Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

“Herr Professor, I’ve just made a discovery.”

“And what is that?”

Ellery laughed. “You know all about it.”

The old man shook silently. He didn’t when I phoned him from New York, thought Ellery, but he’s done some catching up since.

“You do, don’t you?”

“I have made some inquiries since, yes. Was it so evident? Sit down, Mr. Queen, sit down, we are not enemies. Your city has been terrorized by a paranoid murderer who strangled nine people, and now Edward Cazalis has been arrested for the crimes.”

“You don’t know the details.”

“No.”

Ellery sat down and related the story, beginning with the discovery of Archibald Dudley Abernethy’s body and ending with the capture of Cazalis in the First Avenue alley. Then he briefly indicated the subsequent conduct of the prisoner.

“Tomorrow, Professor Seligmann, Cazalis’s trial begins in New York, and I’m in Vienna—”

“To what purpose?” The old man regarded Ellery through the reek of his meerschaum. “I treated Cazalis as a patient when he came first to Vienna with his wife eighteen years ago, he studied under me subsequently, he left — I believe in 1935 — to return to America, and since that time I have seen him once. This summer. What is it you want of me, Herr Queen?”

“Help.”

“Mine? But the case is concluded. What more can there be? I do not understand. And if there is more, in which way could I be of assistance?”

“Yes.” Ellery fingered his cup. “It must be confusing. Especially since the evidence against Cazalis is so damning. He was captured in the act of attempting a tenth murder. He directed the police to the hiding place of a stock of strangling cords and they found where he said they would be, in the locked medical files in his office. And he confessed to the previous nine murders in considerable detail.” Ellery set his cup down with care. “Professor Seligmann, I know nothing of your science beyond, let’s say, some intelligent layman’s understanding of the differences among neurotic behavior, neurosis, and psychosis. But in spite of — or perhaps because of — my lack of knowledge in your field I’ve been experiencing my own brand of tension, arising from a rather curious fact.”

“And that is?”

“Cazalis never explained his... forgive me for hesitating... his motive. If he’s psychotic, his motives proceed from false views of reality which can have only clinical interest. But if he’s not... Herr Professor, before I’m satisfied, I’ve got to know what drove Cazalis to those murders.”

“And you believe I can tell you, Herr Queen?”

“Yes.”

“How so?” The old man puffed.

“You treated him. Moreover, he studied under you. To become a psychiatrist he had himself to be analyzed, a mandatory procedure—”

But Seligmann was shaking his great head. “In the case of a man so old as Cazalis was when he began to study with me, Mr. Queen, analysis is not a mandatory procedure. It is a most questionable procedure, Mr. Queen. Very few have been successfully analyzed at the age of 49, which is how old he was in 1931. Indeed, the entire project was questionable because of his age. I attempted it in Cazalis’s case only because he interested me, he had a medical background, and I wished to experiment. As it happened, we were successful. Forgive me for interrupting—”

“At any rate, you analyzed him.”

“I analyzed him, yes.”

Ellery hitched forward. “What was wrong with him?”

Seligmann murmured: “What is wrong with any of us?”

“That’s no answer.”

“It is one answer, Mr. Queen. We all exhibit neurotic behavior. All, without exception.”

“Now you’re indulging your Schufterei, if that’s the word.” The old man laughed delightedly. “I ask you again, Herr Professor: What was the underlying cause of Cazalis’s emotional upset?”

Seligmann kept puffing.

“It’s the question that’s brought me here. Because I know none of the essential facts, only the inconclusive superficial ones. Cazalis came from a poverty-laden background. He was one of fourteen children. He abandoned his parents and his brothers and sisters when a wealthy man befriended and educated him. And then he abandoned his benefactor. Everything about his career seems to me to point to an abnormal ambition, a compulsive overdrive to success — including his marriage. While his professional ethics remained high, his personal history is characterized by calculation and tremendous energy. And then, suddenly, at the apex of his career, in his prime — a breakdown. Suggestive.”

The old man said nothing.

“He’d been treated for a mild case of what they called ‘shell shock’ in the first war. Was there a connection? I don’t know. Was there, Herr Professor?”

But Seligmann remained silent.

“And what follows this breakdown? He abandons his practice, one of the most lucrative in New York. He allows his wife to take him on a world cruise, apparently recovers... but in Vienna, world’s capital of psychoanalysis, another breakdown. The first collapse had been ascribed to overwork. But to what was the second collapse, after a leisurely cruise, ascribable? Suggestive! Professor Seligmann, you treated him. What caused Cazalis’s breakdowns?”

Seligmann took the pipe from his mouth. “You ask me to disclose information, Mr. Queen, of which I came into possession in my professional capacity.”

“A nice point, Herr Professor. But what are the ethics of silence when silence itself is immoral?”

The old man did not seem offended. He set the pipe down. “Herr Queen. It is evident to me that you have come not for information so much as for confirmation of conclusions which you have already reached on the basis of insufficient data. Tell me your conclusions. Perhaps we shall find a way of resolving my dilemma.”

“All right!” Ellery jumped up. But then he sat down again, forcing himself to speak calmly. “At the age of 44 Cazalis married a girl of 19 after a busy life devoid of personal relationships with women although in his work all his relationships were with women. During the first four years of their married life Mrs. Cazalis gave birth to two children. Dr. Cazalis not only cared for his wife personally during her pregnancies but performed both deliveries. Neither infant survived the delivery room. A few months after the second fatality in childbirth, Cazalis broke down — and retired from obstetrics and gynecology, never to go back to them.

“It seems to me, Professor Seligmann,” said Ellery, “that whatever was wrong with Cazalis reached its climax in that delivery room.”

“Why,” murmured the old man, “do you say this?”

“Because... Professor Seligmann, I can’t speak in terms of libido and mortido, Ego and Id. But I have some knowledge of human beings, and the sum of whatever observations I’ve been able to make of human behavior, and of my own and others’ experience of life impels me to the conclusion.

“I observe the fact: Cazalis turns his back with cold purpose on his childhood. Why? I speculate. His childhood was predominated by a mother who was always either carrying a child or having a child, by a laborer-father who was always begetting them, and by a horde of other children who were always getting in the way of his wishes. I speculate. Did Cazalis hate his mother? Did he hate his brothers and sisters? Did he feel guilt because he hated them?

“And I observe the career he sets for himself, and I say: Is there a significant connection between his hate for maternity and his specialization — as it were — in maternity? Is there a nexus between his hate for the numerous progeny of his parents and his determination to make himself an expert in the science of bringing more children into the world?