The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  She shook her head. “I've never seen one. I've never seen any black cat in this neighborhood except Mr. Lasky's, and—”

  She turned to look at Satan One-and-a-Half, who was lying on his back on the rug, batting a fore-paw, at nothing apparently.

  I said, “Cat, if you could only talk. I wish I knew whether—” I stood up abruptly. “To what side of that maple tree and how far from it did Mr. Lasky bury that cat?”

  “Are you going to ... ?”

  “Yes. There's a trowel and a flashlight in the kitchen, and I'm going to make sure of something, right now.”

  “I'll show you, then.”

  “No,” I said. “Just tell me. It might not be pleasant. You wait here.”

  She sat down again. “All right. On the west side of the tree, about four feet from the trunk.”

  I found the trowel and the flashlight and went out into the yard.

  Five minutes later I came in to report.

  “It's there,” I told her, without going into unpleasant details. “As soon as I wash up, I'd like to use your phone. May I?”

  “Of course. Are you going to call the police?”

  “No. Maybe I should — but what could I tell them?” I tried to laugh; it didn't quite go over. This wasn't funny.

  Whatever else it was, it wasn't funny. I said, “What time do you expect your aunt and uncle home?”

  “No later than eleven.”

  I said, “For some reason, this Haskins is interested in that cat. Too interested. If he sees us leave here, he might come in and get it, or kill it, or do whatever he wants to do with it. I can't even guess. We'll sneak out the back way and get to your place without his seeing us, and we'll leave the lights on here so he won't know we've left.”

  “Do you really think something is — is going to happen?”

  “I don't know. It's just a feeling. Maybe it's just because the things that have happened don't make sense that I have an idea it isn't over yet. And I want you out of it.”

  I washed my hands in the kitchen, and then we went outside. It was quite dark out there, and I was sure we couldn't be seen from the front as we cut across the lawn between the houses.

  We'd left the light burning in her kitchen. I said, “I noticed before where your phone is. I'll use it without turning on the light. I just want to see if I can get any information that will clear this up.”

  I phoned the News and asked for Monty Billings who is on the city desk, evenings. I said, “This is Murray. Got time to look up something for me?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Guy named Lasky. Committed suicide at 4923

  Deverton Street, three or four weeks ago. Everything you can find out. Call me back at—” I used my flashlight to take the number off the base of the phone — “at Saunders 4848.”

  He promised to call back within half an hour and I went out into the kitchen again. Ruth was making coffee for us.

  “I'm going back home after that phone call comes,” I told her. “And you'd better stay here. Your uncle has a key, of course?”

  She nodded.

  “Then lock all the doors and windows when I leave. If you hear anyone prowling around or anything, phone for the police, or yell loud enough so I can hear you.”

  “But why would anyone—?”

  “I haven't the faintest idea, except that Haskins knows you were at my place. He might think the cat is here, or something. I haven't anything to work on except a hunch that something's coming. I don't want you in on it.”

  “But if you really think it's dangerous, you shouldn't...”

  We'd argued our way through two cups of coffee apiece by the time the phone rang.

  It was Monty. He said, “It was three weeks ago last Thursday, on the fourteenth at around midnight. Police got a frantic call from a man who said he'd taken morphine and changed his mind and would they rush an ambulance or a doctor or something. Gave his name as Colin Lasky, and the address you mentioned. They got there within eight minutes, but it was too late.”

  “Left a suicide note, I understand. What was in it?”

  “Just said he was tired of living and he'd lost his last friend the week before. The police figured out he meant his cat. It had been killed about that time, and nobody knew of him having any friend but that. He'd lived there over ten years and hadn't made any friends. Hermit type, maybe a little wacky. Oh, yeah — and the note said he preferred cremation and that there was enough money in a box in his bureau to cover it.”

  “Was there?”

  “Yes. There was more than enough; five hundred and ten dollars, to be exact. There wasn't any will, and there wasn't any estate, except the money left over after the cremation, and some furniture. The landlord, the guy who owned the house and had rented it to Lasky, made the court an offer for the furniture and they accepted it. Said he was going to leave it in the house, and rent the place furnished.”

  I asked, “What happens to the money?”

  “I dunno. Guess if no heir appears and no claims are made against the estate, the state keeps it. It wouldn't amount to very much.”

  “Did he have any source of income?”

  “None that could be found. The police guess was that he'd been living on cash capital, and the fact that it had dwindled down to a few hundred bucks was part of why he gave himself that shot of morphine. Or maybe he was just crazy.”

  “Shot?” I asked. “Did he take it intravenously?”

  “Yes. Say, the gang's been asking about you. Where are you hiding out?”

  I almost told him, and then I remembered how close I had come this evening to getting a composition started. And I remembered that I wasn't lonesome any more, either.

  I said, “Thanks, Monty. I'll be looking you up again some of these days. If anyone asks, tell 'em I'm rooming with an Eskimo in Labrador. So long.”

  I went back to Ruth and told her. “Everything's on the up and up. Lasky's dead, and the cat is dead. Only the cat is over in my living room.”

  I went across the back way, as I had come, and let myself in at the kitchen door. The cat was still there, asleep again in the Morris chair. He looked up as I came in, and damn if he didn't say “Miaourr?” again, with an interrogative accent.

  I grinned at him. “I don't know,” I admitted. “I only wish you could talk, so you could tell me.”

  Then I turned out the lights, so I could see out better than anyone outside could see in. I pulled a chair up to the window and watched Ruth's house.

  Soon the downstairs light went out, and an upstairs one flashed on. Shortly after that I saw a man and woman who were undoubtedly Ruth's uncle and aunt let themselves in the front door with a key. Then, knowing she was no longer alone over there, I made the rounds of my own place.

  Both front and back doors were locked, with the key on the inside of the front door, and a strong bolt in addition to the lock was on the back door. I locked all the windows that would lock; two of them wouldn't.

  On the top ledge of the lower pane of each of those two windows, I set a milk bottle, balanced so it would fall off if anyone tried to raise the sash from the outside. Then I turned out the lights.

  Yellow eyes shone at me from the seat of the Morris chair. I answered their plain, if unspoken, question. “Cat, I don't know why I'm doing this. Maybe I'm crazy. But I think you're bait, for someone, or something. I aim to find out.”

  I groped my way across the room and sat down on the arm of his chair. I rubbed my hand along his sleek fur until he purred, and then, while he was feeling communicative, I asked him, “Cat, how did you ring that doorbell?” Somehow there in the quiet dark I would not have been too surprised if he had answered me.

  I sat there until my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and I could see the furniture, the dark plateau of the grand piano, the outlines of the doorways. Then I walked over to one of the windows and looked out. The moon was on the other side of the house; I could see into the yard, but no one outside would be able to see me sta
nding there.

  Over there, diagonally toward the alley, in the shadow of the group of three small linden trees— Was that a darker shadow? A shadow that moved slightly as though a man were standing there watching the house?

  I couldn't be sure; maybe my eyes and my imagination were playing tricks on me. But it was just where a man would stand, if he wanted to keep an eye on both the front and back approaches of the cottage.

  I stood there for what seemed to be a long time, but at last I decided that I'd been mistaken. I went back to the Morris chair. This time I put Satan One-and-a-Half down on the floor and used the chair myself. But I'd scarcely settled myself before he had jumped up in my lap. In the stillness of the room, his purring sounded like an outboard motor. Then it stopped and he slept.

  For a while there were thoughts running through my mind. Then there were only sounds — notes. My fingers itched for the piano keys, and I wished that I hadn't started this damnfool vigil. I had something, and I wanted to turn on the lights and write it down. But I couldn't do that, so I tried memorizing it.

  Then I let my thoughts drift free again, because I knew I had what I'd been trying to get. But my thoughts weren't free, exactly. They seemed to belong to the girl, Ruth Carson. . . .

  I must have been asleep, because she was sitting there in the room with me, but she wasn't paying any attention to me.

  We were both listening respectfully to the enormous black cat which was sitting on the piano while it told us how to ring doorbells by telekinesis.

  Then the cat suggested that Ruth come over and sit on my lap. She did. A very intelligent cat. It stepped down from the top of the piano onto the keyboard and began to play, by jumping back and forth among the keys. The cat led off with

  “La Donna e Mobile” and then — of all tunes to hear when the most beautiful girl in the world is sitting on your lap — he started to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  Of course Ruth stood up. I tried to stand, too, but I couldn't move. I struggled, and the struggle woke me.

  My lap was empty. Satan One-and-a-Half had just jumped off. It was so quiet that I could hear the soft pad of his feet as he ran for the window. And there was a sound at the window.

  There was a face looking through the glass — the face of a man with a white beard!

  My hunch had been right. Someone had come for the cat.

  Lasky, who was dead of morphine, had come back for his black cat which had been run over by an auto and was buried in the back yard. It didn't make sense, but there it was. I wasn't dreaming now.

  For an instant I had an eerie feeling of unreality, and then I fought through it and jumped to my feet. The cat, at least, was real.

  The window was sliding upward. The cat was on its hind feet, forepaws on the window sill. I could see its alert head with pointed black ears silhouetted against the gray face on the other side of the window.

  Then the precariously balanced milk bottle fell from the upper ledge of the window. Not onto the cat, for it was in the center, and I'd made the bottle less conspicuous by putting it to one side. While the window was still open only a few inches, the milk bottle struck the floor inside. It shattered with a noise that sounded, there in the quiet room, like the explosion of a gigantic bomb.

  I was running toward the window by now, and jerking the flashlight out of my pocket as I ran. By the time I got there, the man and the cat were both gone. His lace had vanished at the sound of the crash, and the cat had wriggled itself through the partly open window and vanished after him.

  I threw the window wide, hesitating for an instant whether or not to vault across the sill into the yard. The man was running diagonally toward the alley, and the cat was running with him. Their course would take them past the linden trees where I'd thought, earlier, I'd seen the darker shadow of a watcher.

  Half in and half out of the window, still undecided whether this was my business or not, I flipped the switch of my flashlight and threw its beam after the fleeing figure.

  Maybe it was my use of that flashlight that caused the death of a man. Maybe it wouldn't have happened otherwise.

  Maybe the man with the beard would have run past the watcher in the trees without seeing him. And certainly, as we learned afterward, the watcher had no good reason to have made his presence known.

  But there he was, in the beam of my flashlight — the second man, the one who'd been hiding among the lindens. It was Milo Haskins.

  The bearded man had been running away from the house; now at the sight of Haskins standing there between him and the alley, directly in his path, he pulled up short. His hand went into a pocket for a gun.

  So did Haskins's hand, and Haskins fired first. The bearded man fell.

  There was a black streak in the air, and the cat had launched itself full at the pasty moonface of Milo Haskins. He fired at the cat as it flew through the air at his face, but he shot high; the bullet shattered glass over my head. The bearded man's gun was still in his hand, and he was down, but not unconscious. He raised himself up and carefully shot twice at Haskins.

  I must have got out of the window and run toward them, for I was there by that time. Haskins was falling. I made a flying grab at the bearded man's automatic, but the man with the beard was dead. He'd fired those last two shots, somehow, on borrowed time.

  I scooped up Haskins's revolver. The cat had jumped clear as he had fallen; it crouched under the tree.

  I bent over Haskins. He was still alive but badly hurt.

  Lights were flashing on in neighboring houses, and windows were flying up. I stepped clear of the trees and saw Ruth Carson's face, white and frightened, leaning out of an upper window of her house.

  She called, “Brian, are you all right? What happened?”

  I said, “I'm all right. Will you phone for a police ambulance?”

  “Aunt Elsa's already phoning the police. I'll tell her.”

  • • •

  We didn't learn the whole story until almost noon the next day, when Lieutenant Decker called. Of course we'd been making guesses, and some of them were fairly close.

  I let Lieutenant Becker in and he sat down — not in the Morris chair — and told us about it. He said, “Milo Haskins isn't dying, but he thought he was, and he talked. Lasky was Walter Burke.” He stopped as though that ought to make sense to us, but it didn't, so he went on:

  “He was famous about fifteen years ago — Public Enemy Number Four. Then no one heard of him after that. He simply retired, and got away with it.

  “He moved here and took the name of Lasky, and became an eccentric cuss. Not deliberately; he just naturally got that way, living alone and liking it.”

  “Except for the cat,” I said.

  “Yeah, except for the cat. He was nuts about that cat.

  Well, a year or so ago, this Haskins found out who his neighbor across the street was. He wrote a letter to the police about it, put the letter in a deposit box, and started in to blackmail Lasky, or Burke.”

  “Why a letter to the police?” Ruth asked. “I don't see—”

  I explained that to her. “So Lasky couldn't kill him and get clear of the blackmail that way. If he killed Haskins, the letter would be found. Go on, Lieutenant.”

  “Burke had to pay. Even if he ran out, Haskins could put the police on his trail and they might get him. So he finally decided to fool Haskins — and everybody else — into thinking he was dead. He wanted to take the cat with him, of course, so the first thing he did was to fake its death. He boarded it out to a cat farm or cat kennel or whatever it would be, and got another black cat, killed it, and buried it so people would notice. Also that gave color to the idea of his committing suicide. Everybody knew he was crazy about the cat.

  “Then, somewhere, maybe by advertising, he found a man about his age and build, and with a beard. He didn't have to resemble Lasky otherwise, the way Lasky worked it.

  “I don't know on what kind of a story Lasky got the other guy here, but he did, and he killed him
with morphine.

  Meanwhile, he'd written the suicide note, timed his phone call to the police telling them he'd taken morphine, and then ducked out — with, of course, the balance of his money.

  When the police got here, they found the corpse.”

  “But wouldn't they have got somebody to identify it?”

  The lieutenant shrugged. “I suppose, technically, they should have. But there wasn't any relative or friend to call in. And there didn't seem to be any doubt. There was the suicide note in Lasky's handwriting, and he'd phoned them. I guess it simply never occurred to anyone that further identification was necessary.

  “And none of his neighbors, except maybe Haskins, knew him very well. He'd probably trimmed the other guy's beard and hair to match his, and probably if any neighbor had been called down to the morgue, they might have made identification. A man always looks different anyway, when he's dead.”

  I said, “But last night why did Haskins—?”

  “Coming to that,” said the lieutenant. “Somehow the cat got lost from Lasky. I mean Burke. Maybe he just got around to calling for it where it'd been boarded, and found it had got away, or maybe he lost it himself, traveling, before it got used to a new home. Anyway, he figured it'd find its way back here, and that's why he took the risk of coming back to get it.

  See?”

  “Sure. But what about Haskins?” I asked.

  “Haskins must have seen the cat come back,” said the lieutenant.

  I nodded, remembering that Haskins had been mowing his lawn when I'd gone to the door.

  “He realized it was Lasky's cat and that Lasky had tricked him. If the cat was alive, probably Lasky was too.

  He figured Lasky would come back for the cat, and he watched the house for that reason. First he tried to get you to give him the cat by saying it was his. He figured he'd have an ace in the hole if he had the cat himself.

  “He didn't intend to kill Lasky; he had no reason to. He just wanted to follow him when he left, and find out where he was and under what identity, so he could resume the blackmail. But Lasky saw him there when you turned on the flashlight. Lasky went for a gun. Haskins had brought one because he knew he was dealing with a dangerous man. He beat Lasky, I mean Burke, to the draw. That's all.”