Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

At 4:45 A.M. one Evarts Jones, an attorney, handed the following statement to the press:

I am authorized by Jerome K. Frankburner, chairman of tonight’s disastrous meeting, and by the central committee of the so-called CATs of Greater New York City, to announce that all units will be immediately disbanded and organized patrol activities will cease.

Mr. Frankburner and the committee speak for all citizens who joined in this well-meant but ill-advised popular movement when they express their great sorrow and profound regret over what occurred in Metropol Hall last night.

Pressed by reporters for a personal statement, Frankburner shook his head. “I’m too punchy to say anything. What can anybody say? We were dead wrong. The Mayor was dead right.”

At dawn the Cat Riots were quelled and the Four Days were a bloody paragraph in the unwritten almanacs.

Later, the Mayor in silence distributed the statistics of the night’s disorders to the press.

The Dead

Women 19

Men 14

Children 6

TOTAL 39

Seriously Injured

Women 68

Men 34

Children 13

TOTAL 115

Minor Injuries, Fractures, Abrasions, etc.

Women 189

Men 152

Children 10

TOTAL 351

Arrested on Charges of Looting, Unlawful Assemblage, Inciting to Violence, etc.

127 persons (including minors)

Property Damage (estimated)

$4,500,000

The woman whose screams touched off the panic and the rioting that followed, said the Mayor, was trampled to death. Her name was Mrs. Maybelle Legontz, 48, a widow, childless. Her body was identified at 2:38 A.M. by a brother, Stephen Chorumkowski, steamfitter, of 421 West 65th Street. Persons in the audience in the immediate vicinity of Mrs. Legontz had testified that to the best of their recollection she had not been attacked or molested by anyone; but the standees had been packed together and an accidental nudge by some bystander may have exploded her nervous fears.

Mrs. Legontz had a medical history of neurasthenia, a condition which first appeared following the death of her husband, a sand-hog, of the “bends.”

There was no possibility that she had been the Cat.

It had been, the Mayor agreed with the reporters, one of the worst outbreaks in New York’s history, perhaps the worst since the draft riots of 1863.

Ellery found himself in the milky darkness seated on one of the benches of Rockefeller Plaza. There was no one else in the Plaza but Prometheus. Ellery’s head was dancy and the chill of the New York morning against the torn places on his hands and face was deliriously personal, keeping him in a rare consciousness.

Prometheus spoke from his watery niche in the sunken court and Ellery took a certain comfort in his company.

“You’re wondering how it all came about,” began the golden giant, “that this beast in human form you call the Cat has been able, through the mere bawling of his name, to drive thousands of men out of their heads and send them like frightened animals to an animal death.

“I’m so old I don’t recall where I originally came from, except that it’s supposed to have been without women — which I find very unconvincing — but I seem to remember that I found it necessary to bring to men the gift of fire. If I really did that, I’m the founder of civilization, so I feel qualified to make certain extended remarks on the late unpleasantness.

“The truth is, what happened last night had nothing to do with the Cat at all.

“The world today reminds me of the very old days, when religions were being born. I mean, modern society resembles primitive society to an amusing degree. There’s the same concentration on democratic government, for example, while certain of your number who claim to be in touch with higher powers push to the top to rule. You make the same virtue out of common names and common bloods, investing both with mystic mumbo jumbo. In sexual affairs, your women are equally overrespected and kept inside a convenient cage of sanctity, while important affairs are arrogated to themselves by your males. You’ve even reverted to food taboos in your worship of diets and vitamins.

“But I find the most interesting similarity,” continued Prometheus, apparently impervious to the cold dawn which was making Ellery rattle like an old gourd, “in the way you react to your environment. The crowd, not the individual, is the thinking unit. And the thinking power of a crowd, as last night’s unfortunate events demonstrated, is of an extremely low order. You’re bursting with ignorance, and ignorance breeds panicky fears. You’re afraid of nearly everything, but most of all you’re afraid of personal contact with the problems of your time. So you’re only too happy to huddle together inside the high magic wall of tradition and let your leaders manipulate the mysteries. They stand between you and the terrors of the unknown.

“But once in a while your priests of power fail you and suddenly you’re left to face the unknown in person. Those on whom you relied to bring you salvation and luck, to shield you from the mysteries of life and of death, no longer stand between you and the dreadful darkness. All over your world the magic wall has crumbled, leaving your people paralyzed on the edge of the Pit.

“In such a state of affairs,” said Prometheus, “is it to be wondered at that a single hysterical voice, screaming a single silly taboo, can frighten thousands into running away?”

Ellery awoke on the bench to pain and an early sun burnishing his tutor. There were people in the Plaza and automobiles were rushing by. It seemed to him that someone was making an awful lot of noise and he got up angrily.

The cries were coming from the west, hoarse and exultant.

Boys voices, booming in the canyons.

Ellery limped up the steps, crossed the street, and made his way stiffly toward Sixth Avenue.

There’s no hurry, he thought. They’re peddling the obituary of the C.A.T. So many dead, so many injured, so many dollars’ worth of wreckage. Read all about it.

No, thank you. Hot coffee will do nicely instead.

Ellery limped along trying not to think at all.

But bubbles kept bobbing up.

Obituary of C.A.T. Obituary of Cat... now that would be something. Obituary of Cat. Come seven.

Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

Ellery laughed.

Or as another immortal put it, I should of stood in bed.

Brother Q, you’re through. Only you had to rise from the dead. To chase a Cat.

What next?

What do you do?

Where do you look?

How do you look?

In the fresh shadow of the Music Hall marquee the boy’s mouth was going through an acrobatic exercise under his popping eyes.

Never an ill wind, thought Ellery as he watched the pile of papers dwindle.

And he began to pass, to cross Sixth Avenue for his coffee, when a shouted syllable made sense and something on top of the heap flew up and lodged in his brain.

Ellery fumbled for a coin. The coin felt cold.

“Extra.”

He stood there being elbowed right and left. There was the familiar Cat, but he had an eighth tail and it was not a question mark.

Her name was Stella Petrucchi. She lived with her family on Thompson Street, less than a half a mile below Washington Square. She was 22 years of age; of Italian parentage; of the Roman Catholic faith.

For almost five years Stella Petrucchi had been employed as a stenographer in the same law office on Madison Avenue and 40th Street.

Her father had been in the United States for forty-five years. He was a wholesale fish merchant in Fulton Market. He came from Livorno. Stella’s mother was also from the province of Toscana.