Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

By Wednesday morning the failure of the Mayor’s radio appeal was apparent. The most irresponsible rumors circulated in the City: that the National Guard had been called out, that the Mayor had made an emergency-flight personal appeal to President Truman in the White House, that the Police Commissioner had resigned, that in a clash between a Washington Heights CAT patrol and police two persons had been killed, and nine injured. The Mayor canceled all appointments for the day and remained in continuous conference. Top officials of the Police Department were unanimous in favor of presenting ultimatums to the CAT groups: Disband at once or face arrest. The Mayor refused to sanction such action. No disorders had been reported, he pointed out; apparently the groups were maintaining internal discipline and restricting themselves to their avowed activities. Besides, the movement by now embraced too many people for such measures. “They might lead to open clashes and we’d have riots all over the City. That might mean calling for troops. I’ll exhaust every peaceful means before I lay New York open to that.”

By midafternoon Wednesday word came that “the central committee” of “the combined Citizens’ Action Teams of New York City” had engaged the vast and windy Metropol Hall on Eighth Avenue for “a monster mass meeting” Thursday night. Immediately after, the Mayor’s secretary announced a delegation of this committee.

They filed in, a little nervous but with stubborn looks on their faces. The Mayor and his conferees regarded the deputation with curiosity. They seemed a cross-section of the City’s people. There were no sharp or shady faces among them. The spokesman, a tall man in his 30s with the look of a mechanic, identified himself as “Jerome K. Frankburner, veteran.”

“We’ve come here, Mr. Mayor, to invite you to talk at our mass meeting tomorrow night. Metropol Hall seats twenty thousand people, we’ll have a radio and television setup, and everybody in the City will be sitting in. It’s democracy, it’s American. What we’d like you to tell us, Mr. Mayor, is what you’ve done to stop the Cat and what plans you and your subordinates have for the future. And if it’s straight talk that makes sense we guarantee that by Friday morning there won’t be a C.A.T. in business. Will you come?”

The Mayor said, “Would you gentlemen wait here?” and he took his people into a private office next door.

“Jack, don’t do it!”

“Why not, Barney?”

“What can we tell them that we haven’t told them a hundred times already? Let’s ban the meeting. If there’s trouble, crack down on their leaders.”

“I don’t know, Barney,” said one of the Mayor’s advisers, a power in the Party. “They’re no hoodlums. These people represent a lot of good votes. We’d better go easy.”

There were other expressions of opinion, some siding with the Police Commissioner, some with the Party man.

“You haven’t said anything, Inspector Queen,” said the Mayor suddenly. “What’s your opinion?”

“The way I see it,” replied Inspector Queen, “it’s going to be mighty tough for the Cat to stay away from the meeting.”

“Or to put it another way,” said the Mayor — “although that’s a very valuable thought, Inspector — I was elected on a people’s platform and I’m going to stay on it.”

He opened the door and said, “I’ll be there, gentlemen.”

The events of the night of September 22 began in an atmosphere of seriousness and responsibility. Metropol Hall was filled by 7 P.M. and an overflow crowd gathered which soon numbered thousands. But there was exemplary order and the heavy concentration of police had little to do. The inevitable enterprising notions distributor had sent hawkers out to peddle ticklers with a cat’s head on the end and oversized C.A.T. lapel buttons of cardboard, and others were peddling orange-and-black cats’ heads with grisly expressions which were recognizably advance stocks of Halloween gimcrackery, but there were few buyers in the crowd and the police hustled the vendors along. There were noticeably few children and an almost total absence of horseplay. Inside the Hall people were either quiet or spoke in whispers. In the streets around the Hall the crowds were patient and well-behaved; too patient and too well-behaved, according to old hands of the Traffic Division, who would have welcomed, it appeared, a few dozen drunks, a rousing fistfight or two, or a picket line of Communist demonstrators. But no drunks were visible, the people were strangely passive, and if Communists were among them it was as individuals.

The Traffic brass, testing the wind, put in a call for more mounted police and radio-patrol cars.

A noose dropped quietly around the entire area at 8 P.M. Between 51st and 57th Streets south to north, and between Seventh and Ninth Avenues east to west, solid lines of police appeared to screen off each intersection. Automobile traffic was detoured. Pedestrians were permitted to penetrate the police lines entering the area, but none were allowed to leave before identifying themselves and answering certain questions.

Throughout the district hundreds of plainclothesmen circulated.

Inside the Hall there were hundreds of others. Among them was one Ellery Queen. On the platform sat the central committee of the combined Citizens’ Action Teams of New York. They were a polyglot group in which no single face stood out; they might have been a jury in a courtroom, and they all wore the intent but self-conscious expressions of jurymen. The Mayor and his official party occupied the seats of honor — “which means,” as the Mayor remarked behind his hand to Dr. Edward Cazalis, “where they can keep an eye on us.” The speaker’s rostrum was flanked with massed American flags. Radio and public address microphones clustered before it. The television people were set up and waiting.

The meeting was opened at 9 P.M. by Jerome K. Frankburner, acting chairman of the evening. Frankburner wore a GI uniform. On the breast of his tunic glittered several decorations, and his sleeve carried an impressive weight of overseas stripes. Above the military figure hung a grim face. He spoke without notes, quietly.

“This is the voice of a New Yorker,” Frankburner began. “It doesn’t matter what my name is or where I live. I’m speaking for hundreds of New York neighborhood groups who have organized to protect our families and our neighbors’ families from a citywide menace. Lots of us fought in the last war and we’re all lawabiding Americans. We represent no self-seeking group. We have no axes to grind. You won’t find any chiselers, racketeers, or Commies among us. We’re Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Liberals, Socialists. We’re Protestants, Catholics, Jews. We’re whites and we’re Negroes. We’re business people, white collar people, laboring people, professional people. We’re second-generation Americans and we’re fourth-generation Americans. We’re New York.

“I’m not going to make a speech. We’re not here to listen to me. All I want to do is ask a few questions.

“Mr. Mayor, people are being murdered right and left by some lunatic. It’s almost four months since the Cat got going and he’s still on the prowl. All right, you can’t catch him or you haven’t been able to yet. Meanwhile what protection do we have? I’m not saying anything against our police. They’re a hardworking bunch like the rest of us. But the people of New York ask you: What have our police done about it?”

A sound went through the Hall and met another from outdoors. It was very little, a distant flutter of thunder, but in the Hall and throughout the surrounding streets police nervously fingered their clubs and tightened ranks and on the platform beside the speaker the Mayor and his Police Commissioner were seen to go a little pale.