Ellery Queen - Cat of Many Tails

Ellery’s lips parted.

“Don’t answer till I’m finished. You feel that you failed in the Van Horn case and that because you failed two people went to their deaths. Lord knows I’ve tried to help you get it out of your system. But I guess nobody can talk away another man’s conscience... I’ve had to sit by and watch you crawl into a hole while you kept swearing by the beards of all the Prophets that you’d never mix into another case.

“But son,” said the old man, “this is a special kind of deal. This one is tough. It’s tough not only on its own merits — which are tough enough — but because of the atmosphere it’s creating. This isn’t just a matter of clearing up a few murders, Ellery. It’s a race against — against citywide collapse. And don’t make with the eyebrow: I tell you it’s coming. It’s only a question of time. Just one murder in the wrong place... Nobody downtown’s out to rob me of the glory: not in this one. They’re all feeling sorry for the old duck. Let me tell you something.” The Inspector stared down at 87th Street, bracing himself against the window frame. “I mentioned earlier that I thought the Commissioner had an angle in putting me at the head of this special Cat squad. The boss thinks you’re a screwball, but he’s often asked me when you’re going to snap out of the sulks and get back to using the crazy talents God gave you. Well, my opinion, Ellery, is that he’s put me on the spot deliberately.”

“For what reason?”

“To force you into the case.”

“You’re not serious!”

His father looked at him.

“But he wouldn’t do a thing like that.” Ellery’s face was dark. “Not to you. That’s the dirtiest kind of slap in the face.”

“To stop these stranglings, son, I’d do a lot worse. Anyway, what’s the odds? You’re no superman. Nobody expects miracles. It’s even a sort of insult to you. In an emergency people will try anything, even tough old eggs like the Commissioner.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Ellery. “That sets me up. It really does.”

“Kidding aside. It would hit me pretty hard to think that when I needed you most you let me down. Ellery, how about getting into this?”

“You,” said the son, “are an extremely clever old man.”

The Inspector grinned.

“Naturally if I thought I could help out in a thing as serious as this I’d... But, damn it, Dad, I feel virginal. I want to and I don’t want to. Let me sleep on it. I’d be no use to you or anybody in my present state.”

“Fair enough,” said his father briskly. “Good grief, I’ve been making speeches. How do these politicians do it? How about some more lemonade, son, with a shot of gin in it to take the bite off?”

“In my case, it’ll take more than a shot.”

“Motion seconded.”

But neither meant it.

The Inspector sat down at the kitchen table with a groan, thinking that with Ellery the usual psychology was a waste of breath. The Cat and Ellery seemed two twinges of the same pain.

He leaned back against the tiled wall, tipping his chair.

The blasted heat...

He opened his eyes to find the Police Commissioner of the City of New York leaning over him.

“Dick, Dick,” the Commissioner was saying. “Wake up.”

Ellery was in the kitchen doorway, still in his shorts.

The Commissioner was hatless and the gabardine around his armpits was soaked.

Inspector Queen blinked up at him.

“I told them I’d notify you in person.”

“Notify me about what, Commissioner?”

“The Cat’s got another tail.”

“When?” The old man licked his lips.

“Tonight. Between 10:30 and midnight.”

“Where?” He brushed past them, darted into the living room, grabbed at his shoes.

“Central Park, not far from the 110th Street entrance. In some bushes behind a rock.”

“Who?”

“Beatrice Willikins, 32, single, sole support of an aged father. She’d taken him to the Park for some air and left him on a bench to go looking for water. She never came back and finally he called a Park patrolman. The patrolman found her a couple of hundred feet away, strangled. Salmon-colored silk cord. Purse not touched. Hit over the head from behind and signs of dragging into the bushes. The strangulation took place there, probably while she was unconscious. No superficial indication of rape.”

“No, Dad,” said Ellery. “Those are wet. Here’s a fresh shirt and undershirt.”

“Bushes, Park,” said the Inspector rapidly. “That’s a break. Or is it? Prints on the ground?”

“So far, nothing. But Dick,” said the Commissioner, “something new’s been added.”

The Inspector looked at him. He was trying to button his shirt. Ellery did it for him.

“Beatrice Willikins lived at West 128th Street.”

“West,” said the Inspector mechanically, sticking an arm into the jacket Ellery was holding up. Ellery was staring at the Commissioner.

“Near Lenox.”

“Harlem?”

The Commissioner swabbed his neck. “This one might do it, Dick. If someone lost his head.”

Inspector Queen ran to the door. He was very pale. “This means all night, Ellery. You go to bed.”

But Ellery was saying, “This one might do what if someone lost his head, Commissioner?”

“Push the button that blows New York higher than Hiroshima.”

“Come on, Commissioner,” said the Inspector impatiently from the foyer.

“Wait.” Ellery was looking politely at the Commissioner, and the Commissioner was looking just as politely at him. “If you’ll give me three minutes, I’ll go with you.”

The sixth tail of the Cat, which went on display on the morning of August 26, offered a delicate departure from the mode. Where its five fellows were hairlines enclosing white space, this tail was solidly inked in. Thus New York City was informed that the Cat had crossed the color line. By the glowing encirclement of one black throat, to the seven million pale necks already within the orbit of the noose were joined five hundred thousand others.

It was notable that, while Inspector Queen occupied himself in Harlem with Beatrice Willikins’s demise, the Mayor called a dawn press conference at City Hall which was attended by the Police Commissioner and other officials.

“We are convinced, gentlemen,” said the Mayor, “that there is no race angle to Beatrice Willikins’s murder. The one thing we’ve got to avoid is a repetition of the kind of tension that brought on the so-called Black Ides of March in 1935. A trivial incident and false rumor resulted in three deaths, thirty-odd people hospitalized for bullet wounds, and over two hundred others treated for injuries, cuts, and abrasions. Not to mention property damage amounting to more than $2,000,000.”

“I was under the impression, Mr. Mayor,” remarked a reporter for one of the Harlem newspapers, “that — to quote from the report of the bi-racial commission appointed by Mayor La Guardia to investigate the riot — it was caused by ‘resentments against radical discrimination and poverty in the midst of plenty.’”

“Of course,” replied the Mayor quickly. “There are always underlying social and economic causes. Frankly, that’s what we’re a little apprehensive about. New York is a melting pot of every race, national origin, and creed under the sun. One out of every fifteen of our fellow New Yorkers is Negro. Three out of every ten are Jewish. There are more Italians in New York City than in Genoa. More Germans than in Bremen. More Irish than in Dublin. We’ve got Poles, Greeks, Russians, Spaniards, Turks, Portuguese, Chinese, Scandinavians, Filipinos, Persians — everything. That’s what makes us the greatest city on earth. But it also keeps us on the lid of a volcano. Postwar tensions haven’t helped. These stranglings have made the whole City nervous and we don’t want anything foolish to touch off public disorders. Naturally, that last remark is off the record.