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“Who’s never done what?”

“Mr. Kelso. He’s never broken the girl barrier. You know, it’s like the sound barrier. A boy’s got to want to break it, be­cause if he doesn’t he’s dead. There’s this boy at school ? some of us girls come down the hall and he ducks into a classroom.”

“I wouldn’t wonder,” Patti remarked.

Inky grew confidential.“I wouldn’t marry a fellow like that. He’d be the kind who’d gulp down his dinner and get out of the house fast to go bowling. His biological urge is too weak.”

“Inky!”

“That’s the trouble. You don’t face the facts. A boy’s no good as a husband if he doesn’t have it. And I’m not being shocking. I’m only recognizing facts which you older people never do, and look at all the divorces and broken homes.”

Patti said with finality,“I’m not marrying him or your be­loved Greg. So close your mouth, pull in your tongue, and get the body into the kitchen.”

“In that order?”

23

By seven o’clock the fact became apparent that Patti had inaccurately translated D.C.‘s intentions. He was sound asleep and no prodding could stir him. She talked with him, rubbed his ears, and even pulled the drapes aside so he could see that dusk was moving in. He gave her a scathing glance and rolled over, turning his back on her.

“It’s no use,” she said in the half-dark room. “He’s not going out.”

“He’s got to,” Zeke answered, standing close to her, staring at the cat. His arm brushed hers, and once again she was acutely conscious of the intimacy of the moment. She shrugged the feeling away. Still angry with Greg, she realized she might be experiencing an emotional recoil. And yet Zekemeshed so well with whatever she thought and did. It was as if he always had been a part of her life and this house. He was the most restful man she had ever been around.

Zeke crossed to the radio, picked up the microphone, and said,” Operations Center , Operations Center . Informant sound asleep. No indication he will awaken in the immediate future. Suggest you activate Plan A.”

Plan A was put into effect thirty minutes later with the ar­rival of Dr. Jason Faulkner, a noted Beverly Hills feline psychiatrist. Although Zeke considered the calling of Dr. Faulkner ridiculous, Supervisor Newton had recommended it in case D.C. failed to make his rounds. The Bureau op­erated on the policy that no possibility should be overlooked in an investigation, no matter how fantastic or slight the chance of its success. When a life or the apprehension of dangerous fugitives were at stake, no avenue could be ig­nored.

Dr. Faulkner was a tall, graying individual with a profes­sor’s manner. His clients included many famous movie stars and other wealthy people who attested to his skill in analyz­ing their cats’ neuroses and, in a high percentage of cases, eliminating them. He was one of four psychiatrists in Beverly Hills specializing in cats and dogs.

“I seldom have a cat of uncertain ancestry,” he told Zeke. “Most of my patients are Siamese, Manx ? the better fami­lies.”

Zeke glanced up sharply to determine if the doctor were being facetious but he was quite serious. Only Beverly Hills , Zeke? thought, could develop and bring to such a high de­gree of perfection such an unusual head shrinker.

The doctor conducted a cursory examination of D.C., which elicited a warning growl and finally a laying back of the ears. Dr. Faulkner asked numerous questions of Patti and Ingrid regarding D.C.‘s habits. “I need to know,” he ex­plained, “so that I may reach a proper evaluation and ad­judication of the problem ? that is to say, in order to rec­oncile the inner person with the outer person.”

Zeke stopped his flow of thought.“I don’t care about his inner person. We just want to get the outer one moving.”

Pointedly, Dr. Faulkner ignored him. The doctor held a high disdain for persons totally ignorant of the aims and methods of modern psychiatry.“I must know the emotional climate.” He looked straight at Zeke. “He may be suffering from an anti-authority attitude buried deep in the subconscious ? and ridden with anxieties. Deeply depressed.”

D.C. looked up as if to say, Who, me? Why, you old fool. Give me a dog to chase and I’ll show you how depressed I am.

Mike said from the doorway,“He’s anti-authority all right. Always has been.”

Zeke was growing weary of this nonsense.“Don’t all cats suffer from that, doctor?”

“Only when they feel the inner resentment of humans.”

Mike said, indicating Zeke,“Must be him. We all love him, don’t we, you old ham.” He shook D.C.‘s flabby stomach, and D.C. kicked with all four paws. They were always get­ting personal. How would they like it if he shook their gelati­nous parts?

“I love him, too,” Zeke said, rubbing his puffed eyes with his fists. He had to get out of the room, and soon. He was going blind. If the blasted cat would only get his big fat carcass into the outdoors, the allergy would recede.

Zeke admitted that he had been rather demanding. In fact, the things he had required of D.C. might, from a cat’s point of view, amount to indignities.

The doctor said a-a-h, as though the meaning of the uni­verse had just been unfolded to him. Finally, he ventured, “My preliminary observation would indicate he is not a psy­chotic masochist.”

Mike asked,“Isn’t that a dirty word?” In the same instant, Patti said with faint sarcasm, “I’m glad to hear that. Be terrible if we had a what-you-call-it on our hands.”

From the beginning she had been hurt that anyone would want to psychoanalyze D.C. since it was obvious he was perfectly normal. She had told Zeke,“He isn’t any more neu­rotic than I am, or Ingrid, or Mike.”

“That could be,” Zeke had commented wryly.

Now Dr. Faulkner said,“He has undergone a change in emotional climate that has caused a deep-seated aberration. He is fearful of the quiet that has fallen suddenly on his world, and seeks escape in sleep.”

“You mean I can set off my rocket?” Mike asked.

“If that is normal procedure, yes. I would advise that you restore this household to its customary routine.”

Zeke took another look at Dr. Faulkner and hastily revised his estimate of the psychiatrist. He might have a point there.

24

At eight o’clock, Helen Jenkins sat in the bedroom rocker where she had spent most of the day. Dan and Sammy had moved a card table in and were playing poker. They spoke only in weary monosyllables, and Dan, who faced her, swept her every few seconds with his eyes. Behind the men the air conditioner rumbled and groaned uncertainly, and on an end table by the bed a radio emitted a fairly high volume of talk and music.

Shortly after breakfast they had shoved her into the bed­room, first pulling the shades. She realized then that her earlier threat to scream was futile, what with the radio and air conditioner going. And besides, one of them would be upon her almost before the scream was out.

Twice that day Dan had left the room, at noon to bring in cold cuts, and in midafternoon when he had looked up the landlady. Returning, he told Sammy,“We’re okay. She asked where we were going, and I told her San Jose . She said she was sorry to see us go, after I paid her the extra month’s rent for running out on her. Said we’d been nice, quiet tenants.”

Sammy said to her,“You hear that, Jenkins? She’s sorry to see you go.”

She offered no answer. Her earlier bravado was gone, and a deep despondency had set in. Not that she was quite whipped yet. She still had three hours, perhaps four. She still might think of a way out, although she knew she was deluding herself. She was a condemned woman on Death Row, hoping and praying for a last-minute reprieve, and hear­ing the quiet ticking of time as it ran out on her.

How many times that day she had glanced at the alarm by her bed she would never know. But every few minutes her eyes had been drawn in that direction by a compelling force. Time was something to squander, almost to forget in life ex­cept for the routine of arriving on a job and leaving, going to church, watching a television program. It never bad any deep significance in itself except when one was about to die.