Ellery thought it unworthy of him.
But he was looking poorly these days, and that was provocative; thinned out, fallen in, the ice of his hair crumbling. His heavy face was sludgy and cracked; he had developed twitches under both eyes; his large hands, when they were not drumming on the nearest object, kept drifting about his person as if seeking an anchorage. Mrs. Cazalis, who was in miserable attendance, said that the work her husband had done for the City had taken too much out of him, it was her fault for having pounded at him to continue investigating. The doctor patted his wife’s hand. He was taking it easy, he said; what bothered him was that he had failed. A young man “rises above failure,” he said, an old man “sinks under it.” “Edward, I want you to go away.” But he smiled. He was considering a long rest, he said. As soon as he tied off certain “loose ends”...
Was he mocking them?
The metaphor remained with them.
Or had he become suspicious and was uncertainty or the fear of detection strong enough to check the continuing impulse to kill?
He might have caught sight of one of his pursuers. The detectives were sure he had not.
Still, it was possible.
Or had they left a trace of their visit to his apartment? They had worked systematically, touching and moving nothing until they had fixed in their memories the exact position and condition of each object to be touched and moved. And afterward they had restored each object to its original place.
Still, again, he may have noticed something wrong. Suppose he had set a trap? He might have had a little signal for himself, a trivial thing, unnoticeable, in the storage closet or in one of the drawers. A psychotic of a certain type might have taken such a precaution. Elaborately. They were dealing with a man whose brilliance overlapped his psychosis. In certain flights he might be prescient.
It was possible.
Dr. Cazalis’s movements were as innocent as those of a man walking across a field under the sunny sky. A patient or two a day in his office, chiefly women. An occasional consultation with other psychiatrists. Long nights when he did not step out of his apartment. Once a visit with Mrs. Cazalis to the Richardsons’. Once a concert at Carnegie, when he listened to the Franck symphony with open eyes and clenched hands; and then, curl-lipped and calm, listening with enjoyment to Bach and Mozart. Once a social evening with some professional friends and their wives.
At no time did he venture near East 29th Street and First Avenue.
It was possible.
That was the canker.
Anything was possible.
By the tenth day after the strangulation of Donald Katz, and in the sixth day of “Sue Martin’s” practical-nursing career, they were sweating. They spent most of their time now in the report room at Police Headquarters. In silence. Or, when the silence became intolerable, snapping at one another with a querulousness that made silence a relief.
What was digging new hollows in Inspector Queen’s face was the thought that Cazalis might be outwaiting them. Madmen had been known to exercise extraordinary patience. Sooner or later — Cazalis might be thinking — they would conclude that he had reached the end of his string... if only he did nothing long enough. Then they would call off their watchdogs. Sooner or later.
Was that what Cazalis was waiting for?
If, of course, he knew he was being watched.
Or, if he foresaw that this was one case in which the watchers would never be withdrawn, he might deliberately be waiting until he tired them into carelessness. And then... an opening. And he would slip into the clear.
With a tussah silk cord in his pocket.
Inspector Queen kept harrying his operatives until they hated him.
Ellery’s brain performed more desperate acrobatics. Suppose Cazalis had set a trap in his storage closet. Suppose he did know someone had been looking through his old files. Then he knew they had exposed the heart of his secret. Then he knew they knew how he chose his victims.
In such case it would not be overcrediting Cazalis’s acumen to say that he would also guess their plan. He had merely to do what Ellery was now doing: to put himself in the adversary’s place.
Then Cazalis would know that they had gone beyond Donald Katz to Marilyn Soames, and that with Marilyn Soames they had baited a trap for him.
If I were Cazalis, said Ellery, what would I do then? I would give up all thought of snaring Marilyn Soames’s card to the card of the next regularly indicated victim. Or, to play it even safer, I would skip the next regularly indicated victim to the one following on the chance that the enemy had taken out insurance as well. Which we haven’t done...
Ellery writhed. He could not forgive himself. There was no excuse, he kept saying. To have failed to take the precaution of searching Cazalis’s cards past Marilyn Soames to the next-indicated victim, and the next, and the next, and protecting them all — even if it meant going to the end of the file and having to guard a hundred young people all over the City...
If these premises were sound, Cazalis might even now be waiting for the detectives trailing him to relax their vigilance. And when they did, the Cat would slink out to strangle a tenth, unknown victim at his leisure, laughing all the while at the detectives he knew were guarding Marilyn Soames.
Ellery became quite masochistic about it.
“The best we can hope for,” he groaned, “is that Cazalis makes a move toward Marilyn. The worst, that he’s already moved against someone else. If that happens, we won’t know about it till it’s over. Unless we can keep Cazalis at the other end of the tail, Dad. We’ve got to hang on to him! How about assigning a few extra men...?”
But the Inspector shook his head. The more men, the greater the chance of giving the game away. After all, there was no reason to believe that Cazalis suspected anything. The trouble was that they were getting too nervous.
“Who’s nervous?”
“You are! And so am I! — though I wasn’t till you started your old fancy mental gymnastics!”
“Tell me it couldn’t happen that way, Dad.”
“Then why not go after those records again?”
Well, muttered Ellery, they were better off stringing along with what they had. Let well enough alone. Watchful waiting. Time will tell.
“The master of the original phrase,” snarled Jimmy McKell. “If you ask me, your morale is showing. Doesn’t anybody give a slup in bloody borscht what happens to my girl?”
That reminded them that it was time to go uptown for the nightly meeting with Celeste.
They jostled one another getting through the door.
The night of Wednesday, October 19, was uncharitable. The three men huddled in the alley entrance between two buildings on the south side of East 29th Street, near Second Avenue. There was a cutting wet wind and they kept up a little dance as they waited.
10:15.
It was the first time Celeste had been late.
They kept yapping at one another. Swearing at the wind. Jimmy would poke his head out of the alley and say under his breath, “Come onnnnnn, Celeste!” as if she were a horse.
The lights of Bellevue over on First Avenue were no comfort.
The reports on Cazalis that day had been discouraging. He had not left his apartment. Two patients had called during the afternoon, both young women. Della and Zachary Richardson had shown up at 6:30 on foot; apparently for dinner, as by 9 P.M., the time of the last report the Queens had received before leaving Headquarters, they had still not come out.
“It’s nothing, Jimmy,” Ellery kept saying. “Cazalis is safe for the night. Can’t mean a-thing. She just couldn’t get away—”