They moved toward the door. It was Allan who stopped suddenly. His voice shook with anger: “What the devil is that beast doing here?”
Through the music-room doorway a small Maltese cat padded noiselessly into the room, sniffing at the unfamiliar odors of strange feet, letting an incurious green gaze slide over strange faces.
“Get out!” Esther backed away, withdrawing the hem of her skirt. A paw darted. A ripping sound left a scar on the violet satin.
“Upstairs! Quick!” Allan drew Curtis away.
But Payne barred their path. “Why are you taking charge, Allan?”
“Because I am Curtis’s physician!”
“Of course.” Payne’s smile twisted. “A doctor has so many opportunities for blackmail.”
“What do you mean?”
“There had to be a doctor who supplied the Nembutal two days ago. And there had to be a doctor who helped Curtis suppress the symptoms of that allergy yesterday, and for the last three years. Who else but a doctor trying to establish himself in practice after the war? A doctor’s fees vary according to the income of each patient. Even the income-tax people wouldn’t suspect a doctor who suddenly became rich. When the going got tough, you naturally did everything you could to protect such a source of income. That’s why you suggested to Amy that your waiting room was the scene of the conversation she overheard. You hoped that would diffuse suspicion. Anyone might walk into a doctor’s waiting-room. But only a few people had easy access to the Gregorys’ living-room.”
Allan dropped Curtis’s arm. “Blackmail! Preposterous! I—”
“Not only blackmail.” Payne’s voice was hard. “Accessory after the fact of murder. Unless you are going to talk.”
“Murder! You don’t think I had anything to do with Sharpe’s death or with—” Allan stopped abruptly and then said, “I must have a lawyer before I say anything.”
“Curtis, let me get you upstairs.” Esther’s voice was low and rich with feeling as she moved forward to take the place Allan had deserted.
But Payne still blocked the way. “One question, Curtis: Why is that cat in this house tonight?”
Curtis shrugged.
“Does it matter now?” Esther was contemptuous.
“I can tell you how the cat got here,” said Payne. “I brought him in myself, secretly, this morning, so he would be in the house all day, before we met this evening. But why did I do that?”
Again Curtis shrugged.
“Aren’t you going to answer me in words, Curtis? Are you afraid to speak, with that cat and Amy Corbett both in the same room?”
“Don’t say a word!” It was more like a sob than a cry from Esther.
Curtis touched her arm. “My dear, what’s the use? They know. They’re going to prove it. Let’s get this over with.” He turned toward Amy, his eyes so sad and shamed she could scarcely meet them. “Well, Amy? Is this the voice of the man you overheard talking over an open telephone line?”
The deep, hoarse tones, so unlike Curtis’s normal voice, died away. Amy nodded. “Yes.” She couldn’t say more. There were tears in her own eyes.
“Oh, my dear... my dear—” Esther pushed her cocktail glass into Curtis’s hand, then she put her arms around him, her head against his shoulder.
Curtis gently disengaged himself. He drained the cocktail before he turned to Payne: “Why did you do this to us?”
“Because you and Esther killed my best friend, Charley Maitland, in order to marry each other, and you were planning to kill me, when you saw I suspected it.
“The cat, whose cry Amy heard over the open telephone line two days ago, was a stray kitten that wandered in here and that Esther forced her maid to give away afterward. That cat was what made your voice unrecognizably hoarse when Amy heard it over the telephone. For you have a respiratory allergy to the dander of cats. It must have developed when you were on the West Coast during the war, for no one here knew about it.
“When I telephoned Charley Maitland’s house the night he died, yours was the strange voice that answered the telephone. Your voice was rasping then, so that I couldn’t identify it afterward — a rasping caused temporarily by the Persian cats Charley Maitland bred. You didn’t want anyone to know you were in Maitland’s house the night he died. So you did everything you could to conceal your allergy and its symptoms.
“When you came East again, your doctor, Allan, discovered the cause of your allergy. He helped you conceal it by avoiding the cause and suppressing the symptoms as quickly as he could when avoidance wasn’t possible. But your anxiety about it made him suspicious, and he discovered enough of the truth to be able to blackmail you.
“You were late when you reached Mrs. Corbett’s house that first evening because you had already killed Sharpe in Allan’s stable. When you came out on the terrace you were careful to say to Esther in Amy’s hearing, ‘Where have you been all afternoon? I thought you were going to meet me at the club for a swim.’ You wanted Amy to think you and Esther had not been together since lunchtime. When, later, you pleaded with Amy to forget the whole thing and make peace with Esther, you were pleading for yourself as well as for Esther.
“The fact that you really liked Amy and didn’t want to injure her made it all the worse for you. It was not Amy you were trying to kill when she left Allan’s house last night. It was I, Matt Payne, the one person from Esther’s past whose very existence was a perpetual threat to Esther and yourself. Maitland’s friend, who, once he heard your hoarse, allergic voice again, would know that you were with Esther and Maitland when Maitland died.
“Esther had told you I was following Amy to Allan’s. When you saw Allan leave the house you assumed Amy had gone already. But there was still a light in the waiting-room. You thought it was I, prying into Allan’s records for evidence of blackmail. You caused a short circuit with outside wires to bring me outdoors. When you saw the tall figure in a mannish trench coat through the misty darkness, you were sure it was I, not Amy, so you attacked.”
Payne looked at his watch. “I didn’t expect the allergic symptoms to develop quite so soon. Murchison was to have been on hand. As it is, we can expect him here at any moment.”
“You’re too late!” Esther’s brilliant eyes defied him mockingly, then softened as she turned back to Curtis. “Forgive me, dear.”
Curtis smiled. “Did you think I didn’t know what you had put in that cocktail? Thank you, Esther!” He cherished her face against his cheek and, at last, Amy saw Curtis as he really was — a star-crossed lover, doomed and desperate, Paolo to Esther’s Francesca...
Afterward Payne came to see Amy at her apartment in New York.
“Charley Maitland wouldn’t divorce Esther,” said Payne. “Hence that misleading phrase: ‘Didn’t seem like adultery when it was you and I.’ They talked of running away together without divorce, but that takes money. Esther had no money of her own. The war had brought Curtis near bankruptcy, since he was a silk importer. When they realized that Maitland’s life insurance would pull Curtis out of his financial hole, while Maitland’s death would make it possible for them to marry, the situation became intolerable to them, and three years ago, while Curtis was still in the Army, they killed Maitland.”
“And did Curtis kill that Siamese cat?” prompted Amy.
“He had to keep the cat at a good distance or his voice would become hoarse again. He couldn’t risk that, for he didn’t know how soon he might meet you afterward. It was too dark and foggy to see shape, but he could see movement. He threw his old army knife at a movement so close to the ground it had to be animal rather than human. Luckily for you.”
“Why luckily for me?”