Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

7:35.

Ellery ran.

When the uniformed maid ushered him into the Cazalis living room, the first person he saw was the Mayor of the City of New York. That harrowed servant of the people was lying back in an easychair, hands clasped about a tall glass, glaring at a bust of Sigmund Freud above Ellery’s head.

The Police Commissioner, seated beside the Mayor, was studying the fume of his cigar.

Dr. Cazalis sat on a Turkish divan, bolstered by silk pillows. His wife held on to his hand.

At a window stood Inspector Queen, cocooned in silence.

The air was chill.

“Don’t tell me, please,” said Ellery. “It’s a washout.”

No one replied. Mrs. Cazalis rose and prepared a Scotch-and-soda, which Ellery accepted with genuine gratitude.

“Ellery, where have you been today?” But the Inspector failed to sound as if he cared.

“Out chasing radio calls. Don’t be misled, Mr. Mayor,” said Ellery. “It’s the first time since I took over. Hereafter I’ll do my special investigating from an armchair — that is, if there is a hereafter?”

The Mayor’s glance touched him briefly, almost with loathing. “Sit down, Queen, sit down.”

“Nobody’s answered my question.”

“It wasn’t a question, it was a statement,” said Dr. Cazalis from the pillows. “And as a statement it exactly states the case.”

“Sit down, Queen,” snapped the Mayor again.

“Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’ll keep my father company.” Ellery was startled by Dr. Cazalis’s appearance. His pale eyes were inflamed and his skin was plowed so raw that Ellery thought of floodwater soil eroded into gullies; the glacier had given way. And he recalled Cazalis’s remark about his insomnia. “Doctor, you look depreciated.”

“There’s been considerable wear and tear.”

“He’s worn out,” said Mrs. Cazalis shrilly. “He drives himself so. No more sense than an infant. He’s been at this day and night since...”

Her husband squeezed her hand. “The whole psychiatric attack, Mr. Queen, is a fizzle. We’ve got exactly nowhere.”

Inspector Queen said curtly: “This week I’ve been working close to Dr. Cazalis, Ellery. We wound up today. There were a number of possibilities. We ran every one of them down.”

“Quietly, you understand,” said the Mayor bitterly. “No toes stepped on. Not a word in the papers.”

“Well,” said Dr. Cazalis, “it was a long chance at best. My fault entirely. It seemed a notion at the time.”

“At the time, Edward? Isn’t it still?” Mrs. Cazalis was regarding her husband in a puzzled way.

“Humpty Dumpty, dear.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I take it, Queen,” said the Mayor, “you haven’t got to first base?”

“I never took the bat off my shoulder, Mr. Mayor.”

“I see.” Here goes a Special Investigator, thought Ellery. “Inspector Queen, what’s your feeling?”

“We have a very touchy case, Mr. Mayor. In the usual murder investigation, the range of suspicion is limited. The husband, the ‘friend,’ the handyman, the rival, the enemy, and so on. Motive begins to stick out. The field narrows. Opportunity narrows it even further. We’ve got human material to work on. Sooner or later in even the most complicated case we make a rap stick. But in this one... How are you going to narrow the field? Where do you start? No connection among the victims anywhere. No suspects. No clues. Every murder a dead end. The Cat could be anybody in New York.”

“You can still say that, Inspector?” cried the Mayor. “After all these weeks?”

The Inspector’s lips thinned. “I’m ready to hand in my shield right now.”

“No, no, Inspector, I was just thinking aloud.” The Mayor glanced at his Police Commissioner. “Well, Barney, where do we go from here?”

The Commissioner tapped a long ash very carefully into a tray. “When you get right down to it, there’s no place we can go. We’ve done, and we’re doing, everything humanly possible. I could suggest a new Police Commissioner, Jack, but I doubt if that would satisfy anybody except the Extra and the other crowd, and I’m Irish enough to believe it wouldn’t necessarily bag your Cat, either.”

The Mayor waved, impatiently. “The question is, are we doing everything possible? It seems to me where we may have gone off is in assuming that the Cat is a New Yorker. Suppose he comes from Bayonne? Stamford? Yonkers? He may be a commuter—”

“Or a Californian,” said Ellery.

“What? What was that?” exclaimed the Mayor.

“A Californian, or an Illinoisan, or a Hawaiian.”

The Mayor said irritably, “Queen, I can’t see that that sort of talk gets us anywhere. The point is, Barney, have we done anything outside the City?”

“Everything we can.”

“We’ve had every community within a radius of fifty miles of the City alerted for at least six weeks,” said the Inspector. “From the start they’ve been requested to keep their eyes peeled for psychos. But so far—”

“Jack, until we get a concrete reason for believing otherwise, nobody can crucify us for concentrating on Manhattan.”

“My personal opinion,” added the Inspector, “has been all along that he’s a Manhattanite. To me this Cat smells local.”

“Besides, Jack,” said the Commissioner with a certain dryness, “our jurisdiction ends at the City limits. After that we’ve got a tin cup in our hands and take what the saints provide.”

The Mayor set his glass down with a little bang and went over to the fireplace. Ellery was nuzzling his Scotch with a faraway look, the Commissioner was back at his cigar examination, Dr. Cazalis and Inspector Queen were blinking at each other across the room to keep awake, and Mrs. Cazalis sat like a grenadier.

The Mayor turned suddenly. “Dr. Cazalis, what are the chances of extending your psychiatric investigation to include the entire metropolitan area?”

“Manhattan, is the concentration point.”

“But there are other psychiatrists outside?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What about them?”

“Well... it would take months, and then you wouldn’t get anything like satisfactory coverage. Even here, in the heart of things, where I exert a pretty direct professional influence, I haven’t been able to get better than 65 to 70 per cent of the men in the field to co-operate. If the survey were extended to Westchester, Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey...” Dr. Cazalis shook his head. “As far as I personally am concerned, Mr. Mayor, it would be pretty much out of the question. I haven’t either the strength or the time to tackle such a project.”

Mrs. Cazalis’s lips parted.

“Won’t you at least continue covering Manhattan, then, Dr. Cazalis? The answer may well lie in the files of one of the 30 or 35 per cent you say refused to play along. Won’t you keep after those people?”

Dr. Cazalis’s fingers pumped rapidly. “Well, I’ve been hoping...”

“Edward, you’re not giving up. You’re not!”

“Et tu, darling? I thought I had no more sense than an infant.”

“I mean for going at it the way you have. Ed, how can you stop altogether? Now?”

“Why, dear, simply by doing so. I was paranoid to attempt it.”

She said something in such a low tone that Dr. Cazalis said, “What, dear?”

“I said what about Lenore!”

She was on her feet.

“Darling.” Dr. Cazalis scrambled off the divan. “All this tonight’s upset you—”

“Tonight? Did you think I wasn’t upset yesterday? And the day before?” She sobbed into her hands. “If Lenore had been your sister’s child... had meant as much to you as she did to me...”

“I think, gentlemen,” said the Mayor quickly, “we’ve imposed on Mrs. Cazalis’s hospitality long enough.”