The Judge Is Reversed

by Frances Lockridge

  “You told me that,” Mullins said, unfairly. But he was not in a mood to be fair. Doctor indeed! It was true Gebhardt had produced a small black bag. If he thought that made him look like a doctor. “Go ahead. You went in. Did you yell or anything?”

  “I called out, ‘Anybody home?’” Gebhardt said. “If that’s what you mean by yelling.”

  “Nobody answered?”

  “Amantha did,” Gebhardt said. “Amantha yelled. She’s a Siamese. They most always yell.”

  The Siamese, betrayed by her own vocal responsiveness, had revealed that she was in the rear of the apartment. It had also become pretty evident that she was not in the kitchen, behind a closed door.

  The apartment was oddly laid out; it was as if the architect—assuming an architect to have been involved—had, on being confronted with an enormous, roughly square, area said, “Let’s put a wall here and another one here and see what happens.” What had happened was a corridor in the shape of an inner square, with rooms opening from it on both sides—the outer and more opulent having windows on the street or on a court; the inner rooms (the trapped rooms) having no windows at all, but only air vents. The kitchen was one of the trapped rooms. It was at the rear of the apartment. The corridor provided a race course for cats.

  From the foyer, Gebhardt had, he said, gone to his right. Not that it mattered; he could have gone either way. As he passed doors, he opened them and looked inside for cats. The second door he opened was that to a corner room—a library which actually had the appearance of one, being walled with books.

  “You figured this—cat—you wanted would be in there? With the door closed? When you had heard her in the rear of the apartment?”

  “Sergeant,” Gebhardt said, “I never figure where a cat won’t be. I never match guesses with a cat. I just look.”

  “O.K.,” Mullins said. “And he was lying on the floor. In about the center of the room.”

  “He was.”

  “And not dead?”

  “Dying,” Gebhardt said.

  He was told that he seemed very sure.

  “I was,” Gebhardt said. “There’s not much difference between humans and other animals when it comes to dying.”

  Aloysius Mullins frowned and started to say something. He remembered he was, after all, a cop. Not, for example, a theologian.

  “Did you do anything for him?”

  “Made sure. There wasn’t anything to be done. Not with his head bashed in the way it was.”

  “So?”

  “Went to find a telephone. There isn’t one in the library. As one of your—mob, must have noticed.”

  Gebhardt had called at twelve minutes after ten, which fitted and which the records verified. He had gone back to the library.

  “He was dead then,” Gebhardt said. “And if you want to know how I knew, sergeant—he wasn’t breathing. When they don’t breathe, they’re dead.”

  Oscar Gebhardt was somewhat disgruntled himself. He explained things in the simplest terms, to the simplest, and made no bones about it.

  “Usually,” Gebhardt added, in the interest of scientific accuracy, but somewhat blunting his point.

  He had waited for the police to arrive. He had told a prowl car patrolman what he knew, and told it again to detectives from the precinct and now he had told Mullins three times. It was now twenty minutes after one. Oscar Gebhardt looked pointedly at his watch.

  “You’d known him a long time? Since he didn’t make anything of letting you have the key?”

  “Twenty years,” Gebhardt said. “He’s had cats for twenty years and I’ve treated his cats for twenty years. He wrote a book about cats—damned good book—and I gave him some pointers. And I haven’t the faintest idea who killed him. And I didn’t. He was hit one blow, very heavy, with a dull object and it crushed his skull and he died of it. An hour, maybe not more than half an hour, before I found him. His name, in case you haven’t found that out, was John Blanchard. He—”

  Mullins reddened slightly. He said thanks for nothing, thanks a lot for nothing.

  “And,” Oscar Gebhardt said, “I’ve got calls to make. Whether you like cats or not. No use going to White Plains now. But I’ve got five calls in Manhattan, and one up in the Bronx and two in New Jersey. And if you still think I’m not who I say I am, there are a hundred people—two hundred—right here in Manhattan. Call them up and say you’ve got a little bald man with eyebrows, wearing funny clothes who says he’s Dr. Oscar Gebhardt, a cat specialist. Ask them if they’ve ever heard he goes around killing people and—”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as what—oh.” Gebhardt paused and his eyebrows quivered. “Good many out of town on a nice weekend like—all right, call some people named North. Mr. and Mrs. Gerald. They just might—”

  He stopped, because Mullins’s face had changed. It seemed to Oscar Gebhardt, D.V.S., that it had changed for the worse.

  The telephone bell rang shrilly, unexpectedly. It is unusual for telephone bells to ring in the North apartment at one thirty on Sunday afternoons. Jerry was carrying pre-lunch martinis on a tray and jumped slightly, but managed not to slosh, being a man of experience. Pam looked at him, and was looked at. Then Jerry looked at the tray, with the expression of a man up to his neck in labors. Pam said, “Oh all right, but I don’t see why it’s always me,” and answered the telephone.

  “Mrs. North?” a familiar voice said—a voice familiar, but now evidently under strain of some sort. Pam said, “Why Sergeant Mullins! Hello.”

  “There’s a man here,” Mullins said, “says you know him. A short sort of man sort of bald, with sort of bushy eyebrows. He’s got on a red coat and—”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “Dr. Gebhardt. He always wears a red coat on Sunday. To make it feel like Sunday, because otherwise it’s just another—” She stopped herself. “There’s a man where, sergeant?” Pam said.

  “He found a body,” Mullins said. “Says he found a body. Says he’s a doctor. That is, cat doctor. Says he came to give reju—” Mullins paused, “Rejuvenation shots,” he said with great clarity, but as if he were quoting something preposterous, “to a cat.”

  “Well,” Pam said, “why not? Wait—what body? I mean, whose body?”

  “Oh,” Mullins said, “man named Blanchard—John Blanchard. But the point is, this man who says he’s a vet named Gebhardt says you can identify him. And I guess—”

  “I’m sure we can,” Pam North said. “We’ll come right—where, sergeant?”

  “It isn’t really nec—”

  “Of course it is,” Pam said. “How can we tell if we don’t see him?”

  “Mrs. North,” Mullins said, “all I told you was what he looked like and about the coat and right away—”

  “Sergeant,” Pam said. “How can I really know? Over the telephone. There might be a hundred short bald men wearing reddish sport jackets. Pretending to be—”

  “But right off—” Sergeant Mullins said.

  “Where?” Pam said.

  Mullins hesitated a moment. He accepted the inevitable. He told Pam where.

  “As soon as we can,” Pam said, and hung up and said, “Jerry! Gebby’s found a body and it’s that Mr. Blanchard of course. And Mullins wants us to come up there and tell him whether it’s really Gebby and I knew all along—”

  Mutely, Jerry North handed his wife a martini. She took it.

  “But we haven’t much time,” Pam said.

  “My dear,” Jerry said, “I’m afraid—I’m afraid it’s growing on you. Does Mullins really want us in on it? Because you know how—”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “Didn’t he call us?” But she looked at Jerry more carefully, and saw that he was looking at her thoughtfully.

  “I know,” she said. “But—it isn’t as if we could make it not have happened. Because it already has. So when Mullins wants us to say Gebby is Gebby—”

  “You know he is,” Jerry said. “You said he was right off the bat. Pam—before Mullin
s gave you his name?”

  “Well,” Pam said. “Perhaps a little. But—”

  “Seeing’s believing,” Jerry said. “I know, my dear. And one of these days we’re going to get us both killed. However—”

  Cabs move freely in New York on Sundays. The one the Norths captured moved with somewhat breathtaking freedom. There was a knot of people in front of the old apartment house on Riverside Drive. “Sergeant Mullins wants to see us,” Pam told a patrolman, who looked at them somewhat stonily. Jerry thought that this was the overstatement of the decade, or, at any rate, of the day. But they were sent along to Mullins—to Mullins, and Dr. Oscar Gebhardt, to whom Pam said, “Hello, Gebby.”

  “Took you long enough,” Gebhardt said, to her. “Well?” he said to Mullins.

  Mullins guessed so. They could get in touch with Gebhardt if the need arose.

  “Obviously,” Gebhardt said. “Use the telephone.” He got his black bag; he went out of the room.

  “Well,” Mullins said. “Thanks Mrs. North. Mr. North. It was good of you to come up. I’ll tell the loot—that is, the captain—when he gets here. So I don’t know as there’s any reason for you—”

  “Sergeant Mullins,” Pam North said. “We knew Mr. Blanchard was going to be killed.”

  Mullins looked at her and slowly his mouth opened. Jerry looked at her. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair.

  “Well,” Pam said, “almost. Because—”

  “Because what, Pam?” Captain William Weigand, of Homicide, Manhattan West, said from the doorway. “And don’t you think you should have mentioned it?”

  “An indignant tennis player, for one thing,” Pam North said. “And—”

  She was interrupted. A Siamese cat came around Bill Weigand at a brisk trot, now and then looking back anxiously over her shoulder. The room they were in had been, evidently, Blanchard’s office. It contained a large desk, and leather chairs, and a leather sofa.

  “Stop her, somebody!” Dr. Oscar Gebhardt said, testily, with contempt for inefficiency, from outside. He trotted into the room after the Siamese cat, holding a hypodermic syringe in one hand. The cat, after one more quick backward glance, went under the sofa. “Damn,” Gebhardt said. “Four of you, and you couldn’t stop one cat. Here, Amantha. Nice kitty. Pretty kitty.” Oscar Gebhardt spoke words of endearment in a tone of consuming anger.

  “Mrr—ow-aough,” Amantha said, at some length, from under the couch.

  “Close the door, somebody,” Gebhardt said. Bill Weigand kicked the door closed. “And move the damned sofa,” Gebhardt said, to nobody in particular. Mullins looked at him. “You,” Gebhardt said. “Big enough, aren’t you? And this is sterile.” He waved the syringe. “Put it down and I’ll have to boil it again.” Mullins stared at him.

  “Come on, Mullins,” Jerry said, and went to the sofa and began to pull at one end of it. Mullins stared briefly at Jerry North. He went to the other end of the sofa and pulled. It was a heavy sofa, but it moved. The trouble was that Amantha moved under it.

  “Farther out,” Pam said, and, when it was far enough out, went behind the sofa. She lay down on the floor and reached an arm under the sofa. “Nice Amantha,” Pam North said, in the tone of a coo. “Pretty Amantha.”

  “Yow-ow-wohr—uh,” Amantha said. “WOW!”

  “Such a way to talk!” Pam said. “Ouch!”

  “Bad?” Gebhardt enquired, with more politeness than interest.

  “Nick,” Pam said. “Sergeant. She’s at your end. I’m pushing and—”

  Amantha came out. Her ears were laid back. She paused briefly to hiss and went across the room and under a chair.

  “Why didn’t you grab her, for God’s sake?” Gebhardt said to Mullins. “Went right through your hands.” He waved the hypodermic at Mullins.

  “Listen,” Mullins said. “If you think—”

  “Move the chair, sergeant,” Bill Weigand said. “I’ll catch her if she comes this way. Pam?”

  “Coming out,” Pam said, and came out from behind the sofa, and brushed herself. “I do think, sergeant—” she began, but did not finish. She went to one side of the chair and got down on her knees beside it. “Nice kitty,” Pam said. “You ornery little beast.” She said the last in dulcet tones.

  Amantha said nothing whatever.

  Mullins looked around somewhat wildly. Then he got down on his knees in front of the chair, which was large and low. Jerry knelt opposite his wife; Bill Weigand went behind the chair and also knelt. Gebhardt remained near the door, holding the syringe like a baton.

  “You look like a prayer meeting,” Gebhardt said, with some pleasure. “Or a crap game.”

  “Push,” Bill said, over the chair, to Mullins. Mullins pushed.

  “WOW—OW!” Amantha said, and the moving chair exposed her. She tried to back under.

  “Grab her!” Gebhardt shouted and started forward. And Mullins grabbed the little café-au-lait cat, with brown ears and face and legs, and long brown tail. He held her dangling.

  “Desk,” Gebhardt said. “Hold her down.”

  Mullins looked around somewhat wildly, Amantha dangling. He held the cat out toward Pam.

  “Desk!” Gebhardt said. “How many times—”

  Mullins put the little cat down on the desk top.

  “Push her down hard,” Gebhardt said. “Front end. Good and hard. They’re tougher than they look.”

  “Good God,” Mullins said, but he pressed down on the little cat’s shoulders. She glared up at him from wide blue eyes.

  “Don’t let go until I say,” Gebhardt said, and was around the cat. He rubbed her flank with a dab of cotton which he had carried with the syringe. He pushed the needle in, and the little cat was a spring of rage under Mullins’s big hands. She twisted. She screamed. Gebhardt pressed the plunger. Amantha was a tortured cat. She mentioned it.

  “Let her go!” Gebhardt said, loudly. “Quick, man!”

  Mullins yanked his hands up.

  Amantha was a released spring. She paused only long enough—and it did not seem she really paused at all—to rake Mullins’s right thumb with a needle tooth. She then went back under the sofa.

  “Good,” Gebhardt said. “Not much trouble after all. Get you, sergeant?”

  Mullins shook blood from his hand. Not much blood, to be sure. But blood. He glared at Gebhardt.

  “Have to move fast,” Gebhardt said. “Even when they’re getting along, as she is, they’re pretty quick. Fortunately, she’s a sweet-tempered little thing. Aren’t you, Amantha?”

  The cat answered from under the sofa. She said, “mrr—ough,” but with no special violence.

  “Knows it’s over for the day,” Gebhardt said. “Well, got to be getting along. I’d put a little iodine on that, sergeant.” He did not, it occurred to Pam, speak in tones of much sympathy. “Never got a really bad infection myself, but now and then—As I said, you’ve got to be firm with them. Firm and fast.”

  He nodded, confirming his own statement. He went out of the room again.

  Mullins prepared to speak.

  “As a matter of fact, sergeant,” Pam North said, “you didn’t need us, you know. All you had to do was to look at Gebby’s hands. Bandages. Anybody could tell he’s a cat vet.” She looked at Mullins and shook her head. “A matter of deduction,” Pam said. “Obvious, my dear sergeant.”

  For a moment the glare remained in the eyes of Sergeant Aloysius Mullins. They waited. The glare faded and Mullins slowly, widely, began to grin. Mullins’s face is large, but the grin fitted it.

  “O.K.,” Mullins said. “O.K. the bunch of you.”

  5

  They waited in their apartment for Captain William Weigand, Sergeant Aloysius Mullins. They had been told to go there; told to wait there. If they didn’t mind. While spadework was done. “We’ll be along,” Bill told them. “To hear how come you knew Blanchard was going to be killed.”

  “If we didn’t mind indeed,” Pam said to Jerry, as they waited. They had
waited first with sandwiches, in lieu of lunch. They waited then, for some time, with conversation—with some attempt to determine what, if anything, they did have to tell the men from homicide they had known so long.

  “A woman with fringe,” Pam said. “An injured tennis player. A man who’s fanatic about vivisection. You’d have thought he was killing Amantha, wouldn’t you? And really it’s no more than a prick.”

  “Tell them that,” Jerry said. “I must say, however, Amantha doesn’t seem to need much rejuvenating.”

  “Poor Mullins,” Pam said, and reverted. She said that it didn’t, did it, seem like so much when you listed it. A woman with fringe, a blond youth with a temper, a middle-aged man with a fixation.

  “Perhaps,” Pam said, “I went too far. We didn’t know he was going to be killed. Only that he was enemy-prone. And, of course, inclined to sit in judgment.”

  They didn’t, Jerry agreed, actually know much about the late John Blanchard. Bill would know more.

  “We’ve got stamps to give,” Pam said and, when Jerry raised eyebrows, added, “Trading.”

  “On the other hand,” Jerry said, “we could sit this one out.”

  “We always could have,” Pam said. “Except the very first one. We never have. Every time, it seemed there were circumstances. Speaking of time, isn’t it about?”

  Jerry looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past six.

  “It is indeed,” Jerry said, and got up, and moved quickly—moved to the kitchen and the refrigerator, to the bar in the living room. Ice made pleasant sounds in a shaker. “We’re creatures of habit,” Pam said, accepting. “How nice for us.”

  One of their habits is to drink slowly. They had not finished their first, not quite finished, when the doorbell rang at a few minutes before seven. Bill came in and Mullins followed him, and Bill said, “Phew!” Jerry mixed again, this time three in the shaker, a solitary old-fashioned. (Without fruit salad; Mullins was being reformed.) Mullins had a small bandage on his right thumb.

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said, after a sip. “Now—give.”

  They gave—gave a woman in fringe at a cat show, the identification of Blanchard by a woman who ran what Pam called a cat store; gave an indignant tennis player.