“But haven't you any idea who he was, or where his farm is, or anything about him?”
“Hm-m-m,” said ma thoughtfully. “He said his name was---yes, that was it, Smith. Didn't mention his first name. Nor where he lived. Let's see---he was short and stocky, about the size and build of Mr. Workus, say. But he was bald; he didn't wear a hat. And he had a reddish mustache and wore dark glasses.”
“That sounds like a disguise,” said Miss Weyburn.
Ma blinked. “Why should anyone disguise himself to buy cats?”
“But, ma,” I protested, “there must have been something screwy about the guy. Dark glasses and a name like ‘Smith’ and--- Heck, if he wanted cats for mousing, he could have got 'em for nothing. Why pay a fancy price?”
I turned to our customer. “Listen, Miss Weyburn,” I said, “I'll check into this, and I'll find your cat, if it's possible. But if I can't---well, were you awfully attached to it? Or if I got you a beautiful thoroughbred Angora or Siamese kitten, would you be---”
Tears were running down her cheeks, and I said hastily, “Please don't cry! If it's that important, I'll find your cat if I have to . . . to go to China for it. And if I don't, you can have our whole store, and---” And me with it, I wanted to say, but it didn't seem the proper time and place to say it.
“I don't want your d-darned store. I want---”
“Listen, ma,” I said, “you'll watch the store for the rest of the day, won't you? I'm going out to hunt---”
“Sure, Phil.” Ma gave me a knowing look. “But first you go back and finish currying that pony, and let me talk to Miss Weyburn.”
I got the idea, because we didn't have a pony to curry. So I made myself scarce out the back door for about ten minutes, and gave ma a chance to stop the girl crying. Ma can talk; she can convince almost anybody of almost anything, and when I came in again the girl wasn't crying, and she looked less mad and more cheerful.
“Well,” I said, “if you'll tell me where I can get in touch with you, miss, I'll let you know the minute I find---”
“I'm going with you,” she interrupted. And I didn't object to that, at all. I said, “That's swell. I'll get the car out of the garage and bring it around front.”
And five minutes later, we were driving downtown. First, we stopped at the offices of the two local newspapers and arranged to put in ads addressed to a Mr. Smith who had purchased five cats the day before.
And then I turned the car down Barclay Street.
“Where are we going now?” Miss Weyburn wanted to know.
“Police station,” I told her. “Those personal ads were just in case this Smith guy is what he said he was. But there seems to be a faint smell of fish about a guy wanting a dozen cats, and it's just possible that the police may know of him as a nut, or something.”
“But---”
“It won't cost anything to try, will it?” I pointed out. “And Lieutenant Granville is a good friend of mine. If he's in---”
And he was. We walked into his office and I said, “Hi, Hank. This is Miss Weyburn. We wanted to talk about a cat. Her cat. A small gray---”
“Stolen?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean if it was, I'm the one who stole it. I was boarding it for her and it was sold by mistake.”
Hank glowered at me. “I got real trouble. I'm working on a murder case that happened night before last and there aren't any leads and we're against a blank wall, and you come in and want me to hunt a cat.”
“If you're up against a blank wall,” I pointed out, quite reasonably, “then there's nothing you can do for the moment, and you might as well be human and listen to us.”
“Shut up,” said Hank. “Miss Weyburn, if Phil sold a cat that belongs to you, he's responsible. Do you want to bring charges against him?”
“N-no.”
Hank looked at me again. “Well, then what do you want me to do?”
“You yahoo,” I said, “I want you to listen. And then, if possible, be helpful.” And before he could interrupt again, I managed to tell him the story.
He looked thoughtful. “Checked the pound yet?”
“Why, no---but why would anyone buy a cat, or cats, and then take them to the pound?”
“Not that, Phil. But the guy might have tried to get cats there. You said he originally wanted a dozen. Well, it sounds silly to buy cats by the dozen, but it's not illegal. Anyway, he got only five from you. Maybe he kept on trying, or maybe he'd been to the pound first. Maybe he left his address there.”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I said. “That might be a lead. Hank, I knew there must be some reason why they made you a detective. We'll go to the pound, and we'll go to Workus' pet shop, too. And meanwhile, if you should happen to hear anything---”
“Sure,” Hank agreed. “I'll let you know. And, Miss Weyburn, anytime you want to have this guy here put in jail, just let me know and sign a complaint, and I'll be glad to---”
But I got the girl out before Hank could give her any more ideas, and when we got out of the station, I glanced at my watch and saw that it was after noon.
So we stopped in the restaurant across the street, and when we'd ordered, she asked, “Who is this Mr. Workus you mentioned?”
“He runs the other pet shop in town,” I explained. “If this Smith wasn't satisfied with five cats, he probably went there next. Anyway, we'll try.”
“And if he didn't leave an address at the pound or at the other pet shop?”
Well, she had me there, but I ducked answering, and tried to keep the conversation on more cheerful topics while we ate.
Hank strolled into the restaurant while we were having coffee, and I motioned him over to a seat at our table. He grinned and said, “Well, any more news on the cat-astrophe?”
“This isn't funny,” I told him. “Miss Weyburn is attached to that cat. That beagle I sold you last fall, Hank---would you think it a joke if something happened to it?”
He reddened a bit and said, “Sorry, Miss Weyburn. I didn't mean to---”
“That's all right, lieutenant,” she said. “What's the important case you're working on?”
“Guy named Blake. Somebody burglarized the Dean laboratories night before last. Blake was the watchman, and they killed him.”
“Laboratories?” I asked. “What'd they steal?”
Hank shook his head. “We haven't made a check-up yet; not thorough enough to tell if anything gone. But there isn't a single clue. Even the F.B.I, men---” He broke off.
“Huh?” I said. “What would the F.B.I, be doing on a burglary-and-murder case?”
Hank looked uncomfortable. He said. “They aren't here on that. Something else. I didn't mean that the Dean burglary was an F.B.I, case.”
“In other words,” I suggested, “do I think it will rain tomorrow?”
He grinned sheepishly. “That's the general idea.”
By that time the waitress was there to take Hank's order, and Miss Weyburn and I left and headed first for the pound. We drew a blank. They hadn't had any cats for several days. There'd been two inquiries about cats the day before, but both by phone calls, and no record had been made. Nor could the man who'd taken the calls remember any helpful details.
So I headed the car for the far side of town. Pete Workus was alone in his shop when we went in. I knew him only slightly; he'd been in business there only a year or so.
“Hello, Pete,” I said. “This is Miss Weyburn. We're trying to trace a man who bought five cats at our place yesterday. He wanted more than that, and I thought maybe he came here.”
Workus nodded. “He did. Or anyway, there was a guy here who bought us out of cats, so I suppose it's the same one. I sold him three of them.”
“Did he leave a name and address?”
Workus leaned an elbow on the counter and rubbed his chin. “Uh, I guess he gave me his name, but I don't remember. It was a common name, I think.”
“Smith?”
“Yeah, I guess that was it. But not his address. Anyway, he doesn't wa
nt any more cats, Evans, so you can stop hunting for him. I offered to get him some more, but he figured he had enough with what I sold him. Come to think of it, he mentioned your place; he said he got five from you, and he'd got one somewhere else, and with the three I had, he figured nine would be enough.”
“I don't want to sell him any more cats,” I said. “What happened is that we sold him one too many, by mistake. Miss Weyburn's cat. And I got to get it back for her.”
“Hm-m-m, that's tough. Well, I hope you find him then; but I don't know how to help you.”
“Maybe,” I suggested, “you can add to the description of him that we have.”
Workus closed his eyes to think. “Well, he was maybe five feet seven or eight inches, about a hundred and seventy pounds---”
I nodded. “That fits ma's description. And he wore dark glasses while he was here?”
“Yes, yellowish sun glasses. He didn't wear a hat, and he was bald, and he had a mustache. That's . . . that's all I can remember about him. Say, Evans, while you're here will you take a look at a puppy of mine? I hear you're something of a vet, and maybe you can tell me whether it's got distemper or not.”
“Sure,” I said. “Be glad to. Where is he?”
“Back this way.” He opened the door to the room behind the shop, and I went in after him. I turned around to ask the girl if she minded waiting a few minutes, but she was following us. She said, “May I watch?”
“Sure,” I told her, and we followed Workus into the back room.
He was leading the way back past a row of cages when it happened. Up at shoulder height, a small brown monkey arm darted out through the bars of one of the upper cages, and grabbed.
Workus swore suddenly as his hair vanished into the monkey cage. Then, his face a bit red, he said, “Excuse my language, miss. But that's the second time that d-darned monkey caught me napping.”
He opened the door of the cage and reached in to recover his toupee, which the now-frightened and jabbering monkey had dropped just behind the bars.
I hadn't known, until now, that Workus wore a toupee; and I'd jumped a bit at the apparent spectacle of a man being scalped. For under the toupee, Workus was completely bald.
“Say,” I said, half jokingly and half seriously, “it wasn't by any chance you who bought these cats of ours, was it? If you left off your toupee and hat, and put on dark glasses and a mustache---”
Workus had closed the door of the monkey cage, and was adjusting the toupee on his head. He looked at me strangely. “Are you crazy, Evans? Or joking? Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
“I haven't any idea,” I said cheerfully. And I hadn't. But something was beginning to buzz at the back of my mind, and without stopping to think it over, I went on talking. “But one thing does strike me funny. My mother described the mysterious Mr. Smith as being about your height and weight. Now what made her say that? She's seen you only a few times in her life. But, in thinking what the man who bought the cats was like, she used your name. Doesn't it seem that it might have been because---sort of subconsciously---she saw through the disguise, and recognized your walk, or your voice, or something?”
Workus was frowning. He said, “Are you accusing me of---”
“I'm not accusing you of anything. If it was you, there's nothing criminal about buying cats. All we want is Miss Weyburn's cat back, and we'll . . . I'll pay for it. That sale wasn't legal, anyway. We can get a writ of replevin for the animal. But I hope we won't have to go to the police.”
And having gone that far, I decided to bluff it on out, and added, “Or will we?”
He didn't answer at all for a moment. Then, quite suddenly and surprisingly, he grinned at us. “O.K.,” he said. “You win. It was me. And I'll see that you get your cat back, Miss---Weyburn, is it? I'll give you a note to the man who has it, and his address.”
He crossed toward the desk at one side of the room, and I turned and looked at Miss Weyburn, and said: “See? The Bon Ton Pet Shop gets results. Even if we have to turn into a detective agency. We get our cat. Like the Northwest---”
But she was looking past me, toward Workus. Suddenly, at the startled look on her face, I whirled around. Workus was holding a gun on us. A .38 automatic that looked like a cannon when seen from the front. He said, “Don't move.”
For a moment, I thought he was crazy. But I lifted my hands shoulder-high, and I tried to make my voice calm and reasonable. I said, “What's the idea? In the first place, Workus, you can't get away with this. And in the second---”
“Be quiet, Evans. Listen, I don't want to kill you unless I have to, and if you're reasonable, maybe I won't have to. But I can't let you out of here; you'd go to the police and they just might decide to investigate what you told them. Even if you got your cat back, you might.”
“Listen,” I said. “What's all this about? Am I crazy, or are you? Why this fuss about cats?”
“If you knew that, I'd have to kill you. Still want to know?”
“Well,” I said, “if you put it that way, maybe not. But---about holding us here. How long---”
“Tomorrow. I'm through here, and leaving town after tonight. Tomorrow I won't care what you tell the cops. I'll be clear.”
I grunted. “But dammit---” I turned my head toward the girl. “I'm sorry, Miss Weyburn. Looks like I got you in a mess.”
She managed a fleeting smile. “It isn't your fault. And---”
The sound of a door opening behind me made me start to turn my head farther around, but Workus' voice barked, “Look this way.” And the snick of the safety catch on the automatic backed it up, and I turned.
“You first, Evans,” Workus snapped. “Put your hands behind you to be tied.”
I obeyed, and somebody behind me did a good job of tying my wrists. Then a blindfold was tied over my eyes and a clean handkerchief from my own pocket used as a gag. When, on instructions, I sat down and leaned back against the wall, my ankles, too, were tied.
Then, after Miss Weyburn had been similarly tied and placed beside me, I heard the footsteps of Workus going back to the store at the front. The other man opened and closed a door, and I heard his steps on stairs, but don't know whether he was going up or down them.
And then, for a long time, nothing happened.
I tried, experimentally, to reach the knots in the cord that bound my wrists, but couldn't touch them, even with the tip of one finger. I might have been able to loosen the cord by rolling around until I found a rough edge somewhere to rub it against, but every ten or fifteen minutes, all afternoon, I'd hear Workus' footsteps coming to the door to look in at us, or coming on into the back room on some errand or other. So, for the present, there was nothing I could do---except wait and hope for the best.
Time passed, but slowly. Very slowly. You'd think that in a spot like that, you'd have enough to worry about to keep you from getting bored. But after an hour or two, you haven't. You can be worried, or afraid, or mad, just so long and no longer. It begins to taper off; an hour or two passes like a year or two, and you begin to wish something would happen, almost anything. Time becomes an unendurable vacuum.
I don't know how long it was before I got the idea of opening communication with the girl beside me in code. But suddenly I thought of the old idea of communicating by taps or touches; one for A, two for B, three for C and so on through the alphabet. If she got the idea---
I wriggled over a few inches until my right elbow touched her left. By nudges, I spelled out C-A-N U U-N-D-E-RS-and she saved me from spelling out the rest of the “understand” by cutting in with Y-ES.
It was a slow and painful method of communication, and I prefer talking and listening, but it helped pass the time and it didn't matter how slow it was, because we had more time than we knew what to do with. And often we could shorten it by interrupting a question in the middle as soon as there was enough of it to guess the rest.
It didn't take long to find out that neither of us could make any intelligent guess a
s to the motive and purpose of our captors. We decided that if a reasonable chance of escape should offer itself, we should take it rather than trust too completely to Workus' stated intention to let us go the next day. But that for the present, we'd better make the best of it.
Then---for chivalrous, if unromantic, reasons---I moved farther away from her. I had discovered that I entertained other company. Undoubtedly, I was too near the monkey cage, and undoubtedly Workus was too stingy with his flea powder. I probably got only a couple of them, but they moved around and gave the impression of a legion.
But time did pass, and after a while I heard Workus closing up the shop and pulling down the shades. He didn't leave, though, but remained up front, still looking in on us occasionally. The man who'd gone up or down the stairs rejoined Workus; then first one and then the other left by the back door and returned after a while. Probably they had gone out to eat; one at a time, while the other remained on guard.
After a while my trained fleas seemed to have left me, and it was lonesome alone, so I slid over next to the girl again. I spelled out O-K and tried to figure out how to put a question mark after it and couldn't, but she spelled back Y-E-S W-H-E-R-E W-E-R-E-, U, and I spelled F-L-E-A-S, and she came back N-O T-H-A-N-KS, which didn't make sense, but then probably my answer hadn't made sense to her.
Then---it must have been close to nine o'clock---the two men came into the back room together. One of them took my shoulders and one of them my feet and I was carried out the back door and into what I judged to be Workus' truck; a light delivery van with a closed body. A minute later the girl was put in with me and the back door of the truck closed and latched.
The engine started and I hit my head a resounding thump as the car jerked into motion.
It lurched through the roughly paved alley. Out on the streets, the motion wasn't so bad. But from time to time we hit bumps and went around corners. I tried to brace myself, sitting up and leaning against a side of the truck body, but it didn't work. The only way to avoid frequent head thumpings was to lie flat.
Apparently the girl had made the same discovery, because I found her lying beside me, and we found that by lying close together we minimized the jouncing and rolling. We didn't try our code of signaling, because the joggling of the moving truck would have made it impossible.
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