Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Careless Kitten

Mason said, “I notice this door to the kitchen is open a crack — just an inch or two.”

“Uh huh.”

Mason said, “You can see the kitten walked through that door. There are the tracks of a kitten outlined in something white.”

“That’s right.”

Mason bent over and touched his finger to the floor, rubbing it across one of the white tracks. “Feels something like flour. You can see where the kitten came through the door, walked over toward the bed. Yes, there are four tracks right together where the kitten must have stood to jump up on the bed. Then the kitten came down on the other side. You can see just a trace of the white powder here.”

“That’s right. But I don’t think that powder is flour.”

“Why not?”

“Because I keep my flour in a big tin, and I keep the lid on the tin. And I know the pantry door was closed.”

“Let’s take a look,” Mason said, going into the kitchen.

Lunk opened the door of a little pantry, said, “Of course, I don’t waste a lot of time keeping house. I cook my own grub and my cooking suits me all right. It might not suit some finicky housekeeper, but it suits me. Yep, there’s the cover on the can all right. Of course, I spill a little occasionally when I’m gettin’ it out for cooking. There’s a little on the floor around the can, and it looks like the cat was chasing a mouse or somethin’ an’ jumped right into that pile of stuff. That’s the most careless damn kitten I ever saw in my life. He ain’t got sense enough to be afraid of anything. He’ll run and butt his head up against a wall if he happens to be chasing something, or get on the back of a chair and fall down on his head. He’s just awful careless. Either ain’t got good sense, or don’t know enough to be afraid.”

Mason stood staring down at the flour. “If this pantry door was closed, how did the kitten get in here?”

Lunk thought that over. “Only one answer to that. Franklin was lookin’ for somethin’, an’ he came snooping around in here, an’ the cat followed him.”

Mason said, “How about that stuff in the front bedroom where the drawers have been pulled out and the clothes dumped on the floor?”

Lunk said, somewhat ruefully, “I guess I slipped up. Shore must have got up right after I went out. When he found I was gone, he realized I’d gone out to tell Matilda Shore that he was here. Gosh, why did I let him catch me at that?”

“And then you think he searched the place?” Mason asked.

“He must have, what with him opening the pantry door and all that.”

“What was he looking for?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You must have had something that Franklin Shore wanted.”

Lunk thought for a moment or two, then said, “I’m not certain but what Shore was down on his luck. He may have been looking for money.”

“Did you have any?”

Lunk hesitated, then said, “Yes, I had a little salted away.”

“Where?”

Lunk was silent for eight or ten seconds, and Mason said, “Come on. Come on. I’m not going to hold you up.”

“I kept it in the hip pocket of my best suit, hanging in the closet,” Lunk said.

“Well, let’s look and see if it’s there now.”

Lunk returned to the front room. The kitten opened its sleepy eyes, yawned, got up to its four feet, arched its back as high as it could possibly stretch, then reached out with its forepaws, elevated its hind legs, flexed its back in the other direction, and said, “Miaow.”

Mason laughed. “I think your kitten’s hungry. Have you got any milk in the house?”

Lunk said, “No fresh milk. I got some canned milk. Helen Kendal brought the kitten here so it wouldn’t get no more poison.”

He walked across to the pile of clothes, picked them up, and started going through the pockets. An expression of dismay came over his face.

“Cleaned out!” he muttered. “Damn him, he took every cent I had saved up.”

“Tell me exactly how much it was,” Mason said.

“Pretty close to three hundred dollars. He could get a long ways on that.”

“You think he wants to get away?” Mason asked.

Once more, Lunk’s mouth firmed into a position of sullen silence.

“Think he’ll be back?” Mason asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Have you got any money at all?”

“Some in the bank. I ain’t got no cash.”

“Matilda Shore will be ringing up any minute now,” Mason reminded him. “Are you going to tell her Franklin Shore was here and you let him get away?”

“Good gosh, no!”

“What are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the flowers? How are you going to explain sending her a bunch of hothouse roses with instructions to deliver them immediately — at around three o’clock in the morning?”

Lunk made a frowning effort at thought, then surrendered to say doggedly, “I don’t know what I’m going to tell her — not now.”

“Why tell her anything? Why not simply skip out?”

Lunk said, with feeling, “Gee, I’d like to do that, if I could get away with it?”

“Well, why not? I could take you to a hotel, let you register under an assumed name, and then you could get in touch with Mrs. Shore whenever you wanted to, and make whatever explanations you wanted. In that way, you wouldn’t have to tell anyone anything. You could keep in touch with me.”

Lunk was nodding slowly. “I could stick some stuff in a bag,” he said, “and maybe get a check cashed...”

Mason peeled off a couple of ten-dollar bills from a thick roll.

“You don’t need to cash a check,” he said. “I’ll give you some money, and when you need more, you can telephone me. I’ve given you a number where you can always reach me.”

Lunk suddenly gripped strong fingers around the lawyer’s hand. “You’re acting mighty square,” he said, and, after a moment, added, “You stick by me in this, and I’ll stick by you. And maybe later on, I’ll tell you just what Franklin Shore really wanted. You let me think it over, and I’ll give you a ring later on.”

“Why can’t you tell me now?”

The old sullen look came over Lunk’s face. “Not now,” he said. “I gotta be sure of somethin’ first, but I may tell you later on — maybe around noon. Don’t try to get it out of me now. I’m waiting for somethin’ before I can tell you.”

Mason studied his man. “Is that something,” he asked, “the morning newspaper with the account of Leech’s death?”

Lunk shook his head.

“Or the police report on Matilda Shore’s poisoning?”

“Don’t crowd me. I’m tellin’ you straight,” Lunk warned.

Mason laughed. “All right, come on, I’ll put you in a nice, quiet hotel. Suppose you register as Thomas Trimmer? And I’ll take the kitten along with me and see it’s taken care of.”

Lunk regarded the kitten somewhat wistfully. “You take good care of it.”

“I will,” Mason promised.

Helen Kendal sat dry-eyed in the waiting room at the hospital. It seemed she had been there for endless hours, so nervous she couldn’t sit still, so physically weary that she couldn’t summon the energy to get up and pace the floor. A hundred times in the last hour she had looked at her wrist watch. She knew now that it simply couldn’t be much longer.

She heard the sound of quick, nervous steps in the corridor. Her tortured mind wondered if that might be someone coming to take her to the bedside of a dying man. Her heart choked up her throat with the thought that if it was only to tell her everything was all right, the messenger would be walking more slowly. These staccato footsteps could only indicate one thing, that they were coming for her and that seconds were precious.