Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

“No, sir.”

“He hasn’t approached her, spoken to her?”

“Hell, she didn’t know he was following her. It’s been kind of like a Humphrey Bogart movie, at that. Johnson’s been tailing her. He’s been in the back court across the street since we pulled in here.”

“Sounds like a Canarsie clambake.” Then the Sergeant said swiftly, “Piggo, get lost.”

The tall man was coming directly toward their doorway.

“Well, well,” said Ellery, stepping out. “Hi.”

“I thought I’d save you some wear and tear.” Jimmy McKell stood innerbraced, looking from Ellery to Sergeant Velie and back again. Behind them, the doorway was empty. “What’s the significant idea?”

“Idea?” said Ellery, considering it.

“I saw you two rubberheels sneak into this doorway. What are you doing, watching Celeste Phillips?”

“Not me,” said Ellery. “Were you, Sergeant?”

“I wouldn’t do a thing like that,” said the Sergeant.

“Very funny.” Jimmy McKell kept looking at them. “Why don’t you ask me what I’m doing here?”

“All right, Jimmy. What are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are.” Jimmy excavated a cigaret, brushed off the linty detritus, and stuck it like a flag between his lips. His tone was amiable, however. “Only my angle is maybe different. I’m told there’s somebody doing the town collecting necks. Now that woman has one of the prettiest head supports in Christendom.” He lit the cigaret.

“Protecting her, huh?” said the Sergeant. “You play long shots, reporter.”

“Two-Million-to-One McKell, they call me.” Jimmy tossed the match; it glanced off Velie’s ear. “Well, I’ll be seeing you. If that’s my kismet.” He began to walk away.

“Jimmy, wait.”

“For what?”

“What do you say we drop in on her?”

Jimmy sauntered back. “For what?”

“I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you two.”

“For what?”

“You’re both entitled to an explanation, Jimmy.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me. My nose knows.”

“No kidding.”

“I’m not. It really does.”

“I don’t blame you for being griped—”

“Hell, who’s griped? What’s a little thing like being suspected of seven murders? I mean between pals?” He stepped close all at once and Sergeant Velie stirred. Jimmy’s lips were out. “Queen, that was the most two-faced, poisonous deal since the days of the Medicis. To sick me onto Celeste and Celeste onto me. I ought to boff you for that.”

The Sergeant said, “Here.”

“Take that ham hock off me.”

“It’s all right, Sergeant.” Ellery was preoccupied and morose. “But Jimmy, I had to make some test.”

“Some test is right.”

“Yes, it was on the silly side. But you both came to me at such a convenient moment. I couldn’t close my eyes to the possibility that one of you—”

“Is the Cat.” Jimmy laughed.

“We’re not dealing with normality.”

“Do I look abnormal? Does Celeste?”

“Not to my eyes, no. But then I don’t have psychiatric vision.” Ellery grinned. “And dementia, for example, is a youthful disease.”

“Praecox McKell. Well, they called me a lot worse in the late Hot War.”

“Jimmy, I never really believed it. I don’t believe it now.”

“But there’s always the mathematical chance.”

“Come on, let’s drop in on Celeste.”

“I take it if I refuse,” said Jimmy, not budging, “Charley the Anthropoid here will pinch me?”

“I’ll pinch you,” said Sergeant Velie. “Where it hurts.”

“See what I mean?” said Jimmy bitterly. “We’re just not compatible.” And he strode away, breaking up the hopscotch game and pursued by the curses of little children.

“Let him go, Velie.”

After a few moments Detective Piggott’s voice said, “There goes my bread and butter. Night, Brother Elks.” When they looked around, Piggott was gone.

“So he’s been watching Celeste to save her from the Cat,” said Ellery as they began to cross the street.

“In a swine’s eyeball,”

“Oh, Jimmy means it, Sergeant. At least he thinks he does.”

“What is he, feebleminded?”

“Hardly.” Ellery laughed. “But he’s suffering from a severe attack of what our friend Cazalis might call — though I doubt it — confusional inanity. Otherwise known as the love psychosis.”

The Sergeant grunted. They stopped before the tenement and he looked around casually. “You know what I think, Maestro?”

“After that double wingback map of Manhattan of yours I wouldn’t even attempt a guess.”

“Go ahead and horse,” said the Sergeant. “But I think you put a bee in his buzzer.”

“Explain.”

“I think maybe McKell thinks maybe Celeste is the Cat.”

Ellery glanced up at the behemoth as if he had never really seen him before.

“You know what I think, Velie?”

“What?”

“I think you’re right.” And, looking slightly ill, he said, “Let’s go in.”

The hall was cheaply dim and pungent. A boy and a girl jumped apart as Ellery and Velie walked in; they had been clutching each other in the shadows beside the staircase. “Oh, thank you, I had such a lovely time,” said the girl, running up the stairs. The boy smirked. “I ain’t complaining, Carole.” He slouched out, winking at the two men.

A door at the rear stood open, a line of wash clipping its upper corner to the dark sky.

“Piggott said Johnson was out there, Maestro.”

“Not any more Johnson isn’t,” said a voice from under the stairs. “I got an old camp chair in here, Sarge.”

‘“Lo, Johnson,” said the Sergeant, not turning. “How’s the trick?”

“With those two juvenile delinquents that were just here it was colossal. You calling on C.P.?”

“Is she still up?” Ellery asked the darkness.

“There’s the light under her door, Mr. Queen.”

“That door there,” said the Sergeant.

“Alone, Johnson?”

“Uh-huh.” There was a yawn.

Ellery went over and knocked on the door. Sergeant Velie moved to one side, out of range.

After a moment, Ellery knocked again.

“Who is it?” She sounded frightened.

“Ellery Queen. Please open, Celeste.”

They heard her undo the latch chain very slowly.

“What do you want?”

In the box of light she stood bristling. One hand clutched a large book to her breast. It looked like an old book, one fingered with respect.

Survey of English Literature — First Year.

Saturday night on East 102nd Street. A voom with the Venerable Bede. Bebop with Beowulf. Holding hands with Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages. Jive print in double columns, kneedeep in footnotes.

She blocked his view of the room. He had never seen this room, only photographs.

She was dressed in a full black pleated skirt and a tailored white blouse and her hair was disordered, as if she had had her fists in it as she read. There was blue ink on one finger. What he could make out of her face was a little shocking. The violet stains had spread and her skin was blotchy, cupped to bitter heads.

“May I come in?” asked Ellery with a smile.

“No. What do you want?”

“In this neighborhood, Maestro,” said Sergeant Velie, “you couldn’t run for your life.”

Celeste took a quick look out. She immediately withdrew her head. “I remember him.”

Sergeant Velie stiffened.

“Haven’t you done enough damage?”

“Celeste—”

“Or did you come to arrest me? Not that I’d put it past you. I suppose Jimmy McKell and I were accomplices. We strangled all those people together. Each of us pulling on one end of the silk cords.”