The Cat Wears a Mask

by Dolores Hitchens

  “Let’s get out of the rain,” Grubler interrupted. “Christine gave a lot of checks. She scattered them like confetti. Unless there’s quite a bit of this one, it will be hard to identify.”

  “Of course the person who attacked Gail and left her for dead tried to gather as much of the paper as possible. Gail must have seen her danger; she saw that letting the check be taken from her intact would leave no clue at all. So she scattered as much as she could. But I keep wondering how Gail happened to have it.” Miss Rachel walked swiftly, holding her cat, the basket swinging from her arm.

  Grubler walked just at her elbow. “This attack on Gail … it’s hard to realize she’s been hurt. That police captain seemed to think she’d be all right.”

  “Yes, he thinks so,” Miss Rachel said doubtfully.

  Grubler said with deep uneasiness, “Gail couldn’t be hurt … seriously, could she? And Isleton playing some sort of police game, not letting us know the truth?”

  Miss Rachel’s step faltered. “Oh, he wouldn’t do that.” Then sudden fright seemed to seize her. “She did look quite—quite entirely gone, though.”

  There was silence, except for their hurrying footsteps and the rain. They came to the level reaches of the meadow. Miss Rachel paused, looked at the toppling ruins of Fort Navajo, put down her cat, straightened herself determinedly. “It’s all the more important, now, that the last little scrap of this green paper be found. It must be gathered up at once.”

  Grubler turned to Zia. “Go check up on Gail for us, will you? I’ll stay and help Miss Rachel with her search.”

  Zia hesitated for a moment, then hurried away.

  There was no sign of Emerson in the fallen shed, no indication of Ryker and Gail and Miss Jennifer—if they were inside the big room, they were well away from the windows.

  Miss Rachel trotted about with her head down, obviously looking for paper bits and not paying much attention to where she was going. Her cat watched with an air of uneasy disapproval. Miss Rachel trotted out of sight behind the adobe wall. She didn’t reappear.

  When Captain Isleton and Florencia hurried out of the fringe of trees a few minutes later, the cat was still there, sitting all alone, licking its paws.

  Chapter 19

  When Isleton had hurried back to see what had become of Miss Rachel, Jennifer set herself to making Gail as comfortable as she could. She surveyed the bare and broken room, the sagging floor, the ancient leather-covered chair. “Mr. Ryker, will you see if those cushions can be removed from the chair? They look as though they might. We’ll make a sort of couch.”

  Bob Ryker examined the old chair gingerly. Stray grass seeds had sprouted from the stuffing, gave off a smell like hay. “You’d put Gail on this thing?”

  “It won’t be bad when we’ve covered it with your coat,” she pointed out. Jennifer had been raised in an age when a gentleman’s coat was considered to be on call at all times, and she’d never forgotten.

  “Oh. Of course.” He went to work. The cushions came forth from the frame of the rocker. He tried to pull the dried grass out; it brought the stuffing with it.

  “Poke it inside,” Jennifer told him. She showed him how to put the cushions on the floor and to arrange his coat as a covering. They lifted Gail; she was still papery white, but it seemed to Miss Jennifer, holding her wrist, that the pulse was stronger.

  She rose and spoke sharply to Ryker. “You’ll please to turn your back and look the other way, and remain turned until I tell you otherwise.”

  He stared at her blankly until she repeated her demand; then he walked to a window and stood there looking out. “Is this all right?”

  Jennifer hiked up her skirt, loosened one of her four petticoats and let it drop to the floor. It was a very crisp, starched white petticoat; before Ryker could see what it was, she rolled it into the shape of a pillow. Then she slipped it under Gail’s head.

  Ryker returned to hover worriedly. “Can’t we help revive her somehow?”

  “I’ve a little bottle of smelling salts. We’ll try that.” Jennifer opened her sensible leather handbag, took out a small bottle, loosened the thick glass stopper.

  Ryker was walking about with long uneasy strides, his black brows tightened in a frown. “When Gail comes to herself, she should remember who tried to kill her. Until then, she’s in danger. We have no way of knowing who might try to silence her.”

  This reminded Jennifer of her previous suspicions of Mr. Ryker. She reached surreptitiously for the thorny stick, drew it close under the hem of her skirt. “She’s had a bad shock. Things aren’t too clear, sometimes, immediately after.”

  Ryker stared at her fiercely. “She must remember, as quickly as possible. Don’t you see … if there’s a delay, or any confusion, the danger will be that much worse.”

  Miss Jennifer gripped the stick firmly, put on what Miss Rachel called her Warhorse Look, and said in a tone loud enough to rattle the rafters, “I’ll be here.”

  Apparently this statement was not impressive to Mr. Ryker. He walked about for a few moments longer, then went over to the door. “I think I’ll have a look outside. Good lord, there’s Hal. He’s staggering around as if he’s lost. And somebody’s bopped him one—at least, he’s bleeding.”

  Ryker left the doorway; his steps on the old porch sent groaning noises through all the underpinnings of the old house. Miss Jennifer made no move to leave Gail’s side. She was a little curious about Mr. Emerson and what might have happened to him, but men were men, confusing creatures, and if one of them was wandering about with blood on him, it was no doubt the result of some act of his own.

  The inconsistency of men, she thought, was exemplified by Ryker’s attitude—only a short while before, he and Emerson had been at blows, and now he was solicitous because Emerson was bleeding.

  She bent above Gail as the girl’s eyelids lifted slowly; the effect was mechanical and unalive, like the workings of a doll’s eyes. The glance Gail gave about her at the ruined place seemed foggy and uncomprehending. She struggled to sit up; Miss Jennifer put an arm behind her.

  Gail said, “What are we doing here? What place is this?”

  “Oh, goodness,” said Miss Jennifer in dismay.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Her grip on Miss Jennifer’s fingers was cold and uncertain. Miss Jennifer struggled to crush back the feeling that what Ryker had said was true, there was terrible danger now. So long as Gail didn’t remember, she’d be open to attack by the unknown.

  “You must lie quietly and think,” Miss Jennifer instructed Gail firmly. “You must try to recall—”

  There had been a faint footstep from the direction of the door, a dimming of the gray light as though some form must fill the doorway.

  Gail seemed not to notice. She brushed the back of a hand across her eyes. “There was a check among my canceled ones—a check of Christine’s. I can’t imagine when she put it there, nor why. At the last moment, before we left the house today, I decided to put my account book in the drawer and lock it up. I noticed the green check among my yellow ones. I thought I might ask Miss Rachel about it the first chance I had. But there was someone else …”

  No sound at all now, from the door. Miss Jennifer wanted to turn and look, but she felt pinned in place by her own terror.

  Gail went on in the same fuzzy, unbelieving tone. “It seems I had an idea, too, that I wanted to talk over with her. About the Kachina, the pretended ghost some of us saw in the courtyard and the garden. I—I can’t quite put my finger on what it was … Something about the mask—”

  Miss Jennifer forced her head around slowly. Her spine was a creaking hinge; the bones in it ground and grated upon each other; there was a horrible jerkiness in the way her head moved until she could see the door.

  The doorway was empty.

  Miss Rachel looked up into the pale eyes that were beginning to show the underlying ferocity as well as a tigerish hunger for safety and peace after the kill. She prattled innocently in the
midst of the gray, waiting silence. “I think Gail must have run across this green check among her own canceled ones—there seemed to be a sheaf of them between the pages of her household account book. Remember, on the desk beside that window which had been open?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, Mrs. Ryker must have gone downstairs carrying this bit of paper—ticket, I thought at the time—and somewhere along the way to the tool shed she must have begun to feel the first hint of illness. Notice that she didn’t keep the check with her—it was something she hid at once, something she meant to regain when she had fought off this touch of sickness. How handy it must have seemed to her, finding that open window as she passed and a sheaf of checks where her own could remain unnoticed. Have you ever read The Purloined Letter?”

  “Something about a theory that we usually overlook what’s in plain sight, wasn’t it? I’ve forgotten, unfortunately.”

  “Yes, unfortunately.” Miss Rachel stopped hopping about long enough to titter. “It’s hard to keep things straight in my mind, but remembering back, I’m sure that Gail, in closing up the house this morning, made a final inspection of her desk and noticed the check there at last.”

  “This idea just came to you?”

  “It’s been skittering about inside my head.”

  The smooth voice protested. “Providing the check was actually the motive, as you think it was—wouldn’t the murderer have found it long before?”

  Miss Rachel shook her head. “I think not. It’s logical to suppose that the murderer would expect the check to be concealed in a real hiding place, some secret nook or cranny in the courtyard or the garden.”

  “Why not in Mrs. Ryker’s room?”

  “The room must have been searched first of all, in those minutes when most of us were scattered, searching for Mrs. Ryker right after she’d been bitten. It wouldn’t take long to go through her luggage. Obviously, since she was packing to leave, the check wouldn’t be hidden about the room. Almost at once it must have been plain that she had the check with her.”

  Her companion moved a little closer, so that Miss Rachel was pinned in after a fashion against the adobe wall. With an effect of humoring her: “And the search went on?”

  “Oh, thoroughly. Of course we were supposed to be distracted and confused by the Kachina masquerade, and the business with the gloves and the feathers, and the possibility of Mrs. Ryker’s being a kind of dead sleepwalker, and poor Miss Taggart playing a part I’m sure she never really understood—”

  “Oh? You’ve figured out Ilene’s business too?”

  “Perhaps not in all its details, but close enough, I think. Someone had provided her with the black chiffon gown, the black lace robe, and given her instructions about using a bit of lipstick and letting her hair down—”

  “Not in character, was it?” The pale eyes bent close, closer. The loose arms tightened at the elbows; the hands came up.

  Miss Rachel looked blankly at the curved fingers. “Not at first, not on the surface. The most obvious qualities which Ilene Taggart displayed were those of excessive modesty and repression. But women of that type often cling to a martyr’s complex, too, and some indication of her having such a complex may be found in her reaction to her attack of near-blindness in college. She withdrew from ordinary social life, she let Mr. Ryker make a fuss over her, she deeply appreciated his sympathy. We know now that recently Miss Taggart had good reason to believe that Christine Ryker was driving her husband to drink himself to death, and to carry on with other women. Neither of these things was true, but she didn’t know it. She was in a prime condition to offer herself to him as a rescuer. No doubt she saw herself as pure and selfless, in contrast to Christine’s predatory personality. The thing that would stump Miss Taggart would be the method of getting at Mr. Ryker, the first overture to make him realize her willingness to save him.”

  “And that’s where the naughty nightie came in?”

  Miss Rachel nodded in satisfaction. “All the murderer had to do was to sketch in the general outline, convince her that a bit of flesh-peddling in the beginning could end in a glorious transformation on Mr. Ryker’s part. Probably the original intention was simply to use her as a distraction, a bait, something to get Christine Ryker worked up enough, furious and disgusted enough, so that getting the suspicious check away from her wouldn’t be too hard. What action Ilene took the first night, if any, we haven’t any way of knowing. It’s probable that the presence of Christine Ryker in the house was too much of a deterrent, that Miss Taggart did nothing but wish for courage. Then Mrs. Ryker’s death brought freedom as well as shock. And Ilene Taggart played her part as well as she was able, and until she signed her death warrant by knowing who was behind the Kachina mask.”

  “You make it all seem so clear. This Kachina fellow now, any ideas about that?”

  “Well, at first it seemed an unnecessary oddity. We were apparently supposed to believe that Mrs. Ryker’s ghost was wandering about in Indian form, and I’ve been sure from the first it wouldn’t have. She liked chic clothes too well.” Miss Rachel paused suddenly, then pounced, lifted something and flattened it in her palm. “Quite a large bit of the check. We’ll have something for Captain Isleton when he gets back. As for the Kachina mask—it finally occurred to me that perhaps the most significant thing about it was its shape.”

  The pale eyes pried into her own. “The shape of the mask? What do you mean?”

  “Like a helmet, completely covering the head. Evidently there was something so different, so distinctive … like, oh, for instance, an odd hair color. Like your own very white hair, Mr. Grubler.”

  “That’s what I thought you meant,” said Dave Grubler, grabbing for her.

  But she had ducked to reach for another invisible speck of paper in that instant. “Are you angry? I’m so sorry.”

  “Enough of this,” he laughed. “You’re not the feather-headed little old lady you make out, Miss Murdock. With all your gabble of sugar pies and the foolish giggling—you’ve got a mind much like my own. Neat and sensible. I’ve got to get this over and find Gail and see whether by some miracle she survived what I did to her after she refused to hand me that damned forgery. And in case Emerson’s still around, I’ve got to make sure he didn’t see me before I popped him from around the corner of that shed. I’m a busy man, Miss Murdock. Don’t waste my time by struggling.”

  She was in a corner now, hemmed in by the flanks of the adobe wall, with Grubler approaching from the front. Still she made innocent eyes at him. “I can’t understand … I thought you were very fond of Gail, I didn’t dream you’d try to kill her.”

  “Murder gets easier as you go along,” he explained dryly.

  “The check was—”

  “Part of what Christine had set aside to pay income taxes. If I could have gotten away, if Ryker had let me go through the books, I’d have covered that gambling debt. I was in Reno too, you know.”

  She tried to wriggle downward. “Yes, I know.”

  There was a moment of surprised hesitation. “You know?”

  “What you said about the blonde, in Christine’s room last night. You mentioned a big blonde. I hadn’t said she was big. It was a slip, a bad slip. You’d been following Mrs. Ryker.”

  “I think she was in Reno to find out whether I owed money there,” he threw at her. “It doesn’t matter. I got my snake with the help of a little Hopi kid who didn’t know what it was all about. … I did Ilene up nicely with the cord off the mask … and now you’re going to trip and fall and bring some timbers down on you …” His face sharpened. “What did you say?”

  “I said that Captain Isleton and my cat are watching you from over there.” She pointed across Grubler’s left shoulder.

  He laughed; it was the coldest, least sane laughter she’d ever heard. “In that case I’d better hurry, hadn’t I?” His fingers slid round her throat; he dragged her towards him. At the same moment he began kicking at the supports at the rear of the shed. />
  He is going to kill me, she thought incredulously. I counted too much on Isleton, on his shrewdness and the feeling of danger he should have sensed among these people. Of course I hadn’t explained that it was Grubler who wanted us to leave the house, obviously in order to narrow his search for the forged check … She felt the pulse in her throat, an enormous pounding like a drum, and the strangling fire that was her pent-up breath.

  Her cat walked into view around the end of the adobe wall. Samantha’s image was crooked and watery, like a reflection in a bad mirror. Out of mists Isleton’s face followed—wishful thinking on her part, she thought wryly.

  Isleton had a gun in his hand. He raised it, sighted, fired. A little smoke drifted away from the barrel.

  Or was the smoke and the sound of the bullet only a part of her frantic wish to escape from death?

  An expression of utter, chagrined surprise slowly flattened all other emotion from Grubler’s face. He coughed slightly, then raised his fist with sudden energy to strike her. The gun spoke again. Grubler’s hands faltered downward, fell to his sides, then came up in a spasm to clutch at the front of his coat.

  Isleton’s voice rumbled in her ear. “How do you feel? Did he hurt you?”

  She was clinging to the wall. “I’ll be all right.”

  Isleton patted her arm in fatherly fashion—he was young enough to be her son, she thought irrelevantly—and then hurried to bend above Grubler, who had slid down into a half-sitting position against some rotting timber.

  “There isn’t much we can do for you,” the captain said after a brief investigation. “We’re too far from a doctor … I don’t think even a doctor could do much. I couldn’t let you kill this little old lady.”