Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

He laughed again to indicate that this was pleasantry, a sociable introduction to conversation; he was feeling uneasy.

But the old man merely grunted.

After that, they resumed their silences.

Until the telephone rang.

The line was miraculously clear.

“Ellery!” Inspector Queen’s shout spurned the terrestrial sea. “You all right? What are you still doing in Vienna? Why haven’t I heard from you? Not even a cable.”

“Dad, I’ve got news for you.”

“News?”

“The Cat is Mrs. Cazalis.”

Ellery grinned. He felt sadistically petty.

It was very satisfactory, his father’s reaction. “Mrs. Cazalis. Mrs. Cazalis?”

Still, there was something peculiar about the way the Inspector said it.

“I know it’s a blow, and I can’t explain now, but—”

“Son, I have news for you.”

“News for me?”

“Mrs. Cazalis is dead. She took poison this morning.”

Ellery heard himself saying to Professor Seligmann: “Mrs. Cazalis is dead. She took poison. This morning.”

“Ellery, who are you talking to?”

“Béla Seligmann. I’m at his home.” Ellery took hold of himself. For some reason it was a shock. “Maybe it’s just as well. It certainly solves a painful problem for Cazalis—”

“Yes,” said his father in a very peculiar tone indeed.

“—because, Dad, Cazalis is innocent. But I’ll give you the details when I get home. Meanwhile, you’d better start the ball rolling with the District Attorney. I know we can’t keep the trial from getting under way tomorrow morning, but—”

“Ellery.”

“What?”

“Cazalis is dead, too. He also took poison this morning.”

Cazalis is dead, too. He also took poison this morning. Ellery thought he was thinking it, but when he saw the look on Seligmann’s face he realized with astonishment that he had repeated these words of his father’s aloud, too.

“We have reason to believe it was Cazalis who planned it, told her just where to get the stuff, what to do. She’s been in something of a fog for some time. They weren’t alone in his cell more than a minute or so when it happened. She brought him the poison and they both swallowed a lethal dose at the same time. It was a quick-acting poison; before the cell door could be unlocked they were writhing, and they died within six minutes. It happened so blasted fast Cazalis’s lawyer, who was standing...”

His father’s voice dribbled off into the blue. Or seemed to. Ellery felt himself straining to catch remote accents. Not really straining to catch anything. Except a misty, hard-cored something — something he had never realized was part of him — and now that he was conscious of it it was dwindling away with the speed of light and he was powerless to hold on to it.

“Herr Queen. Mr. Queen!”

Good old Seligmann. He understands. That’s why he sounds so excited.

“Ellery, you still there? Can’t you hear me? I can’t get a thing out of this goddam—”

A voice said, “I’ll be home soon, goodbye,” and somebody dropped the phone. Ellery found everything calmly confusing. There was a great deal of noise, and Frau Bauer was in it somewhere and then she wasn’t, and a man was sniveling like a fool close by while his face was hit by a blockbuster and burning lava tore down his gullet; and then Ellery opened his eyes to find himself lying on a black leather couch and Professor Seligmann hovering over him like the spirit of all grandfathers with a bottle of cognac in one hand and a handkerchief in the other with which he was gently wiping Ellery’s face.

“It is nothing, nothing,” the old man was saying in a wonderfully soothing voice. “The long and physically depleting journey, the lack of sleep, the nervous excitements of our talk — the shock of your father’s news. Relax, Mr. Queen. Lean back. Do not think. Close your eyes.”

Ellery leaned back, and he did not think, and he closed his eyes, but then he opened them and said, “No.”

“There is more? Perhaps you would like to tell me.”

He had such a fantastically strong, safe voice, this old man.

“I’m too late again,” Ellery heard himself saying in the most ridiculously emotional voice. “I’ve killed Cazalis the way I killed Howard Van Horn. If I’d checked Cazalis against all nine murders immediately instead of resting on my shiny little laurels Cazalis would be alive today. Alive instead of dead, Professor Seligmann. Do you see? I’m too late again.”

The grandfatherly voice said, “Who is being neurotic now, mein Herr?” and now it was not gentle, it was juridical. But it was still safe.

“I swore after the Van Horn business I’d never gamble with human lives again. And then I broke the vow. I must have been really bitched up when I did that, Professor. My bitchery must be organic. I broke the vow and here I sit, over the grave of my second victim. What’s the man saying? How do I know how many other poor innocents have gone to a decenter reward because of my exquisite bitchery? I had a long and honorable career indulging my paranoia. Talk about delusions of grandeur! I’ve given pronunciamentos on law to lawyers, on chemistry to chemists, on ballistics to ballistic experts, on fingerprints of men who’ve made the study of fingerprints their lifework. I’ve issued my imperial decrees on criminal investigation methods to police officers with thirty years’ training, delivered definitive psychiatric analyses for the benefit of qualified psychiatrists. I’ve made Napoleon look like a men’s room attendant. And all the while I’ve been running amok among the innocent like Gabriel on a bender.”

“This in itself,” came the voice, “this that you say now is a delusion.”

“Proves my point, doesn’t it?” And Ellery heard himself laughing in a really revolting way. “My philosophy has been as flexible and as rational as the Queen’s in Alice. You know Alice, Herr Professor? Surely you or somebody’s psychoanalyzed it. A great work of humblification, encompassing all the wisdom of man since he learned to laugh at himself. In it you’ll find everything, even me. The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small, you’ll remember. ‘Off with his head!’”

And the fellow was standing. He had actually jumped off the couch as if Seligmann had given him the hotfoot and there he was, waving his arms at the famous old man threateningly.

“All right! All right. I’m really through this time. I’ll turn my bitchery into less lethal channels. I’m finished, Herr Professor Seligmann. A glorious career of Schlamperei masquerading as exact and omnipotent science has just been packed away forever without benefit of mothballs. Do I convey meaning? Have I made myself utterly clear?”

He felt himself seized, and held, by the eyes.

“Sit down, mein Herr. It is a strain on my back to be forced to look up at you in this way.”

Ellery heard the fellow mutter an apology and the next thing he knew he was in the chair, staring at the corpses of innumerable cups of coffee.

“I do not know this Van Horn that you mention, Mr. Queen, but it is apparent that his death has upset you, so deeply that you find yourself unable to make the simple adjustment to the death of Cazalis which is all that the facts of the case require.

“You are not thinking with the clarity of which you are capable, mein Herr.

“There is no rational justification,” the deliberate voice went on, “for your overemotional reaction to the news of Cazalis’s suicide. Nothing that you could have done would have prevented it. This I say out of a greater knowledge of such matters than you possess.”