The Cat Wears a Mask

by Dolores Hitchens

  “Something queer is getting under way … or rather, probably, being finished. Probably a detail or two needed tidying.”

  “You think that Gail …” Jennifer was noticeably paler.

  “Gail shouldn’t have gone off alone, and I shouldn’t have taken it for granted that the group would remain intact down at the cars.” Miss Rachel picked her way down the narrow area between the houses. It had begun to rain again, big scattered drops that raised the odors of wet earth, dead weeds, and rotted wood from underfoot. At the rear an acre or so of empty space lay between the house and the fringe of pines. Miss Rachel searched it with her eye, then turned right.

  On the bare earth under the windows of the old house lay three or four shreds of paper, tiny pieces of a neutral green color which almost escaped Miss Rachel at first. She bent and gathered them. None was as large as her thumbnail. Soggy from contact with the wet ground, they disintegrated as she handled them. She stood on tiptoe beside the wall and looked into the old house. In these rear rooms timbers had fallen through from the ceiling, leaving a ragged hole which showed the empty upper space, then a roof full of holes. “Gail …”

  She went on towards the end of the row of buildings, rounded them into the open expanse of the parade ground. Jennifer swung around sharply at the sound of her footsteps. “Did you find her?”

  “No.” She ran her eye over the other buildings; none offered any shelter or would be capable of concealing anyone.

  “Gail may have gone back to the cars.”

  “Yes, we’d better see if she has.” Still she stood there, undecided, her mind filled with dissatisfaction. “Remember Gail’s account book, on her desk? Did you see the canceled checks sticking out of it?”

  “I think so. Yellow slips of some kind.”

  “And a green one.”

  “I don’t remember. … Is it important?”

  “Wait here a minute. There’s a stable or some sort of shed, off at the end, not quite as fallen down as the others.” She started off.

  “What are you looking for, Rachel?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be bumbling around.”

  “I’m coming with you.” Jennifer picked up her skirts, avoided a hole left by some burrowing animal, started nervously at a dried discarded snakeskin, and headed after Rachel towards the ruins of the stables. “Old manure. Never quits smelling … uh …” Her eyes grew big, her step slowed. Miss Rachel had put up a cautioning hand.

  “Someone’s on the other side of the wall,” Miss Rachel breathed into her ear.

  “Let’s slip away, then.”

  “You go around that end, I’ll go this way. We’ll catch them.”

  “If it’s the—the murderer, Rachel, we won’t stay alive to catch anybody.”

  “Do it anyway.” Miss Rachel gave her sister a shove, then crept to the end of the adobe wall and peered round it. Like a conspirator in a spy story, Miss Jennifer thought in the midst of her indignant fright. Like a child playing cops and robbers. Obviously what was wrong with Rachel was that she had simply never grown up. To resist growing up through all those years, to refuse to take up knitting, to turn down the chance to be secretary for the Parchly Heights Methodist Ladies’ Aid, to read murder mysteries endlessly and go to see motion pictures named Corpses Don’t Like Candy or some such …

  Miss Jennifer put her head around the end of the wall. A scream came up into her throat She looked around for a weapon.

  Gail Dickson lay face down in the grass.

  Mr. Ryker knelt beside her. He had the ends of the brown scarf in his hands.

  The scarf was knotted tight around Gail’s throat, and Gail wasn’t moving. She looked huddled and small and dead.

  Chapter 18

  Bob Ryker lifted his head as Miss Jennifer advanced. Having-been obliged to leave the umbrella at Gail’s house by the edict of no baggage, she had compromised on a two-foot length of spiny stick she had found among the grasses.

  He was pale, she noticed. With guilt, no doubt. “She’ll be all right now. She’s breathing regularly. I loosened the scarf just in time.”

  “Murderer!” said Jennifer fiercely.

  Miss Rachel was with them now, kneeling swiftly, pushing the soft brown hair back from Gail’s face. “Yes, she is breathing. There’s a bump on her temple, though.”

  Jennifer held the stick ready. “In the act, the very act, and if you come one step towards me, I’ll beat your brains out.”

  Ryker had stepped back, stood there as if confused. “I almost broke my neck getting up here. There’s a sheer face of rock. I don’t think he used that … I think he knew some other way, a cleft in the hill or something.”

  Miss Rachel was staring closely at Gail, smoothing the hair back from the temples, taking her pulse … She flicked a look at Ryker. “Who?”

  “Emerson. Who else?”

  “You were all there, all except Mr. Emerson?”

  He frowned down at her. “I guess we were. Pedro and I were working together when I saw all at once that Emerson’s spade was sticking in the dirt and he was gone.”

  “You found Gail here, just like this?”

  The rain spattered loudly between them, wetting the brown coat that Gail wore, tumbling like jewels through her hair. Miss Jennifer brushed a raindrop off her nose. “Rachel, don’t you believe the evidence of your eyes?”

  “He must be given a chance to speak, Jennifer.”

  Ryker looked at them with foggy eyes. “She was like that. I thought she was dead. Then I got the scarf loosened.”

  “Someone was doing this job as we first walked into the clearing,” Miss Rachel said to her sister. She delved into the pockets of the brown coat, came up with a handkerchief, a powder compact, some shreds of green paper resembling those in the grass. But these were dry. She let Ryker see them. “Do they remind you of anything?”

  He stood still. His face suddenly assumed the look of a mask.

  “You do know, then.”

  “No,” he denied. “Just paper.”

  “Check paper. Did your wife use purple ink?”

  His tone was dry, husky. “I never knew her to.”

  “She hated gambling, didn’t she?”

  The mask stiffened. “She hated taking a chance on anything that wasn’t under her control.”

  Miss Rachel studied him. “When Gail came up here she walked along the road on the other side of the open field. Someone called or beckoned to her from between two of the buildings. The fact that Gail answered that summons shows that she was unsuspicious … but she became suspicious almost immediately. She began to destroy whatever it was she had in her pocket—something in the form of a green slip of paper which looks like check paper. She threw away a few shreds on the spot at which she joined this other person. It may have been that she had been asked to produce this check.”

  His hands opened, then shut into fists. “He’ll answer to me when I find him. There won’t be any interruptions this time.”

  “Why don’t you tell me the truth, Mr. Ryker?”

  He backed away until he was touching the adobe wall. “Any truths you dig up from here on out are going to be damned unpleasant ones. But I didn’t forge any checks to pay gambling debts in Reno. Are you going to let me carry Gail back to the car?”

  “We’ve got our eyes pinned on you,” Miss Jennifer warned.

  Ryker threw her a glance into which he managed to force some of the old wicked whimsey. “I assure you that Gail will be as safe as she would in her mother’s arms.”

  “Suppose you let me decide that,” said a heavy masculine voice.

  They turned as one to meet the stare of a State Police captain in uniform. He was big—the biggest policeman Miss Rachel ever remembered. He had gray hair cropped short under his cap, a pepper-and-salt mustache, a long bony face, and ears so big they gave him a faintly radish aspect. He walked with a firm military step, bent above Gail, felt of her wrist, and examined her temple. “This is Miss Dickson. I know her. What happened her
e?”

  Miss Rachel spoke. “Someone struck her down—you can see the mark—and then tied her scarf very tightly around her throat and left her to die.”

  He remained kneeling for a few moments, apparently satisfying himself that Gail was in no danger. He stood up and straightened his uniform. “Now, you people …” His frosty official glance sharpened itself on Jennifer and her weapon, Miss Rachel, Ryker standing mute beside the wall. “Who are you?”

  “We’re guests of Miss Dickson’s. This is my sister, Miss Jennifer Murdock. I’m Miss Rachel. And this is Mr. Ryker.”

  The pepper-and-salt eyebrows crawled upward. “Ryker? The husband?”

  Bob Ryker didn’t reply for a moment. Then he drawled curiously, “Where the devil did you pop up from?”

  Captain Isleton’s glance grew chiller yet. “I’ve been in the process of getting up here for most of the night and morning. My car’s just below the clearing”—he jerked his head in the direction of the turn-around space used by picnickers—“with two flat tires and something in the motor that seems to be the result of pulling for hours through the mud. You are Robert Ryker, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your wife died as the result of a rattlesnake bite?”

  “So far as we were able to tell. There was a snake in her room, there were fang marks on her ankle, and she died.”

  “Anything else?” Isleton watched Ryker, who nodded and muttered, “A second death.” Isleton said, “Who was it?”

  Ryker seemed deliberately to put on a mask; his eyes grew blank, his face lost all expression. “A Miss Ilene Taggart, poor little devil.”

  “Another snake bite?”

  “No. Strangled—much like Miss Dickson’s near-disaster. Only Miss Taggart wasn’t found in time.”

  Isleton’s glance never changed its frosty impersonal quality, but Miss Rachel had a hunch that his mind was active, that he was studying them in the light of long experience with crime, and that into his consciousness, as neatly as upon the pages of a notebook, all that he saw and heard was being indelibly transcribed. “Who are the survivors?”

  Miss Rachel spoke, since he was looking at her. “Besides us, there are Miss Dickson’s employees.” She remembered that Gail had never spoken of Pedro and Florencia as servants; she judged that Gail didn’t like the term. “A couple who have been with her for years, Mexican people. There is Zia, a Hopi girl—I don’t know her last name. Two men—Mr. Grubler and Mr. Emerson, whom we left down at the cars working on the road. I believe Mr. Grubler managed some of Mrs. Ryker’s business interests. Mr. Emerson, I understand, was being approached as a prospective employee.”

  “Why were all these people at Miss Dickson’s?”

  “To attend the Snake Dance at the Hopi village. They had all been friends in college some seven years ago.”

  Rain pelted them on a sudden gust. Isleton shifted his head so that the brim of his hat protected his face. “We’d better move Miss Dickson. The fort … anything like a whole roof in it?”

  “There is one room with the walls intact, the front room of that big place.”

  Isleton bent, though Ryker had started forward. Gail’s face against the blue uniform was white as a paper silhouette. They rounded the adobe wall, heading for the sagging porch and the door of the ruined house, on the run. Halfway to the door, Miss Rachel stopped short.

  Hal Emerson sat half inside a shed which had collapsed, leaving its beams upended in a sort of tepee. He was gray; a trickle of blood ran from his mouth. He must have seen their running forms. His face twitched, then twisted in something like a grin.

  Miss Rachel crossed the weedy patch and bent towards him solicitously. The others were out of sight now, inside the other house. They’d be looking for her in a moment, of course. Just now she had this bit of time. She spread her palm in front of Emerson. “Do you know anything about these?”

  He closed his eyes for an instant, then concentrated upon the scraps of paper as if with a strong effort. “A check. Someone’s torn it up.”

  “Did Mrs. Ryker offer you a check for your first month’s services?”

  Shock seemed to run through him. His gaze came up. “I didn’t take it.”

  “Didn’t you give it to Gail?”

  “No.” He steadied himself, propping an arm against one of the fallen timbers. There were white patches at the corners of his mouth. “Gail wouldn’t … she’s not interested in me any more.” He began to sink forward on his face.

  Miss Rachel jerked about, finding Captain Isleton at her elbow. “Oh? And who’s this gentleman?” Isleton asked softly.

  “Mr. Emerson. He’s been hurt.”

  Isleton knelt and looked Emerson over. “Cut lip. Doesn’t seem to be much other damage. Somebody might have popped him one.” He stood up, rubbed his gray hair with the heel of his hand. “Do you think we’ll find the others one by one, all the victims of little accidents?”

  If it was an attempt at humor, it roused no echo in Miss Rachel. “I hope not. One of these people is deadly serious.”

  He bent towards her, lowering his voice. “Ryker. Did he kill his wife?”

  She stared back so blankly that he made an impatient gesture. “Miss Dickson told me something about you once. She wanted us to meet. She said you’d done some business with the Los Angeles police department, had a friend there named Mayhew.”

  “I didn’t do any business with them that they could prevent.”

  He looked at her shrewdly. “They weren’t appreciative?”

  “They were downright bullheaded.” She glanced down at Emerson’s sprawled form. “Aren’t we going to move him too?”

  “He’ll be all right. Now, about Ryker—”

  “We’d better get them all together. And I want my cat. She’s in the car. Jennifer can keep an eye on Gail and Mr. Ryker for us, while we go and get the others.”

  He blinked at her. “Your sister? That little old—uh—”

  “Jennifer is very battle-axey,” Miss Rachel said. “She’ll be quite able to keep things in line.”

  “Well … let’s get going, then.”

  The pathway through the trees was a windy tunnel, whipped with rain, in which the large official presence of Captain Isleton was like a rock amid the storm. At an open space they came upon Zia and Dave Grubler, standing together. Grubler carried the cat’s basket. He was looking down into Zia’s face, seemed to be listening to her with patience.

  Zia jerked about at the sound of their footsteps. “Oh. Miss Rachel, I’m worried about Gail. Was she up above?”

  “Miss Dickson’s going to be all right,” said Isleton gravely. He looked from one to the other. “Have you two people been together since Miss Dickson left you?”

  Zia looked at Grubler sidewise.

  He said promptly, “I was digging at a caved-in spot in the bank, when I realized I was the only one left working. I scouted about, not very far, decided the others had gone completely away, went back to the cars, and picked up Miss Rachel’s basket for her. Zia joined me then.”

  “I couldn’t find the path Gail had taken,” Zia explained.

  “Neither of you were up as far as the fort?”

  Both shook their heads. Zia asked, “Has something happened to Gail?”

  “She had a bit of a run-in with somebody up there,” Isleton said. “But she’s going to come out of it. We want everybody up above. This Mexican couple—where are they?”

  “Florencia won’t move out of the car,” Zia said. “She has her head covered by her rebozo. I’m afraid she wouldn’t be much help to you in an investigation. I think Pedro started up for the fort right after Miss Rachel and her sister left.”

  Isleton’s dark blue uniform was speckled with raindrops. He brushed at them impatiently. “I want everybody. If you people will go on, I’ll find this Mexican woman and bring her up. At the end of this trail, is it?”

  “Right below us,” Grubler said.

  As Isleton turned away, Gruble
r held out the basket. “Your cat was yowling when I went to the car. I think she’s been lonely for you.”

  Miss Rachel twisted the catch, lifted the lid. Samantha scrambled for freedom, but Miss Rachel held her fast. “Just a minute, Captain Isleton.”

  He turned from a distance of about fifteen feet.

  “My cat has been out of this basket since I left her.”

  He frowned, not seeing what this had to do with his official business. “But she’s all right, isn’t she?”

  “There is fresh mud between the pads of her paws. What I’m pointing out, Captain, is that a search has gone on. Someone opened the basket to examine it and the cat got out. She was put back. The mud in her paws was overlooked in the hurry.”

  He nodded absently. “I’ll bring this Mrs. Flores up and we’ll hold an inquiry.”

  He turned and hurried away. Miss Rachel held her cat gently and soothed her with soft words. Rain spattered across the black fur; Samantha lifted indignant eyes to the sky. A big drop hit her on the tip of her nose and she wiped it away with an enraged paw.

  “Is there some kind of shelter at the fort?” Zia asked.

  “One big room in a ruined house. I’m sure Captain Isleton wants us to go there. But there is something …” She plunged a hand into the pocket of her skirt, came out with bits of dull green paper. “These scraps—it’s something the murderer has looked for for a long while. Perhaps still is seeking. What do you suppose it was?”

  There was abrupt, uncanny silence in the midst of the spattering noises made by the rain.

  “It looks like check paper. In fact, I’m sure that’s what it is. The bank Christine used supplied its patrons with much the same color.” Grubler stared at the damp bits on her palm. “Is there writing of any sort—anything that might be pieced together?”

  “There are more scraps like this up at the fort,” said Miss Rachel with unnecessary smugness. “We’ll see what, we have when we get them all.”

  Zia reached out, touching the fragments with fingers that trembled. “You said there had been a search. Did you mean for this check?”

  “I’m quite sure. You see, Mrs. Ryker had something of the sort inside her hand just after she’d been bitten in her room. I caught only a glimpse, and thought at the time of a ticket—train and plane tickets are usually printed on this kind of heavily watermarked paper. Then there wasn’t any sign of whatever it was she’d had, by the time we found her in the garden. It’s evident now that she disposed of it somewhere on her way to the tool house, or perhaps dropped it.”