16

The Siamese cat named Stilts lay on the carpet in front of the fire. She looked as if she had been scattered there. Shadow approached, enormous blue eyes all innocence. She sniffed Stilts briefly and bit her left hind foot.

With no preliminaries whatever, Stilts went three feet into the air, straight up. At the top, she turned, walked briefly on air, and came down on top of Shadow. Shadow flattened, and breath went out of her with a small sound like “uff.” She turned on her back and began, furiously, to kick Stilts in the face. Stilts put both forelegs around Shadow’s neck and began to bite her left ear.

“They do love each other,” Pam North said, to anyone who cared to listen. “Don’t you, babies?” she added, to the cats.

“It is,” Dorian Weigand said, “impossible to jump like that. It is clearly impossible.”

The sound of Dorian’s voice distracted the cat named Shadow, who abandoned her obvious effort to kick Stilts to death and looked at Dorian. Stilts bit Shadow’s tail. Shadow leaped three feet into the air, turned in flight, and came down on Stilts.

“All right,” Dorian said. “Excuse it, please.”

Dorian Weigand was curled, rather as a cat might herself curl, in a big chair in the Norths’ apartment. It was a little after six on Thursday evening, and Dorian and the Norths had drinks and Bill was overdue for his.

“Here he comes now,” Dorian said, uncurling. “Hear him?”

Pam and Jerry heard footsteps in the corridor outside. They sounded like any footsteps. But neither Pam nor Jerry really doubted; neither was surprised to hear a characteristic tapping on the door. Dorian let him in, looked at him carefully before kissing him. He didn’t look any more tired than he usually did. He looked as if things had gone all right.

Things went well enough, he told them—told them after he had been supplied with a drink, and had swallowed half of it. Blaine Smythe was in the Fairfield County jail, charged with felonious assault, and with more to follow. He could fight extradition if he wanted to waste the time; if his lawyer thought it worth wasting. He denied everything and thereupon closed his lips, which was wise of him. But things went well enough.

A bell-man at the King Arthur, shown several photographs, had picked one of Smythe as resembling a man on crutches who had checked into the hotel late Tuesday afternoon, and been given—at request—a room on the third floor front. A cartridge case, ejected from the rifle which, in due time, would be described in newspapers as the murder weapon, had been found in grass behind a hedge. This had taken doing. From now on the things to be done would, for the most part, take doing. But they would get done. Things went well enough.

“Which,” Bill said, and finished his drink and looked at an empty glass with absent-minded reproach, “gives us two of them. Thanks, Jerry.”

“One in the grass we weren’t to find, weren’t even to look for,” Bill said. “Another in the car—Self’s car—which we were to find. A thorough man, Smythe. Thought of almost everything.” He stopped, looked with absent-minded surprise at his replenished glass, sipped. “They’ve filled you in?” he said, to Dorian. “Up to now,” Dorian said.

“Having gone to the trouble to get Self there,” Bill said, “he didn’t really leave any holes. A little put out, probably, to find you and the others there, Pam, but that needn’t have been fatal. If, of course, his shot had been. Fired a shot from his rifle on the way up. It was his, incidentally. The other rifle was just—a prop. It was safe enough to fire. It’s hunting season. He retrieved the casing and put it in his pocket. Reloaded, of course. After he knocked Self out, tossed the casing into the car.”

“The trouble he went to,” Pam said. “You jump around.”

Bill looked at her in some surprise. He said he thought it obvious enough. When Smythe decided—it probably was decided reluctantly—that he had to kill Lauren, he decided also to provide the police with a murderer. A James Self, already complete enough with motive. So, he telephoned Self, pretending to be Lauren—

Bill interrupted himself. “She has a very deep, rather husky voice,” he said. “Symthe is an actor; Lars Simon says a good one. Good actors can mimic. Right?”

“Nobody’s quarreling,” Pam said. “Told Mr. Self Jo-An was there, got him to come, shot Mrs. Payne after Self arrived, rushed over and pretended to take the gun away from him while actually giving it to him. That’s clear enough.” She considered. “Now,” she added.

“Right,” Bill said. “Then it’s all clear.”

He seemed to consider the matter ended. He lighted a cigarette and leaned back; he blew smoke into the air and watched it.

“Don’t tease the animals,” Dorian told him. “Wouldn’t it have been merely one word against another?”

“No,” Bill said. “Lauren had called Smythe, asked him to come up. From the Dumont. There’s a record of the call, complete with number. With her dead, he could quote her as he liked. Actually—I think still trying to think she had dreamed, still pushing reality away—she said—she can’t remember her exact words—‘I couldn’t have seen you, could I? Not where I—I dreamed I did?’ He reassured her, she says; almost convinced her. But—‘He was too ready,’ she said. ‘I—I suppose then I really knew.’

“She must have revealed that—revealed she was not convinced. He made his decision then.”

“Still—” Dorian said.

“At the time Self got the phone call,” Bill said, “Lauren was in a garage in New Canaan, waiting for her car. She made no call from there. Nor was any long-distance call made from the house. So—a lie against Self. So—no explanation of his presence there. Except, of course, the one Smythe would provide. Along with the cartridge case in the car. Oh, I think it would have worked. With Mrs. Payne dead.”

“You had this bandage gadget,” Jerry pointed out. “With a streak on it. It was oil?”

“Yes. It was oil. I had that. Enough for a hunch. Not for proof. I’d have kept on worrying. Smythe wouldn’t have needed to worry much.”

“I don’t,” Dorian said, “see how he knew Mr. Payne would come out and stand on the sidewalk waiting to be shot at. If he hadn’t, all this for nothing. Plus the chance somebody would see him—somebody who knew him—and want to commiserate about the broken leg or whatever.”

“As for that,” Bill said, “he could merely say he was getting the feel of the bandage gadget. Explain as much as necessary. He might, of course, have decided, under those circumstances, to postpone his sniping. The sniping, incidentally, because there’s been a rash of them. And nobody caught. Another—well, say another tree in a woods.”

“If you must,” Dorian said, gently. “Now, darling—how he knew Mr. Payne would come out instead of having dinner at the hotel and going up to his room?”

Bill said, “Well—” He said, “I don’t say everything’s wrapped—”

“String,” Pam said. “I save string, did you know? And wrapping paper. Payne thought the food at the Dumont was ‘terrible.’ They never ate there. Mrs. Payne told us that yesterday. Not you, Bill. He probably told everybody or—or she did. Of course. She and Blaine were—what were they, Bill? Anyway, she would have, wouldn’t she?”

Bill thanked her for the string. He said it was a very nice peice of string, a very useful piece of string. Or, if she preferred, wrapping.

“Bill,” Pam said. “Why? Because they were lovers? He and Lauren? Even then, why?”

Bill emptied his glass. Jerry got up, and Bill put his hand over the glass. He said he would let the rest catch up.

“I don’t think they were, Pam,” he said, and spoke slowly. “She says not. She says that now she’s glad—very glad. She says she doesn’t know why they weren’t. She said, ‘I just couldn’t bring myself—’ and didn’t finish. Not a matter of morals, I suspect. Of—” He shrugged. He said a psychiatrist might have a dozen reasons. He said that the word “revulsion” might sum it up. Revulsion instilled by other things; revulsion probably temporary.

“She talked a good deal about her husband,” Bill said. “Nothing very—explicit. She’s still—excited, upset. Not as coherent as she might be. I think because she’s not very sure in her own mind. You see—she loved Smythe. Thought he loved her. But—about Payne. It seems he was something of a rat, as Self called him. In a—in a number of ways. What’s called mental cruelty. She gets vague after that. But, I suspect it didn’t stop there. That, somehow, he—well, left her in a kind of shock.”

“Bill!” Pam said. “She’s not up there all alone? Tearing herself to pieces alone?”

He looked surprised. He said he thought he had told her. Gladys Mason was with her. And the boy, too. “She seems,” Bill said, “to have turned to Mrs. Mason. As to—oh, call it an elder sister.”

“Hmmm,” Dorian said. “As to the sister business.” She sipped from her own drink.

“Call it what you like, then,” Bill said. “Anyway, she’s turned to her. And Mrs. Mason is—protective.” He smiled faintly. “Shooed me out, in the end,” he said. “Seems to have taken over, in a very helpful way. I’ve a feeling she may keep on with it.”

“The ill wind,” Pam said “But again—why? I realize I’m persistent.”

“When she couldn’t any longer believe in—in her dream,” Bill said. “She thought he had done it to protect her. To—free her. Because he loved her.” Jerry made a gesture, started to speak. “No,” Bill said, “it’s quite possible that that entered into it. At one time, anyway. She—in a way she’s defenseless. It may even have started with that, only with that. She still wants to believe that that was at the bottom of it.”

“He tried to kill her,” Jerry said. He went to the bar and began to mix drinks. “And let’s not quote Wilde, please.”

“Also,” Bill said, “Payne got him fired. Quite unjustly. Partly, at any rate, because that would hurt Lauren. With Payne dead, he had his part back. Very good part. Might have done a lot for him, Lars Simon says. If the play had clicked.”

“I like that better,” Jerry said, and poured.

“Also,” Bill said, “Mrs. Payne is quite a rich woman. With Payne dead her—revulsion might well have been overcome.”

“I,” Gerald North said, “like that best of all. And in the end, of course, he was trying to save his own neck.”

He brought drinks on a tray.

“You’re dour today,” Pam said. “It’s all those things you have to read. Reaction.”

“I’m dour,” Jerry agreed. “You might have answered the door, Pam. You and Lauren are pretty much of a size.”

“Jerry!” Pam said, “it was her door.”

He looked at her doubtfully. He started to refer to the sticking out of necks, but changed his mind. After all, nothing had happened to Pam’s neck.

“As for the motive,” Pam said. “It doesn’t have to be just one, does it? It can be a scramble.” She accepted a martini. “Things so often are,” Pamela North said.