Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Careless Kitten

The kitten’s eyes, weaving back and forth, followed the ball of crumpled page. that Helen Kendal was waving high above the arm of the chair.

The kitten was named Amber Eyes because of those yellow eyes Helen liked to watch them. Their black pupils were always changing, narrowing to ominous slits, widening to opaque pools of onyx. Those black and amber eyes had an almost hypnotic effect on Helen. After she had watched them a little while her thoughts seemed to slip. She would forget the near things, like today, and this room, and the kitten.

She could even forget about Jerry Templar and Aunt Matilda’s eccentric domineerings, and find herself suddenly thinking about things that were far away or in another age.

It was one of the long-ago things this time. Years and years ago. When Helen Kendal was ten, and there was another kitten, a gray-and-white one, up on the roof. So high up that it was afraid to come down. And a tall man with kind gray eyes had fetched a long ladder and was standing up at the wobbly tip of it, patiently coaxing the kitten toward his outstretched hand.

Uncle Franklin. Helen was thinking about him now as she had thought about him then. Not as she had learned to think about him afterward, from other people. Not as Aunt Matilda’s runaway husband, not as Franklin Shore, the Missing Banker, in the big headlines, not as the man who had inexplicably thrown away success and wealth and power and family and lifelong friends, to lose himself, moneyless, among strangers. Helen was thinking of him, now, only as the Uncle Franklin who had risked his life to rescue a scared kitten for a sorrowful little girl, as the only father whom that little girl had ever known, a gentle, understanding, friendly father, remembered, after all these years, with a love that knew and would keep on knowing, against all seeming proofs to the contrary, that it had been returned.

That knowledge, suddenly rediscovered, made Helen Kendal absolutely sure that Franklin Shore was dead. He must be. He must have died long ago, soon after he had run away. He’d loved her. He must have loved her, or he wouldn’t have risked sending her that picture post card from Florida soon after he disappeared, just when Aunt Matilda was trying so hard to find him and he must have been trying even harder to keep her from doing it. He couldn’t have lived very long after that or there’d have been another message for Helen. He’d have known how she’d be hoping for one. He wouldn’t have disappointed her. He was dead. He’d been dead for almost ten years.

He was dead, and Helen had a right to the twenty thousand dollars he had left her in his will. And that much money now, with Jerry Templar home on a week’s leave—

Helen’s thoughts slipped again. The Army had made a difference in Jerry. His blue eyes were steadier, his mouth grimmer. But the change in him only made Helen surer that she loved him, and surer than ever, for all his tight-lipped silence on the subject, that he’d kept on loving her. He wasn’t going to marry her, though. Not when it might mean that Aunt Matilda would turn her out of the house, to live on his Army pay. But if she had money, money of her own, money enough to let Jerry feel perfectly sure that no matter what happened to him, she’d never be homeless or hungry—

There was no use in thinking about it. Aunt Matilda wasn’t going to change her mind. It wasn’t that kind of a mind. Once it was made up, even Aunt Matilda herself couldn’t change it. And it was made up permanently to believe that Franklin Shore was alive, and just as permanently and immovably made up not to take the steps at law that would declare him legally dead and allow his will to be probated. Aunt Matilda didn’t need her share of the estate. As Franklin Shore’s wife, she controlled the property he had left behind him almost as completely as she could hope to control it as his widow and executrix. She controlled Helen, penniless and dependent, far more completely than she would control her after that twenty-thousand-dollar legacy was paid.

And Aunt Matilda enjoyed controlling people. She’d never willingly give up her purse-string power over Helen, especially not while Jerry Templar was here. Aunt Matilda had never liked him nor approved of Helen’s liking him, and the change the Army had made in him only seemed to make her dislike more explicit than ever. There wasn’t a chance on earth of her letting go of that legacy before Jerry’s leave was up. Unless Uncle Gerald—

Helen’s thoughts shifted again. Uncle Gerald, three days ago, telling her he was going to force Aunt Matilda’s hand. His brother’s will left him the same sum it bequeathed to Helen. Sixty-two and looking older, still practicing law for his living, he could use his money and felt he’d waited for it long enough.

“I can make Matilda act, and I’m going to do it,” he’d said. “We all know Franklin’s dead. He’s been legally dead for three years. I want my legacy and I want you to have yours.”

His eyes had softened and warmed as they studied her, Helen remembered, and his voice had been warmer, too, and gentler.

“You’re more like your mother every time I see you, Helen. Even when you were little you had her eyes, with the violets in them, and her hair, with the red just showing under the gold. And you’ve grown up to have her tall, slim, lovely body and her long, lovely hands, and even her quiet, lovely voice. I liked your father, but I never quite forgave him for taking her away from us.”

He had stopped. And there had been something different about his voice when he went on. “You’re going to need your twenty thousand dollars before long, Helen.”

“I need it now,” Helen said.

“Jerry Templar?” Her face must have been answer enough, because he hadn’t waited for her to speak. He’d nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll try to get you that money.”

He’d sounded as if he meant to do more than just try. And it had been three days ago. Maybe—

Amber Eyes had stood it as long as he could. He flashed up in a leap toward that maddening ball of paper, clutching with teeth and claws; then, starting to fall, struck instinctively for Helen’s wrist, clinging with needle-sharp claws trying to save himself from a fall to the carpeted floor.

Violently startled, Helen screamed.

Aunt Matilda called sharply from her room, “What’s the matter, Helen?”

“Nothing,” Helen said, laughing nervously as she grasped the kitten’s paw with her free hand, disengaging the clutching claws. “Amber Eyes scratched me, that’s all.”

“What’s the matter with Amber Eyes?”

“Nothing. We were just playing.”

“Stop playing with that kitten. You’re spoiling it.”

“Yes, Aunt Matilda,” Helen said dutifully, stroking the kitten and regarding the scratches on the back of her hand.

“I suppose,” she said to Amber Eyes, “you don’t know that your little claws are sharp. Now I’ve got to go put something on my hand.”

She was in the bathroom at the medicine cabinet when she heard the sound of Matilda’s cane; then the door of the bedroom opened, and Matilda stood frowning at her.

Matilda Shore, at sixty-four, had a full ten years of deferred vengeance behind her. Sciatica had not improved her disposition. She was a big-boned woman. In her youth, she must have had a certain Amazon type of beauty, but now she had lost all regard for personal appearance. Flesh had wrapped itself around her frame. Her shoulders were stooped. She habitually carried her head pushed forward and down. There were deep, sagging pouches under her eyes. Her mouth had taken on a sharp, downward curve. But none of the encroachments of time had been able to eradicate from her features the grim determination of a woman of indomitable will who lived with a single, definite purpose in mind.