Something the Cat Dragged In

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “No, I did not.” For once in his life, Congressman Sill managed to give a simple, direct answer. “We all left together. I didn’t know Ungley had stayed behind. I can’t tell you why he did.”

  “You never once looked back to see whether he’d started walking home?”

  “Why should I?” Sill was weaving an uncertain course between truculence and his usual bland pomposity. “Advanced in years though he indubitably was, Professor Ungley prided himself on his vigor and cherished his independence. We all respected his dislike of being, as he himself would have put it, fussed over.”

  Shandy thought of the times he’d seen Ungley at the faculty dining room, brandishing his cane and snapping at the student waiters for extra service. Was all that pestering due to the former professor’s dislike of being fussed over? He wasn’t about to ask. What he really wanted to find out from Sill, though he didn’t quite know why, was, “Did you yourself walk to the meeting, or did you drive?”

  “Living so close to the clubhouse”—Sill’s ornate barracks was in fact only the second house down from Harry Goulson’s—“I walked to the meeting. Our distinguished industrialist, Mr. Lutt, dropped me off on his way home. At least I think he did. He often does. Now that I mention it, I honestly can’t recall whether he did or not. He might have and he might not. And that, young man, is the best I can do. Ah, me. Anno domini is catching up with me, I fear.”

  “Happens to all of us sooner or later,” said Shandy. “Was Mr. Lutt the only member who brought a car?”

  “No, the Pommells had theirs, I believe. They always drive. I’m inclined to believe Mr. Twerks drove, too, though I can’t say for sure.”

  Sill’s speech was slurred by now. Considering how much he’d drunk in the space of this meeting, aside from whatever amount he might have had before, Shandy marveled that he was able to talk at all. Any more questions had better be asked fast, or Sill wouldn’t be conscious to answer them.

  “Which of the cars drove away first?”

  Sill belched, then put a hand genteelly to his mouth. “Par’n me. I don’t remember. What difference does it make?”

  None, most likely, but why couldn’t a single one of this bunch give him a straight answer to such a simple question? Were they all blind drunk by the time they left the meeting? Recalling what the inside of that so-called clubhouse looked like, Shandy wondered if maybe they smoked peyote or something. You could probably grow hallucinogenic mushrooms easily enough in those dusty corners.

  “Could you tell me what refreshments were served at the meeting, Congressman Sill?” he asked, just for the heck of it.

  “Hah! Got you there. None. We never have refreshmentah. Ushed to, but not any more. Too busy. Important business. Excuse me, young man. I have important business. Be sure to shend me the clippingsh.”

  Sill took hold of the arms of his chair and managed to pull himself more or less upright. He then essayed a step forward, swaying in a seventy-degree arc. Shandy decided it might not be a bad idea to clear out before the crash.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THE AFTERNOON WAS JUST about gone now. It would be dark soon and Shandy was more than ready to quit. While he was down here in the village, though, he supposed he might as well pay a short call on Mrs. Pommell. She was the only one of the Balaclavians he hadn’t spoken to yet. Ottermole had given him a report on what she’d said and done the morning Ungley’s body was discovered, and he ought to be concentrating on Ruth Smuth instead of the old professor, but what the hell? The Pommell house wasn’t far away and he couldn’t think what to do about Mrs. Smuth anyway.

  He might as well have obeyed his inclinations instead of his by now no doubt addled brain. Mrs. Pommell was not at home. At least that was what the maid told him when she came to the door. Shandy supposed she must be the maid because the uniform she had on was much too classy for a mere hired girl. He’d never noticed her around the village before and decided she must be a recent import from some exotic foreign clime. She didn’t seem to know any English except, “Nobody here.”

  And why in Sam Hill wasn’t somebody here? This was a strange time for a Balaclava Junction housewife not to be in her own kitchen. It was odd Pommell himself wasn’t around, for that matter, since the bank closed at half-past three.

  “Did the Pommells go out to dinner?” he asked.

  All he got was another shake of the head and another, “Nobody here.”

  Shandy gave up. He’d started walking away from the house when he happened to glance back. There in the Pommells’ garage sat their big blue Lincoln, looking smug and self-satisfied like the Pommells themselves. The car was getting on in years, but the Pommells wouldn’t dream of doing anything so vulgar as to trade it in for a less opulent and more fuel-efficient model.

  They’d gussied it up with a new set of lambswool seat covers, though. Shandy wondered why. The velvet upholstery was still in perfect condition, or had been a couple of days ago when he’d last seen the car down at Charlie Ross’s garage. Charlie’d been vacuuming it when he’d stopped by for his own car, and he’d had to pause to admire because Charlie took pride in his work and liked his customers’ to notice. The Pommells must be expecting another cold winter. Considering the combined breadth of their beams, one might have thought they already had padding enough.

  That was unkind, but Shandy was miffed. If the Pommells hadn’t taken their car, they couldn’t be far away. Then where were they? There wasn’t a restaurant around town fit to eat in. Nobody gave dinner parties during the week except Shandy’s own wife, Helen, and she surely wouldn’t have invited them without telling Peter. “Nobody here” must mean simply nobody who cared to speak with Peter Shandy.

  The hell with it. Shandy gave up and went home. To his astonishment, he found the house devoid of cooking smells and Helen slouched in a living room chair with her feet up on the fireplace fender and a Balaclava Boomerang in her hand.

  “Good gad, woman,” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Hello, Peter,” she replied languidly. “I’ll start dinner sooner or later. Just give me time to pull myself together. It’s been the most ghastly day at the library. All hands to the pumps and never a letup since the moment our newspapers started coming in. Can you believe the stuff they’re printing? And we had the radio going in Dr. Porble’s office to get the news, and that was even worse.”

  “What are they blethering on the tube?”

  Peter went to turn on the television set, but Helen moaned.

  “Don’t, please! Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. The demonstration yesterday was bad enough, but this Ruth Smuth strangling is the absolute end. Poor Sieglinde dropped in just before I left work, and she was actually in tears, Peter. Thorkjeld’s positively beside himself, she says. That makes an awful lot of Thorkjeld even for her to handle. She wants him to call in the state police, but he’s turned balky. He says he started out relying on you and Fred Ottermole, and he’s not about to change horses in midstream. Peter darling, that’s putting a terrible responsibility on your shoulders. Couldn’t you possibly—”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  That was the first time Peter had snapped at Helen since their marriage. “Drat it, Helen, this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to Ottermole. I can’t take it away from him. If Svenson trusts me, why can’t you?”

  Her face stiffened. “I’m sorry, Peter.”

  “So am I.” He knelt and buried his face in her skirt. “Don’t worry, Helen. Please.”

  Why should she, after all? Wasn’t he worried enough for both of them?

  After a while, Helen lifted his face to hers and gave it a few therapeutic kisses. “I’m not worried, Peter. I just hate to see you wearing yourself out like this. Why don’t you stretch out on the couch while I throw a few eggs and things into the frying pan? Want me to mix you a Boomerang?”

  “Better not, thanks. I had a bucketful of straight Bourbon with Congressman Sill a while back.”

  “Getting
rather unselective about your drinking buddies, aren’t you? I should have thought Sill would flee at the sight of you, after what you did to him yesterday.”

  “He doesn’t know I did it, I don’t suppose, Besides, he mistook me for a newspaperman. My God, that old blow-hard can put it away! Actually, I only had one drink and I poured most of that into a convenient ficus elastica. They bounce back pretty quickly. Maybe I could trifle with a smallish, weakish Bourbon and water, at that. And perhaps a morsel of cheese, if you feel up to fetching it?”

  “Oh, I think I can stagger as far as the kitchen and back. I ought to have got something to nibble on for myself. Drinking without eating gives me a headache, and goodness knows I’ve had enough of those today already.”

  Helen got Peter his drink and snack. When she came back to the living room, he was asleep on the couch. She postponed supper again, put more wood on the fire, and settled back in the easy chair with a handful of crackers and the remains of her Boomerang. Before she’d finished the crackers, she too was asleep.

  When she woke, the fire was down to a bed of coals, the couch and the cracker plate were empty. Peter was out in the front hall talking on the phone, softly because she was still asleep, urgently because what he was saying must be important.

  “That’s right, Ottermole. I confirmed it with Mrs. Lomax. Yes, I understand your position, but it’s a risk we have to take. Svenson will—naturally, he’d slaughter us both if we left him out. Get hold of Cronkite Swope and call the—no, I understand you’d rather handle the whole thing yourself, but how—oh, I see. By all means, if you’re sure they can manage. Right. Give me five minutes.”

  When he hung up, Helen was at his elbow. “Peter, what’s this about risk? Where are you going?”

  “My love, what were we talking about just before you deserted me for the arms of Morpheus?”

  “You deserted me first. We were talking about cheese, I think. Good heavens, I still haven’t started dinner. What time is it?”

  “Half-past ten.”

  “You must be starved.”

  “Not really. I ate some cheese.”

  Helen had her eyes open now. She took a closer look at him. “I must say it’s certainly perked you up.”

  “Oh yes. Great stuff, cheese. Stimulates the brain cells. Well, au revoir, ma chérie. I’m off to the wars again.”

  “Peter Shandy, if you think I’m going to let you go cavorting around all night on an empty stomach—”

  “A physical impossibility, my love. Unless of course the stomach belongs to somebody else.”

  “You know who did it, don’t you?”

  “Let’s say I have a theory. In a little while, I hope, I’m going to have a big, fat, juicy clue.”

  The doorbell rang. It was Professor Joad and his test tubes.

  “All set, Shandy?”

  “All set. En avant!”

  “En avant where?” Helen insisted.

  “To a game of Cops and Robbers, where else? Keep the home fires burning, and pray Fred Ottermole doesn’t bust a zipper.”

  Shandy gave her a quick but efficient kiss, grabbed his old mackinaw jacket, and vanished into the night. Helen sighed and went to poach herself an egg.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “HE’S THERE.”

  That was Fred Ottermole, breathing hot and heavy into Shandy’s ear. Shandy had an impulse to retort, “I had a feeling he might be,” but didn’t. Ottermole was laying his job on the line here. Who could blame him for acting a trifle jittery? “Right,” Shandy answered. “Let’s move in.”

  “Okay.” Ottermole gave one last, nervous tug to a zipper tab and charged up the front steps.

  It was the law clerk who came to the door, looking frazzled and a little bit scared. “Yes, sirs? I’m sorry, but Mr. Hodger was just going to bed.”

  “That’s what he thinks.” Ottermole unzipped a pocket in the most official manner and pulled out a printed form with some words inked in. “Know what this is?”

  “A—a search warrant?”

  “Yup.”

  The chief regarded the warrant fondly. He must have been yearning for years to wave one of these under some miscreant’s nose. Too bad the law clerk was already so browbeaten that he didn’t do anything except cringe away from the door.

  “C—come in. I guess. Mr. Hodger—”

  “Go tell Hodger I want him in his office. Pronto, savvy? Deputy Joad will go with you, so don’t take a notion to try anything funny.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” the law clerk assured Ottermole with pathetic sincerity.

  He slunk off down the hallway, Joad at his elbows grinning like a catfish. Chemistry professors probably didn’t have all that many chances to get deputized at CCNY. As Cronkite Swope pussyfooted after them, notebook in hand and pencil at the ready, Shandy and Ottermole started pawing through Hodger’s filing cabinets. It didn’t take them long to find what they were looking for.

  “Aha!” Shandy hauled out a handful of folders.

  His cry brought Cronkite Swope haring back. “What is it, Professor?”

  “Ungley’s writing. Ergo, these are his missing files. Looks as if the old lizard wasn’t lounging all those years after all. Great Caesar’s ghost!”

  “Holy cow!” added Cronkite Swope, reading over Shandy’s shoulder.

  “Cripes,” Fred Ottermole contributed from behind the other shoulder. “Does that say what I think it does?”

  “M’yes, I expect it does. Ungley appears to have been a veritable Boswell to the Balaclavians. As soon as he was let in on their important business, he began keeping a complete record. Here, hold this while I find the rest.”

  Shandy thrust the folders at Swope and. was rooting through Hodger’s files like a terrier who’s found a rat i’ the arras when the lawyer himself limped in, escorted by Joad and the terrified clerk.

  “What’s the meaning of this outrage?” he was roaring. “Whitney, get Judge Jeffreys on the phone.”

  “Don’t bother, Whitney,” Shandy told the clerk. “Mr. Hodger will be seeing a judge himself sometime tomorrow morning, I expect. It won’t be Jeffreys, though. I notice Ungley has mentioned him a number of times in—er—most appreciative terms. It must have given the Balaclavians quite a jolt Wednesday night, Mr. Hodger, when Ungley revealed the wonderful surprise he’d been preparing for you over so many years.”

  “I have nothing to say,” Hodger snarled, “except that you’re going to pay dearly for this, all of you. I have friends in high places.”

  “So you have, and it’s fascinating to see who they are,” said Shandy, still flipping pages. “And how helpful they’ve been, and what they’ve been helpful about, and how much their assistance cost your esteemed society. Why the flaming perdition didn’t you burn this stuff as soon as you got your hands on it, Hodger?”

  Hodger did not care to offer an explanation.

  “Wow, I’ll say this is hot stuff all right!” Cronkite Swope raced through the files, picking out scraps and ticking them off for future reference. “Care to tell us how this material fell into your hands, Mr. Hodger? Mr. Whitney, would you care to make a statement for the press?”

  “If you got anything to say, Whitney, you better spill it fast,” Ottermole growled.

  “I—all I know is, I heard them down here that night.”

  “What night?”

  “Wednesday, after the meeting.”

  “Who’s them?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure. I didn’t come down. I sleep upstairs, see, and Mr. Hodger has this bell he rings when he wants help in the night. If he doesn’t ring, I’m not supposed to come downstairs till breakfast time, when the housekeeper comes in. He didn’t ring Wednesday night, so I didn’t come. I thought some of his friends from the club must have brought him home.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Pretty late, I know that. Seems to me I heard the church clock strike two while they were here.”

  “Did your boss usually stay that late
at the club?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir. I mean, Chief. This was the first meeting he’d been to since I came. Mr. Hodger only hired me three weeks ago.”

  “That so? Well, you just lost your job, in case you don’t realize it yet. Your boss is going to be away for quite a while. What are we charging him with, Professor?” Ottermole muttered in a frenzied aside.

  “Would receiving stolen property do to start with? You might tack on bribery and conspiracy if that sounds too thin. Rack your memory, Mr. Whitney. Are you sure you didn’t hear a voice you could recognize?”

  “I did sort of think it might be that Mr. Twerks who lives in the big brown-and-yellow house with all the antlers,” Whitney admitted. “I had to take some papers over there for him to sign one day last week. He’s got this kind of honking way he talks, and he laughs a lot.”

  “Was he laughing that night?”

  “Yes, some. Mr. Hodger told him to keep quiet.” With nothing left to lose, young Whitney threw caution to the winds. “I remember now. He said, ‘Shut up, Twerks. That blasted young ninny upstairs might hear you.’ He didn’t have to call me a ninny. But it couldn’t have been Mr. Hodger who killed Professor Ungley, could it? He can barely manage to scratch himself, let alone swing hard enough to bash anybody’s skull in.”

  “No, it wasn’t Hodger,” Shandy agreed amiably.

  “Then who killed Ungley, Professor?” Cronkite Swope pleaded. “Was it Twerks?”

  “All will be revealed, Swope. First let’s get Mr. Hodger stowed comfortably in the lockup at the station. Were you planning to read him his rights, Ottermole?”

  Ottermole read them with verve and panache. Then he telephoned the police station and asked temporary Deputy Chief Silvester Lomax to send over temporary officer Purvis Mink. Then he deputized Whitney to help Mink take the prisoner and the impounded files down to the lockup.

  Shandy was impressed. “Gad, Ottermole,” he remarked, “I didn’t realize you were such a leader of men.”