyes returned to the paper. That bruise on the side of Uncle Charley’s head. Why, it was from her purse, of course. But it—it wasn’t murder. Uncle Charley had fallen, but she couldn’t remember seeing a doorstep that he might have fallen against. However, if the doorstep had actually entered Uncle Charley’s forehead, wouldn’t she have seen it?

She hadn’t moved him, hadn’t turned him over. She had simply felt for a pulse in that pressure point on Uncle Charley’s neck, just as her first aid course had instructed her to do. She had taken off her glove—

That was another thing which filled her with sudden terror, left her muscles weak and trembling. She had left the house with one glove off and one on. To save her life, she couldn’t think whether she had handled the doorknob with her gloved hand or bare hand.

Fingerprints! They could trap her, seal her doom as a murderess! Again she consulted the newspaper for any mention of fingerprints, for any incriminating evidence.

Mr. Pedlow was well known as a lover of animals, cats in particular.… He is survived by a nephew, Harvey E. Enders, of this city.

No, nothing about prints. Not that it mattered. The police, suspecting murder, would come here first of all. Harvey was Uncle Charley’s only relative and probably his only heir. And the whole town knew about Harvey needing money.

Immediately she was wishing Harvey was here to tell her what to do. She hadn’t actually murdered Uncle Charley. She had struck in self defense. Julie dropped the paper and pressed both hands to her pounding head.

She’d have to control herself. She’d have to keep everything a secret. No one had seen what had happened except the seven cats. Cats didn’t talk. They stared at you, but they didn’t talk. No one had seen her go to Uncle Charley’s house—

Wait! What about that shadowy figure she had seen standing beside the door?

The doorbell rang. Julie got out of her chair, gave the door a quick glance. Mrs. Palet’s frizzled hair was visible through the glass lights at the top of the panel. Julie took just a moment to see what her own face was like in the mirror above the fireplace before coming under Mrs. Palet’s critical glance.

Mrs. Palet came into the room, rattling her newspaper in front of her. Her protruding eyes found new fascination in Julie who was now a relative, if only by marriage, of a murder victim.

“Of course, you’ve seen the papers, Julie, but then you haven’t seen what Doctor saw.” Mrs. Palet always referred to her husband as ‘Doctor’. She said, “You know Doctor is a friend of Michel’s, the coroner. Doctor went with Michel to the Pedlow house after the corpse had been discovered.”

Mrs. Palet’s red hands fluttered over her ample bosom as though looking for a pin. Actually, this seemed to help her get her breath.

“You see, Doctor talked with the policeman who broke into the house after the neighbors decided there must be something wrong with Mr. Pedlow.

“The first thing that happened when the patrolman opened the door, was the cats. They came out in a streak—all seven of them. You see, they’d been shut up with the corpse ever since Monday night, and they were all half wild with hunger.”

Mrs. Palet’s eyes rolled horribly.

“It wasn’t a pleasant sight, as my husband put it to me. Mr. Pedlow’s body had been in the house for almost three days, slowly putrefying. Doctor said the odor inside was nauseating—”

Julie felt her head start to swim. Mrs. Palet rushed forward.

“Oh, my dear! You’re not going to faint? You’re not going to keel over, are you?”

Julie had gripped the back of a chair for support, and she wasn’t at all sure that she wasn’t going to keel over, as Mrs. Palet put it. She allowed the doctor’s wife to help her sit down.

“Well, Julie, you just mustn’t look on the black side of it, dear,” Mrs. Palet said, going toward the door. “After all, your husband Harvey is a mighty lucky man, especially now that Harvey’s money has all been moving one way—out. Don’t you think?”

Julie couldn’t speak. She just waved toward the door.

“Harvey is the only possible heir, isn’t he?” Mrs. Palet persisted. “And that’s what you’ve got to think of, because Mr. Pedlow certain wasn’t anything to you, and you can always use money.”

“Mrs. Palet,” Julie faltered, “will you please just go?”

“Of course, dearie. I do have to get supper, don’t I?”

After the door had closed on Mrs. Palet, the telephone rang. It proved to be a call from the telegraph office, which had received a wire for her from Harvey. It stated that he had seen a newspaper dispatch about his uncle’s death but would be unable to come for the funeral because of the importance of his negotiations in Washington.

Julie was disappointed, and the knowledge that she would be alone for several more days heightened her uneasiness. She wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come. She moved wearily into the bedroom, sat down in front of her dressing table, and absently removed her makeup. And then, with methodical care, she put it back on again.

She knew she was behind the eight ball, and there wasn’t much she could do to get around it except look beautiful. She couldn’t think her way out, for her mind was a riotous tumult of nagging thoughts and impressions.

The doorbell rang again. Julie knew instinctively the police were outside. She had to decide instantly whether to tell the unbelievable truth or to pretend ignorance of the whole thing.

“In a minute!” she called sweetly to whoever it was at the door.

Bending close to her mirror, she picked up her lipstick with steady fingers. She couldn’t tell the truth. She couldn’t because of the twenty thousand wagging tongues that would be saying the same things that Mrs. Palet had said.

Twenty thousand people would be jumping at the same conclusion, supplying the same motive for murder. She couldn’t hope to convince anybody that she had struck Uncle Charley in self defense when there was such a perfect motive for deliberate murder.

Julie blotted off surplus lip rouge on a cleansing tissue. Then she walked unhurriedly into the living room and opened the door for a stout, gray-haired man in police uniform.

He mumbled his name in his embarrassment, but Julie immediately forgot it. However, she did hear him state that he was the chief of the force.

“I won’t bother you long,” he promised before bothering her at all. “I just want to know when you expect your husband home.”

She answered that readily enough. And the chief wanted to know if Harvey would realize anything from his uncle’s will. Julie couldn’t say. She just didn’t know anything about it, but probably if there was a will Harvey would be mentioned.

The chief meditated on that for a while and concluded that he’d have to get a court order and have a look at the will himself. Then he took out of his pocket a pair of slim-nosed pliers. Radio nippers, he called them.

“The plumber found these down a drain tile just outside Charley Pedlow’s front door,” the chief explained. “That was Tuesday. The plumber came late Monday evening to locate a stoppage that had been flooding Charley’s basement. He pulled a downspout and got to exploring and figured the stoppage was in the tile. He didn’t have time to work on it then, but got to work Tuesday morning. These nippers were down the drain and they aren’t the plumber’s.”

Julie frowned at the pliers.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”’

“Plenty. Maybe you saw in the papers that somebody worked on the lock on Charley Pedlow’s door. That’s a snap lock. When you slam the door it locks, but the key isn’t much. You could reach through the keyhole with nippers like these, get hold of the key, and twist it from the outside. That’s what was done. Nipper marks on the tip of the key.”

“But—”

Julie checked herself in time. She had been about to say that the person who had worked on Charley Pedlow’s lock had been frightened away by her arrival, and that after the prowler had left, Uncle Charley had been very much alive.

The prowler couldn’t have returned with the nippers because he had dropped them when Julie’s arrival had surprised him. That was the metallic ringing she had heard—the pliers bouncing from the stoop. And then she had heard a duller sound, which was the pliers falling into the open drain.

The chief regarded Julie carefully, his eyes bright and sharp. “You’ve never seen these nippers, I suppose?”

Julie shook her head. “We haven’t any tools around here except a hammer to hang pictures with. My husband is absolutely helpless mechanically.”

The chief smiled broadly and hoisted himself out of the chair.

“Guess I don’t have to bother you any longer,” he said. “Many thanks.”

When he was gone, Julie was left small consolation. The police were on the wrong track. But suppose they made an arrest—some guiltless person who might have been trying to break into Charley Pedlow’s house but who had certainly not killed Uncle Charley? What would Julie do then?

She went into the bedroom, threw herself face down on the bed. There was a cool breeze blowing through the window. It played with her ruddy curls, caressed her hair as Harvey sometimes did. Julie smiled faintly into her pillow, thinking of Harvey, and gradually the worried tenseness left her body.…

“Me-ow!”

Julie propped herself up on elbows, eyes wide awake, staring into darkness. She had fallen asleep. She had been dreaming about cats.

The cry came again. This was no dream. She sat up stiffly on the edge of the bed, looked out the window. There was a baleful flash of green eyes in darkness, a scampering of small feet. Another pair of eyes stared eerily out of the darkness, and then another.

Julie rushed to the light switch, snapped it on. For a moment she leaned against the wall, her heart doing crazy things that made her gasp.

She listened to the patter of paws outside her window, heard the rattling of shrub branches. Not just one cat, several cats. Her flesh began to crawl, and a nervous trembling shook her body. She went to the bedroom door and in front of her lay the blackness of the living room. She plunged into that blackness, ran to the living room light switch, pushed it on. And then to the front door to snap on the porch light.

Opening the front door, she stood there trying to determine if the light had frightened the cats away. It hadn’t. A sleek black cat bounded up the porch steps, rubbed head and neck on the porch rail, greeted her with a friendly yowl.

“Skat!” Julie whispered without making an impression on the black cat.

She stepped onto the porch intent on chasing the cat away. Suddenly she stopped a yard from the door. A stifled cry fled to her lips and was never uttered. Out there on the front lawn were six more cats—calico cats, tigers, a white cat, the unmistakable gray Tom cat with one eye.

All of Uncle Charley’s cats were out there in front of her house. Julie’s mind took a sickening backward lurch, recalling what Harvey had said about cats: “They’ll go to anybody who feeds them.”

Julie flung up a hand to her forehead as though to stop the dizzy whirl of her brain, as though to tear aside the smothering veil of blackness that descended before her eyes.

* * * *

“Julie!”

Someone was shaking her. The acrid fumes of ammonia burned her nostrils. She didn’t open her eyes right away. She didn’t want to come back.

“Julie, the police—”

Her eyelids snapped open. She was on her front porch, and the arms of little Dr. Palet were around her. The veterinarian’s watery blue eyes were fixed strangely on her face. “You must have fainted,” Dr. Palet whispered. “You’ve got to snap out of it.”

Julie’s gaze shifted to the top of the porch steps. The white cat was there, washing its face. At the other end of the porch, a tiger and the half-grown calico were brawling amicably.

“Can you stand up, Julie?”

“I—I can try.”

She tried, the doctor holding her tightly all the while.

“My car’s waiting,” he said. “I’ve got to get you out of town.”

“Out of town?”

“Yes. The police. Someone saw you going into Charley Pedlow’s house Monday night. They’re coming to arrest you for murder. I just heard. There’s not a moment to lose.”

Julie’s frightened eyes went back to the cats. She shivered in the doctor’s arms.

“All right,” she agreed dismally. “I’ll go.”

“No one will know,” Dr. Palet said. “Mrs. Palet’s gone to the movies. We’ve got to hurry. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Palet hurried her off the porch. His car stood in the drive between the two houses, its front door open. He all but lifted her in, slammed the door, then hurried around the front of the car to get in under the wheel. He backed out of the drive, nosed the car north.

It was the only thing to do, Julie decided. Hide out of town until Harvey could come to her.

The car flashed by the city limits, ripped off the main highway into a narrow twisting road. Dr. Palet’s right hand left the wheel long enough to shyly pat her arm.

“Don’t be afraid, Julie,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “This is sweet of you. You know of somewhere I can hide overnight?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll telegraph Harvey as soon as you get back?”

Dr. Palet laughed shortly. “I’m not going back!”

Julie looked sharply at the doctor’s small-featured face.

“And you’re not going back either,” he added. “We’re going away together. Didn’t you know that?”

He jerked the wheel recklessly and the car slowed around a steep curve.

“What do you mean?” she gasped.

“I mean just what I said.” His laugh was reckless, and his voice was hoarse with emotion. His bright eyes were frightening. “Harvey doesn’t love you—not as I do. And you won’t be able to come back without facing a murder charge. I’ll take care of you. I’ll have lots of money. Charley Pedlow’s will, you know. He showed it to me. A hundred thousand dollars left to me to take care of his cats.”

Julie put her hand on the latch of the door. She spoke calmly though her heart was hammering wildly.

“I think you’d better stop right here and let me out, Doctor.”

“Don’t be silly. You’ll go to the chair.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“You haven’t got any. If you go back, I’ll see that you get the chair. I’m the one who saw you go to Charley Pedlow’s house.”

“And you told the police?”

He laughed. “No, but I will, I’m a realist, Julie. And an opportunist. I tell you that you haven’t any choice.”

He tried to get an arm around Julie. She shrank away from him, turned her back against the door.

“You—you were the one standing beside the door of Uncle Charley’s house that night?”

“Yes. And I was watching through the window when you hit the man with your purse. You haven’t any choice.”

The car had come to the top of a hill. At that moment, Julie saw something glowing faintly in the back seat of the car. She twisted her head, saw a single green cat’s eye watching them from the back seat.

Julie screamed. Dr. Palet was startled into jerking the wheel. He had to fight to keep on the road as the car careened down the hill.

“Screaming won’t get you anywhere,” he told her tensely. “Except maybe land us in a ditch.”

“But the cat!” she gasped. “Why did you bring the cat?”

“You’re crazy.” He laughed. “I didn’t bring any cat.”

“The one-eyed cat is in the back seat.”

At the foot of the hill, a narrow iron bridge loomed in the blaze of headlights. Dr. Palet tried to take a look back over his shoulder, didn’t dare at this speed. And then it happened.

The big gray cat sprang from the seat cushions, straight at the bald head of Dr. Palet. Its saber claws raked across Dr. Palet’s head and face. Then it tumbled upon his lap, clawing wildly at his coat pocket.

Dr. Palet uttered a hoarse, hurt cry. He made a frantic stab for the cat, but missed. The animal yowled, its eyes glowing strangely. It seemed to have dissolved into a whirling blur of fur in which that single eye was a pin-wheeling shaft of green light.

The cat kept clawing and raking at Dr. Palet’s suit. One claw slashed bloody furrows across the back of his hand. An upward leap sent another crimson track across his face.

Julie tried to close her eyes to shut out the terrifying sight of the iron bridge looming in front of them. But her eyes were irresistibly drawn to her approaching doom. Sheer desperation made her lunge for the wheel. But at that precise moment, the doctor’s arm was flung up to ward off the cat.

He lost complete control of the car. It slewed across the road, plunged head-on into the bridge. There was a rending crash of metal, the screech of tires, and the tinkling dissolution of shattered glass. Julie was hurled roughly about. A heavy weight crushed down upon her, and she seemed to drop into a black pit that had no bottom.…

* * * *

Julie was in the hospital three weeks, recovering from shock, a broken rib, and body bruises. Harvey was with her most of the time. He had obtained a leave of absence from his new job. Just as soon as she was well enough to be released from the hospital, they planned to move to Washington.

Dr. Palet had died in the accident, Harvey informed her, which was just about the best way it could have turned out.

“Because the police were going to arrest him for the murder of Uncle Charley! They’d found a pair of pliers which had been used to unlock Uncle Charley’s door from the outside. Those pliers belonged to Dr. Palet. And when the police examined Uncle Charley’s will, they knew Palet had a strong motive.”

Julie listened quietly until the nurse had gone out of the room. Then she told Harvey the truth. She explained how Dr. Palet had dropped the pliers before Uncle Charley was dead, which proved that the doctor simply couldn’t have got in to kill Charley Pedlow. She told how she had left Uncle Charley and closed the door quietly behind her.

“If you didn’t slam the door,” Harvey said, “it wouldn’t have locked. It’s that kind of a lock. From what you just told me I guess you surprised Palet right after he had forced the lock open. In running away, he dropped the pliers. He no doubt was ready to commit the murder when you came along. He must have been watching through the window when you and Uncle Charley were scuffling and saw you strike Uncle Charley on the head with your handbag. After you left, he went in and killed Uncle Charley by simply raising Uncle Charley’s head and bringing it down hard on the doorstop. He was the murderer, all right.”

Julie was still worried. A deep frown creased her smooth forehead.

“It seems to me the police are only guessing. Of course, the pliers are a clue, but I don’t think it is enough. They could still suspect me if they ever found out about my visit.”

Harvey laughed and petted her shoulder. “Forget it, darling. The police have another clue. The whole town knows Dr. Palet’s passion for flowers and particularly for heliotrope. Well, he must have been planting it that day, because when he killed Uncle Charley, he dropped a withered sprig of it on the floor beside Charley’s head. It must have been caught on his clothes.”

“Then I’m in the clear. The police can’t possibly suspect me.”

“That’s right, darling. Don’t you see? Palet knew he’d committed a murder, but he was afraid you had identified him when you saw him lurking in the shadows. He knew you had knocked out Uncle Charley. Only if he could convince you that you had done the killing could he feel safe. So he decided to play up to your suspicions, worry you. If he could make the cats hang around our house, he figured he could break your nerve.”

“But I don’t see how.” Julie protested. “Did he get Uncle Charley’s cats together and dump them on our front lawn? How could he make them stay there?”

“Didn’t you tell me he planted some flowers in our front yard the day after the murder?”

“Yes. Heliotrope.”

“Garden heliotrope is one name for the stuff. Valerian is another. Cats are wild about the foliage, the flowers and even the roots. That’s why he planted the stuff—to keep the seven cat witnesses in front of your eye.”

Julie was silent for a long moment. She still looked puzzled.

“But I still can’t understand,” she murmured, “why that one-eyed cat attacked Dr. Palet. It—it was almost as if that cat knew Dr. Palet had killed its master and—”

Julie broke off, a tremor in her voice.

“You are a silly one,” Harvey chided. “Palet guessed right about your superstitions. There was nothing funny about the cat jumping on him. It was going after the scent of valerian. It had caught the scent of the stuff and followed both of you into the car. When he turned around, the cat leaped and landed on his head and started to claw him in its wild frenzy to get at the valerian.”

Harvey came closer to the bed and leaned over Julie. “Your experiences should teach you to stay away from amorous, middle-aged men.”

Julie smiled, and her eyes sparkled.

“But I’ve no objection to the amorous advances of a certain young man named Harvey Enders,” she reminded him.