Zeke ran a hand through his unruly hair and was pondering an answer when a loud, demanding knock reverberated through the house. They froze into an old-fashioned portrait sitting. Patti recovered first. “I’ll get it. You stay here.” She indicated Ingrid and Mike.
She paced slowly to the front door, taking all the time she could to collect herself. She switched on the porch light and drew the door open a few inches. “Oh, it’s you,” she mumbled.
Greg charged in, bearing a bedraggled tuberous begonia, which he proceeded to shake in her face. “Clara Peabody finest specimen obtainable. And look at it. Watered and cared for with my own hands for six months, and nourished by God, and in six seconds destroyed by your cat.”
She stood staring, then shook her head to try to make sense out of this wild onslaught of verbiage. He continued rapidly, “Sad to say, my begonia’s dead but he’s still alive, and wailing like a banshee. So if you don’t mind too much, Miss Randall that is, if it’s not interfering with your personal affairs” he looked around the room for evidence of a man “would you come and get the little monster?”
He added, “He’s up a tree right over my bedroom.”
“You took a shot at him,” she said angrily. “You deliberately tried to kill D.C. I never thought you’d go that far. But you set out with with “
“Premeditation?”
“That’s it, that’s what it was, premeditated murder.”
He stared at her with calculating eyes as a thought took shape. He asked slowly, “How did you know I took a shot at anything? Who told you?”
“No nobody. I heard the shot.”
“You heard a shot, and you knew it was my shotgun. You recognized it from its tonal quality.”
“I knew,” she insisted stubbornly. “You threatened him once. Remember? You said you were going to give him a pants full of buckshot. Those were your exact words. You said “
“Did your boy friend tell you he was prowling around in my back yard like a burglar, and drew a gun, and was going to kill me in cold blood?” He raised his voice. “Tell him to come on out and we’ll settle this man-to-man.”
“Greg!” She started to cry. “Greg, how could you suggest, how dare you?
“
“Don’t tell me he didn’t run back in here?”
“Greg!”
“He shot out of my place like a rocket.”
“If you choose to believe Mrs. Macdougall
“
“That old busybody.” Quickly he drew a legal brief in his mind. “But there was a man in my yard, and you knew I’d taken a shot
“
“If you have prowlers, call the police. Don’t come roaring over here.”
She was so furious she could have kicked him on the shins, but she controlled herself admirably, she thought. She said, ‘Til get into something and come over.”
He calmed suddenly, shaking his head. “Well, I did it again, didn’t I? I’m always doing it with you.”
“You’d better do a little public relations work on yourself, Greg, instead of hiring people to do it for you.”
He stood like a boy caught robbing the deep freeze. She walked to the hutch, picked up the five-dollar bill, and handed it to him. “Here’s your five dollars. I don’t want to see you throw your money away. Nobody can do anything about your image.”
Greg took the bill as if it might snap at him. “I do care, Patti, don’t you see? Why don’t we sit down like sensible people and calmly and quietly “
“Okay whenever you think the description fits you.”
“If you’d keep your cat tied up
“
“And have him turn into a frustrated, neurotic old man?”
“You’d rather have a frustrated, neurotic old neighbor maybe?”
She repeated, “I’ll get into something and come over.”
As he left, he said, “All right, and be sure to bring the fire department with you, because, man, if that cat had had something to hold to he’d have been the first one on the moon.”
In the glare of giant spotlights a ladder rose from the bed of a fire truck straight toward D.C., who sat swaying on the highest branch. He looked with keen interest on the equipment below and the mob of firemen, police officers, and neighbors. Not bad, not bad at all. Man, he really had a blast going. It was odd. Some nights he went out and couldn’t find any action, and other nights, when he was only half trying, he would hit it lucky and get a whole neighborhood out of bed.
He saw his assassin wandering around down there, and the hair from his neck straight down his backbone stood on end.
As a fireman reached for him, D.C. hissed and backed further out on the limb. He never permitted strangers to touch him. Besides, it was a long way down if he were dropped, and his springs were not exactly factory new.
The fireman beat a retreat when he saw an intent in D.C.‘s eyes that could be catalogued only as murderous. On the ground below, Greg said, “Let me up there. I’ll get the little fiend.”
“Don’t,” Patti half screamed. “He’ll murder him. He’s already tried once tonight.”
Greg started up, moving fast and with the agility of an athlete. From his eyrie above, D.C. watched fascinated. With each rung Greg took, D.C. whisked his tail a little more in anticipation.
At last Greg took the final step on the ladder, which swayed in the wind. He drew a deep breath, steadied himself, and stared into D.C.‘s eyes, which observed him with a hunter’s instinct for timing. That was the secret, timing. If he were off even a second
.
Greg reached for him, which was a gross mistake since it put on display one long, narrow arm. D.C. would have sworn from a cursory examination of the exposed part that Greg was thick-skinned, but he drew blood easily in one knifelike swipe that began a little above the elbow and ran to the wrist. Greg almost backed off the ladder. Below, a fireman yelled in alarm. Greg groaned and swore, and D.C. smiled.
Greg returned to earth with the suggestion that they should fire a tranquilizer into D.C., the way humane officers do when they trap an escaped wild animal. “It’s the only way you’ll ever get him down without somebody losing an arm.”
Ingrid proved him wrong. After much pleading she was permitted to climb the ladder. D.C. followed her progress with an expression on his little face of consummate happiness. He had known all along that eventually she or Patti would come for him. They spent their lives protecting and caring for him, and in this crisis they would not let him be carried down in ignominy by the enemy.
He leaped to her shoulder and licked her on the cheek. He kissed her not only because he loved her but because he had the largest audience of his career. People relished little gestures like that. It simply got them deep down.
And it did. Watching below, a woman tugged at her husband’s robe. “Did you see that, Joe? He kissed her for saving his life.” Joe grunted.
Holding his arm, which a fireman had bandaged, Greg said to Joe, “Cats! They’ve got everybody in Hollywood beaten seven ways to kingdom come for acting. They’re all fiends in baby clothes.”
Once on the ground, D.C. reached over from his perch on Ingrid’s shoulders to lick Patti, and then the three, Ingrid, Patti, and Mike, thanked the officers and firemen profusely.
In her good nights, Patti reluctantly included Greg.
19
The next morning at breakfast Helen Jenkins remarked quietly, “I heard you talking last night.”
Sammy choked on his bacon and Dan became a study in still life. “Care for more coffee?” she asked, and when Dan nodded by rote, she poured with hands steadied by a will she never knew she possessed.
She had stayed awake the entire night. The two men had finished their discussion around 2 a.m. by setting her strangulation murder for the next evening. They wanted time to notify the landlady they were leaving town to take jobs elsewhere.
For several hours she had been too panicked to think but shortly before dawn she organized her thoughts like so many figures on the report sheet at the bank. After considering the pros and cons, she decided on a frontal attack. If she revealed she knew their plans, she would throw them off balance and perhaps gain an advantage. More important, though, she might talk them out of their plan temporarily, and win an additional day or two.