Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

As they dashed in, Johnson and Piggot skidded around the corner with drawn guns.

Sirens began sawing away on 29th, 30th, Second Avenue.

An ambulance shot diagonally across First Avenue from Bellevue.

In the boiling fog the girl and the two men were struggling casually. Staggered: Celeste, Cazalis, Jimmy; caught in the molecular path of a slow motion projection. Celeste faced them, arched; a bow in the arms of a bowman. The fingers of both hands were at her throat defending it; they had deliberately trapped themselves between her neck and the pinkish cord encircling it. Blood sparkled on her knuckles. Behind Celeste, gripping the ends of the noose, swayed Cazalis, bare head wrenched back by Jimmy McKell’s stranglehold; the big man’s tongue was between his teeth, eyes open to the sky in a calm expressionless glare. Jimmy’s free hand was trying to claw Cazalis’s clutch loose from the cord. Jimmy’s lips were drawn back; he looked as if he were laughing.

Ellery reached them a half-step before the others.

He smashed Cazalis directly behind the left ear with his fist, inserted his arm between Jimmy and Cazalis and smacked Jimmy’s chin with the heel of his hand.

“Let go, Jimmy, let go.”

Cazalis slid to the wet concrete, his eyes still open in that curious glare. Goldberg, Young, Johnson, Piggott, one of the patrolmen, fell on him. Young kneed him; he doubled under them, screeching like a woman.

“That wasn’t necessary,” said Ellery. He kept nursing his right hand.

“I’ve got a trick knee,” said Young apologetically. “In a case like this it goes pop! like that.”

Inspector Queen said, “Open his fist. As if he were your mother. I want that cord smoking hot.”

An intern in an overcoat was kneeling by Celeste. Her hair glittered in a puddle. Jimmy cried out, lunging. Ellery caught him by the collar with his other hand.

“But she’s dead!”

“Fainted, Jimmy.”

Inspector Queen was scrutinizing the pink cord with love. It was made of thick, tough silk. Tussah.

He said, “How’s the girl, Doctor, hm?” as he eyed the noose dangling from his upheld hand.

“Neck’s lacerated some, mostly at the sides and back,” replied the ambulance doctor. “Her hands got the worst pressure. Smart little gal.”

“She looks dead, I tell you.”

“Shock. Pulse and respiration good. She’ll live to tell this to her grandchildren till it’s coming out of their ears.” Celeste moaned. “She’s on her way out of it now.”

Jimmy sat down in the wet of the alley.

The Inspector was snaking the silk cord carefully into an envelope. Ellery heard him humming “My Wild Irish Rose.”

They had Cazalis’s hands manacled behind his back. He was lying on his soaked right side with his knees drawn up, staring through Young’s big legs at an overturned trash can a few feet away. His face was dirty and gray, his eyes seemed all whites.

The Cat.

He lay in a cage whose bars were the legs of men, breathing ponderously.

The Cat.

They were taking it easy, waiting for the intern to get finished with Celeste Phillips; joking and laughing. Johnson, who disliked Goldberg, offered Goldberg a cigaret; Goldberg had lost his pack somewhere. Goldberg accepted it companionably and struck a match for Johnson, too, who said, “Thanks, Goldie.” Piggott was telling about the time — it was during a train wreck — when he had been cuffed to a homicidal maniac for fourteen solid hours: “I was so jittery I smacked him on the jaw every ten minutes to keep him quiet.” They guffawed.

Young was complaining to the patrolman, “Hell, I was on the Harlem run for six years. Up there you use your knee first and ask questions afterward. Shiv artists. The whole bastardly lot of ’em.”

“I don’t know,” said the patrolman doubtfully. “I’ve known some that were white men. You take Zilgitt.”

“What difference does it make?” Young glanced down at their prisoner. “He’s squirrel bait, anyway. Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling.”

The man lying at their feet had his mouth going a little, as if he was chewing on something.

“Hey,” said Goldberg. “What’s he doing that for?”

“Doing what?” Inspector Queen shouldered in, alarmed.

“Look at his mouth, Inspector!”

The Inspector dropped to the concrete and grasped Cazalis’s jaw.

“Watch it, Inspector,” someone laughed. “They bite.”

The mouth opened docilely. Young flashed a light into it over Inspector Queen’s shoulder.

“Nothing,” said the Inspector. “He was chewing on his tongue.”

Young said, “Maybe the Cat’s got it,” and most of them laughed again.

“Hurry it up, Doctor, will you?” said the Inspector.

“In a minute.” The intern was wrapping Celeste in a blanket; her head kept lolling.

Jimmy was trying to fend off the other ambulance man. “Scatter, scatter,” he said. “Can’t you see McKell is in conference?”

“McKell, you’ve got blood all over your mouth and chin.”

“I have?” Jimmy felt his chin looked at his fingers with surprise.

“Mister, you bit halfway through your lower lip.”

“Come onnnnn, Celeste,” crooned Jimmy. Then he yelped. The ambulance man kept working on his mouth.

It had turned colder suddenly, but no one seemed to notice. The fog was thinning rapidly. There was a star or two.

Ellery was sitting on the trash can. “My Wild Irish Rose” was going patiently in his head, like a hurdy-gurdy. Several times he tried to turn it off but it kept going.

There was another star.

The back windows of the surrounding buildings were all bright and open; it was very cheerful. Crammed with heads and shoulders. Box seats. Arena, that was it. The pit. It. They couldn’t possibly see It, but they could hope, couldn’t they? In New York, hope dwells in every eye. A dwindling old building. A sidewalk excavation. An open manhole. A traffic accident. What was it? What’s happened? Who got hit? Is it gangsters? What are they doing down there?

It didn’t matter.

The Cats in his Hell, all’s right with the world.

New York papers please copy.

“Jimmy, come here.”

“Not now.”

“Extra,” called Ellery, with significance. “Don’t you want a bonus?”

Jimmy laughed. “Didn’t I tell you? They fired me last week.”

“Get to a phone. They’ll make you editor.”

“The hell with them.”

“It’s worth a million to them.”

“I’ve got a million.”

Ellery rocked on the trash can. The screwball was really a card. Swell kid, Jimmy. Ellery laughed again, wondering why his hand felt so queer.

The third floor windows at the rear of 486 East 29th were all filled, too.

They don’t know. The name of Soames goes down in history and they’re sitting up there wondering whose name they’ll read in the papers.

“Here she is,” announced the intern. “Greetings, Miss, and may I be the first to congratulate you?”

Her bandaged hands went to her throat.

Jimmy mumbled to the other one, “Will you get the devil off my lip? Baby, it’s me. It’s all over. Fini. Jimmy, baby. Remember me?”

“Jimmy.”

“She recognizes me! All over, baby.”

“That horrible...”

“It’s all over.”

My Wiiiiiild Irish Rooooose ...

“I was hurrying along First Avenue.”

“Practically a grandmother. This iodine dispenser said so.”

“He pulled me in as I passed. I saw his face and then it was dark. My neck.”

“Save it, save your strength for a little later, Miss Phillips,” said the Inspector genially.

“All over, baby.”