A little to the south hung a bright spume. But it was a mirage. Times Square would be sweltering under it; the people would be in Radio City Music Hall, the Roxy, the Capitol, the Strand, the Paramount, the State — wherever there was a promise of lower temperatures.
Some would seek the subways. The coupled cars kept their connecting doors open and when the trains rushed along between stations there was a violent displacement of the tunnel air, hellish but a wind. The choice position was in the front doorway of the head car beside the motorman’s cubicle. Here the masses would be thickest, swaying in a grateful catalepsy.
In Washington Square, along Fifth Avenue, 57th Street, upper Broadway, Riverside Drive, Central Park West, 110th Street, Lexington Avenue, Madison, the busses would accept the few and spurn the many and they would rush up and down, north and south, east and west, chasing their tails like...
Ellery blundered back to his desk, lit a cigaret.
No matter where I start, he thought, I wind up in the same damned place.
That Cat’s getting to be a problem.
He tilted, embracing his neck. His fingers slithered in the universal ooze and he tightened them, thinking that he could stand an over-all tightening. Nonskid thoughts. A new lining job on the will.
The Cat.
Ellery smoked, crookedly.
A great temptation.
In the Wrightsville Van Horn case Ellery had run into stunning treachery. He had found himself betrayed by his own logic. The old blade had turned suddenly in his hand; he had aimed at the guilty with it and it had run through the innocent. So he had put it away and taken up his typewriter. As Inspector Queen said, ivory tower stuff.
Unhappily, he had to share his turret with an old knight who jousted daily with the wicked. Inspector Richard Queen of the New York Police Department being also the unhorsed champion’s sire, it was a perilous proximity.
“I don’t want to hear about a case,” Ellery would say. “Just let me be.”
“What’s the matter?” his father would jeer. “Afraid you might be tempted?”
“I’ve given all that up. I’m not interested any longer.”
But that was before the Cat strangled Archibald Dudley Abernethy.
He had tried to ignore the murder of Abernethy. And for some time he had succeeded in doing so. But the creature’s round little face with its round little eyes had an annoying way of staring out at him from his morning newspaper.
In the end he had brought himself up to date.
It was interesting, an interesting case.
He had never seen a less meaningful face. It was not vicious, or kind, or sly, or stupid; it was not even enigmatic. It was nothing, a rotundity, a 44-year-old fetus-face; one of nature’s undeveloped experiments.
Yes, an interesting homicide.
And then the second strangling.
And the third.
And...
The apartment door blupped!
“Dad?”
Ellery jumped, banging his shin. He limped hurriedly to the living room.
“Hi there.” Inspector Queen already had his jacket and necktie off; he was removing his shoes. “You look cool, son.”
The Inspector looked gray.
“Tough day?” It was not the heat. The old man was as weatherproof as a desert rat.
“Anything on the ice, Ellery?”
“Lemonade. Quarts of it.”
The Inspector shuffled into the kitchen. Ellery heard the icebox open and close. “By the way, congratulate me.”
“Congratulate you on what?”
“On being handed today,” said his father, reappearing with a frosty glass, “the biggest pig in the poke of my alleged — I say alleged — career.” He threw his head back and drank. Throat showing, he looked even grayer.
“Fired?”
“Worse.”
“Promoted.”
“Well,” said the Inspector, seating himself, “I’m now top dog in the Cat chase.”
“The Cat.”
“You know, the Cat?”
Ellery leaned against the study jamb.
“The Commissioner called me in,” said the Inspector, folding his hands about the glass, “and he told me he’d had the move under consideration for some time. He’s creating a special Cat squad. I’m in full charge. As I said, top dog.”
“Caninized.” Ellery laughed.
“Maybe you find this situation full of yuks,” said his father, “but as for me, give me liberty and lots of it.” He drained what was left in the glass. “Ellery, I damn near told the Commissioner to his face today that Dick Queen’s too old a bird to be handed a deal like this. I’ve given the P.D. a pretty full lifetime of faithful service. I deserve better.”
“But you took it.”
“Yes, I took it,” said the Inspector, “and God help me, I even said, ‘Thanks, Commissioner.’ And then I got the feeling,” he went on in a worried way, “that he had some angle he wasn’t putting on the line and son, I wanted to duck out even more. I can still do it.”
“You talking about quitting?”
“Well, I’m just talking. Anyway, you can’t say you don’t come by it honestly.”
“Ourrrrch.” Ellery went to one of the living room windows. “But it’s not my brawl,” he complained to New York. “I played around a little, that’s all. For a long time I was lucky. But when I found out I was using loaded dice—”
“I see your point. Yes. And this crap game’s for keeps.”
Ellery turned around. “Aren’t you exaggerating?”
“Ellery, this is an emergency.”
“Oh, come.”
“I said,” said the old man, “an emergency.”
“A few murders. Granted they’re puzzling. That’s hardly a new twist. What’s the percentage of unsolved homicides? I don’t understand you, Dad. I had a reason for quitting; I’d taken on something and I flubbed it, causing a death or two by the way. But you’re a pro. This is an assignment. The responsibility for failure, if you fail, is the Commissioner’s. And suppose these stranglings aren’t solved—”
“My dear philosopher,” said the Inspector, rolling the empty glass between his palms, “if these stranglings aren’t solved, and damned quickly, something’s going to pop in this man’s town.”
“Pop? In New York? How do you mean?”
“It hasn’t really got going yet. Just signs. The number of phone calls to Headquarters asking for information, instructions, reassurance, anything. The increase in false alarm police calls, especially at night. The jitters of the men on duty. A little more all-around tension than there ought to be. A...” the Inspector groped with his glass... “a sort of concentration of interest on the part of the public. They’re too interested. It isn’t natural.”
“Just because an overheated cartoonist—”
“Just because! Who cares a hoot in Hell Gate what’s caused it? It’s on its way, Ellery. Why is the only smash hit on Broadway this summer that ridiculous murder farce, The Cat? Every critic in town panned it as the smelliest piece of rat cheese to hit New York in five years, and it’s the only show doing business. Winchell’s latest is ‘Cat-Astrophes.’ Berle turned down a cat joke, said he didn’t think the subject was funny. The pet shops report they haven’t sold a kitten in a month. They’re beginning to see the Cat in Riverdale, Canarsie, Greenpoint, the East Bronx, Park Row, Park Avenue, Park Plaza. We’re starting to find alley cats strangled with cords all over the city. Forsythe Street. Pitkin Avenue. Lenox. Second. Tenth. Bruckner Boulevard—”
“Kids.”
“Sure, we’ve even caught some of them at it. But it’s a symptom, Ellery. A symptom of something that scares the stiffener out of me, and I’m man enough to admit it.”
“Have you eaten anything today?”