John Baer - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 5 — August 1922)

“Teta,” I whispered, “this whole affair is a secret between the two of us. I thought that I was on the right track — and now I know it. You’re the boy who’ll bring home the bacon. It’s up to you to get the men who killed your pals — Lannagan and Deets. Will you do it?”

There are some people who claim that cats have no intelligence. I stand ready to swear that Teta, Morgan Peck’s cat, understood every word I said. For he rubbed against my leg with a loud pur-r-r-r of satisfaction and immediately took up his station close to the door as if clamoring for action.

We went down the stairs together.

I stopped at both front and rear doors and gave my instructions to the operatives on watch:

“I want to be informed the minute the cat meows to get out,” I instructed them. “Pass this word on to the men who will relieve you. Remember, no excuses go. Before he is let out, I am to be called!”

Fifteen minutes later Olmstead, on duty at the rear door, called to me: “The cat’s howling at my station,” he said.

I followed the animal to the door and personally let him outside.

Across the lawn I followed the cat with my eyes until he disappeared around the corner of a nearby garage. O’Leary and Cain, the two men on duty on the grounds, had had their orders. As Teta disappeared down the alley I saw O’Leary dodge around a nearby bush and follow him. A second later he reappeared and approached the house.

“Your friend, the cat, went into a barn that’s been transformed into a garage at 1424 North Tenth, just five houses below here,” he reported with a grin. “And if you’ll pardon the joke, chief, I’ve shadowed darned near everything that walks, but it’s the first time I ever trailed a cat.”

Stepping to the telephone, I called up my friend Hitchens, chief of detectives, who was cooperating with us in every way possible. Satisfied with the results of my conversation, I sat down to spend the remainder of the afternoon among Peck’s books.

Suddenly the phone at my elbow jangled. Turning, I picked up the receiver and answered the call.

The same metallic voice that had talked to Peck the day of Lannagan’s murder answered my gruff “Hello!”

“Peck?” he asked.

“I’ll call him,” I responded.

“Never mind,” the other answered. Then as I hesitated for words, the voice went on:

“Tell your boss he can prepare for another killing! It may be him and it may be another, but his time is coming soon!”

The voice died away in the same harsh laughter that I had heard before.

I hung up the receiver with a bang and jiggled the hook to attract the attention of “Central.” An instant later I was connected with my friend Armstrong to whom I again explained matters, while Peck looked on, his furrowed face wrinkled in doubt.

This time Armstrong was speedier than before. Scarcely had I hung up the receiver than he called me back.

“The phone call was from the booth in a drug store at the busiest corner of the city. To trace the person who had called would be an impossibility.”

Packard, on duty at the rear door, called me at fifteen minutes past five o’clock.

“The cat just came in!” he yelled.

The afternoon’s hunting had evidently been of the best for the cat was purring contentedly as he passed down the hallway on his way to the library. But I was taking no chances of a scratch from his sharp claws, for I protected my hands with heavy gloves as I tenderly picked him up and carried him upstairs to my room. Ten minutes later I was at the telephone with my friend Hitchens at the other end.

Half an hour afterward there came a sudden blast of a police whistle. From a dozen different directions from where they had been stationed hurried policemen and detectives, all centering on the big brick house at 1424 North Tenth.

There was no response to our knocks. A burly policeman hurled his bulk against the door! It refused to give way’! He swung an axe over his head! Came a sound of splitting wood! A second later we were inside the hallway.

A revolver spit at us from down the corridor! Another flashed from the head of the stairs! We answered them shot for shot, bullet for bullet. For five minutes the battle waged. Then our superior numbers told.

We dashed through the smoke-filled rooms, gathering in our prisoners. Four men were caught in the net — and one woman. She was Mrs. Lon Bixby. Her husband, suffering from a severe wound in the shoulder, was one of the four. The remainder were merely his tools.

Battersby, one of Bixby’s aids, confronted with the murders of Lannagan and Deets, turned state’s evidence and confessed. Slick, one of the others, backed him up in his statements.

Bixby, as I had figured from the first, was the instigator of the whole diabolical affair. How he made his escape from prison, however, is something that he refused to divulge — even when he and his confederates were taken to the gallows to answer for their crimes.

How did they kill Lannagan and Deets? By means of Teta!

Unwittingly, the little animal was the indirect cause of both murders. Battersby, according to his own confession, had been posted by Bixby, who had, while still in prison had him engage the place at 1424 North Tenth Street under an alias in order that he might watch the Peck home.

In his guise as a servant he had got acquainted with Deets while the latter was working with one of the cars. He had noticed Teta come out of the-barn at 1424 which, having been empty for a number of years, was filled with rats. As the cat passed Deets, the latter had bent over and scratched it, making a chance remark about Peck’s affection for the animal. He had also remarked with a chuckle at a fondness the pet had for drawing and withdrawing his claws in whatever he chanced to be lying on — a, habit which all cats indulge in at times.

Battersby, alert to give every detail to his employer, had remarked this fact to Bixby in his report. The latter saw an opportunity to turn the incident to his own advantage. Learning that Peck’s cat frequented the barn, he had catered to the animal in every possible way until the animal passed a great deal of its time in and about the Bixby place.

Failing in his attempts to kill Peck, the instant that he had chased the millionaire to cover Bixby seized upon the cat to carry out his own diabolical ends. Covering the animal’s claws with a concentrated extract of venom made from the poison of a cobra, he had turned it loose leaving it to Fate as to where death would strike.

Peck was likely to be the first. He was the cat’s master and the animal would be more likely to be with him than anyone else. That it was Lannagan who was the first was simply one of those peculiar freaks of chance.

The cat, purring contentedly on Lannagan’s lap, had stuck his claws slightly into the servant’s knee. Lannagan had worn thick trousers and, as a result, a great deal of the poison was rubbed off as the claws went through. He was therefore not stricken until during the night when the venom had gone entirely through his system.

On the other hand Deets, wearing a pair of thin trousers — and there might have been more of the poison on the cat’s claws or it may have been fresher — was stricken almost immediately after the sharp points had penetrated his flesh.

Bixby, a native of South Africa, was an adept on poisons which led to the fact that he finally selected this subtle method of committing his crimes.

Located so close to the Peck home, he was able to see from his window a great deal of what was going on around the mansion. As a result, when the coroner called, he knew that death — through the cat — had struck. But he did not know who. He had a confederate stationed downtown somewhere close to the Pennsylvania station. It was but the work of seconds to call the latter up and instruct him to call Peck to the phone. When the latter answered in person the confederate knew that death had struck someone else and so informed Bixby.