6

Thursday, 10 P.M. to Friday, 2:25 A.M.

Toughy and Ruffy sat shoulder to shoulder and looked at the nieces. The nieces sat shoulder to shoulder and looked at the cats. Mr. North returned from his study, where he had deposited a hat, and regarded the spectacle. Toughy and Ruffy turned simultaneous heads, noticed his advent and returned to their fixed regard of the nieces.

“They’re—well developed,” Pam had told Jerry North on the telephone. “You know what I mean? It seems to give sailors ideas.”

Margaret and Elizabeth were, tangibly, well developed. Or—call it nicely developed. But now, away from sailors, they looked like nice little girls in their middle teens. They looked innocent. “They’re really little girls after all,” Jerry thought, greeting them. He remembered to call Elizabeth “Beth.” The nieces said “How do you do, Uncle Jerry,” very nicely. Then Beth said: “They’re cute, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Jerry said. “Hello Ruffy. Hello Toughy.”

Ruffy, a small gray cat with a white collar, was always talkative. She spoke a little querulously to Mr. North, chiding him for his long absence. Toughy regarded him with baleful yellow eyes revealing the Siamese which had, a little mysteriously, invaded his blood stream. He flattened his ears, twisted his long, bushy tail and waggled the tail’s tip.

“Watch him, Jerry,” Mrs. North said urgently. “Curtains!”

It had been too much for Toughy and Mr. North realized this a moment too late. Toughy, the pleased center of all eyes, recognized his duty. Toughy would now entertain. Jerry North reached for him and Toughy trickled through his fingers. Toughy ran half way across the living room, leaped the other half, landed on the curtains and swarmed up.

“He can climb, can’t he?” Beth said, with interest. “I think he’s cute, don’t you, Margie?”

“They’re both cute,” Margie said. “Very cute. Can he get down?”

Toughy had extended himself. Using spurs, he mounted the curtains to the top, scrambled around the corner to the valance board and gained the summit. He extended himself on the board and looked down, beaming. Then his beam changed to another expression.

“No,” Pam North said. “He can’t get down. He always forgets. Toughy, you’re a fool cat.”

“Yow,” said Toughy. “M-yow. We-ah!”

“Is that good for the curtains?” Margie wanted to know. It appeared that she was the practical niece.

“No,” Jerry said. “It raises—it is very bad for the curtains.”

“I should think it would simply raise hell with them,” Beth said, interestedly. “Leave little holes all over.”

“Me-yow!” said Toughy, demandingly. Ruffy walked over and looked up at him. She looked back over her shoulder at Jerry North. “Yow!” said Ruffy, shortly.

“She wants him to come down,” Beth advised. “She’s afraid he’ll fall. Are they—husband and wife?”

It was a delicate point, Jerry North thought. He looked at Pam.

“Well,” Pam said, “they could have been. And, of course, they’re brother and sister too. It’s—it’s odd about cats. So, of course—”

She stopped, a little puzzled. You couldn’t tell about little girls in their middle teens.

“Spayed,” Beth said. She looked at her aunt with surprise. “Anyway, I should think so.”

“Jerry,” Pam said, “are you going to get the ladder?”

Jerry was glad to get the ladder. The ladder unfolded itself out of a chair and wobbled, but he still was glad to get it. He brought it out and climbed it and dislodged Toughy who, now terrified by the results of his own prowess, clung. He put Toughy on the floor and Toughy, with avid yellow eyes, crouched at the foot of the curtains and stared up at them.

“He’s going back,” Margie said. “I think he’s cute.”

But Ruffy went to Toughy and rubbed his nose with hers, in a friendly, warning fashion. He put an arm around her neck and began to wash her face. Beth said, “Oh, look! Aren’t they—cute!”

Pam and Jerry beamed at their cats. Mr. North found his opinion of the nieces rising. They were, it was clear, perceptive little girls. And what lass didn’t love a sailor?

“Jerry was a sailor the other time,” Pam said. Mr. North was a little startled to encounter her just there, but it was a familiar surprise. The nieces looked at Jerry.

“Really?” said Beth, with an inflection. Margie was sensitive to the inflection.

“Beth!” she said. “It was ever so long ago. Years and years.” She looked at Mr. North again. “And years!” she added.

“He tried to be again,” Pam went on, to Jerry’s uneasiness.… “But they said he was—”

“I should think so,” Beth said. “But it was wonderful, Uncle Jerry. Perfectly wonderful.” She looked at Jerry. “And cute,” she added. “Terribly cute.”

“They turned me down on account of my eyes,” Jerry said coldly. He looked coldly at his nieces. “I’m eligible to the draft,” he informed them. “They just haven’t got around to me.”

The nieces looked sceptical. Then Margie understood and nodded.

“It goes up to sixty-five now,” she reminded her sister.

It was time. Mr. North thought to himself, that little girls—even nicely developed little girls—were in bed. In a moment he would be annoyed at them.

“I am in the second registration,” he told the girls, with annoyed dignity. “There’s nothing to keep me out of the army.” He paused. “Except my eyes, perhaps,” he added.

“And me,” Pam said.

Beth nodded, consolingly. She said, “Of course.”

“You’re really quite young, Uncle Jerry,” she said. “I mean, really.”

“That’s—” Jerry North began, with acerbity. Pam intervened.

“You know,” she said, “I think I’m sleepy. And I’m sure Margie and Li—Beth are, aren’t you, girls.”

She looked at them commandingly and they exchanged glances. They looked at Mr. North and then quickly at each other, and then Beth said:

“Of course, Aunt Pam. Of course we are.”

Then both girls looked at Jerry again. Their looks said that, at his age, he needed all the rest he could get. Their looks said that they were being considerate of the aged. Jerry got ready to speak, but Pamela cut in quickly. She said she hoped the girls wouldn’t mind the guest bed being only three-quarters—“on account of the room,” she added—and that she would show them where their towels were. She looked at Jerry anxiously, and he grinned at her. So that was all right. She took the nieces off.

When she came back; Jerry was stretched out in a chair, his legs extended and a cigarette in one hand. He did, Mrs. North thought, look rather tired. She looked at him carefully. He didn’t look at all old, she decided. Except, she added honestly, to the very young. Jerry’s unoccupied hand hung down beside the chair and its fingers tickled Ruffy, who was lying on her back and wriggling in ecstasy. Ruffy stretched languorously and looked up at her favorite human with brimming eyes.

“Mrs. Williams!” Pamela North said suddenly. Jerry looked at her in surprise, saw she was looking at Ruffy, and looked at Ruffy too.

“Not really,” he said. “How cute.”

“Jerry!” Pam said. “After all they’re just children.” She paused. “Innocent,” she said. “Really innocent. Even with the sailors. And with Ruffy it’s cute, but Mrs. Williams—After all, Mrs. Williams hasn’t been—I mean, it’s different with humans. Not so—sweet.”

Jerry North looked up at her, smiling.

“I saw Mrs. Williams,” he, assured her. “It must have been just a resemblance.” He looked down at Ruffy, and into her liquid eyes. “It couldn’t have been Mrs. Williams,” he said, with more confidence. “I saw her.”

“So did I,” Pam told him. “At the Roundabout. The night you thought we ought to see some of the places people talk about so much. Like the Stork. And El Capitan.”

“Morocco,” Jerry told her. “I was there, and I didn’t.”

“You,” Pam told him, “were looking at the girl without any clothes. The dancer. With the skinny legs.”

“Well,” Mr. North said, judicially. “Skinny?”

Pam looked at him.

“Of course,” she said, “they do say it’s the dangerous age. For men.”

“Do they—Beth?” Mr. North said. “Or was it Margie? And they weren’t skinny. Just—slender.”

“All right,” Pam said. “Jerry—are the girls going to be all right? Or an awful responsibility?”

“All right,” Jerry told her. “And a responsibility. They’re sweet children, but they’re curious. Naturally. Weren’t you?”

“Terribly,” Pam admitted. She thought it over, and looked worried. “From about ten,” she said. “I sometimes wonder.”

Jerry told her that she needn’t. It was natural. And Beth and Margie were of an age to wonder, and reach out inquiring fingers toward the fire. And to draw fingers back and run back to childhood at the faintest actual heat.

“How do you know?” Pam asked. Jerry shrugged.

“I can’t prove it,” he said. “But that’s the way they are. It sticks out all over them. Don’t worry, Pam.” He diverted her. “About Mrs. Williams,” he said.

“Oh,” Pam said. “She was like Ruffy.” She looked at Ruffy, still languorous on her back. “In essence,” she amplified. “She’d had some drinks and she was with a man she liked and—you know. She looked it. Only, more than most people. In public, anyway. Enough more to notice. And when I saw her today, it didn’t seem possible. But it was, so there’s something—something odd. A discrepancy. Isn’t there?”

If she was right, Jerry admitted, there was a discrepancy. If she was right, Mrs. Williams was not what one at first sight guessed her to be. But that was all it came to. It had nothing to do with them.

“Or with Sproul,” he added. “Unless Sproul was the man?”

“Oh no,” Pam said. “It wasn’t Mr. Sproul. It wasn’t anybody—anybody concerned, I mean. It was just a man. Rather good looking, with a straight nose and broad shoulders and—”

“Well,” Jerry North said, “they do say it’s the dangerous age. For women.”

Pam made a face at him. She said that, being human, a girl couldn’t help noticing. She said she didn’t really like straight noses.

“Yours is much better,” she told him. “Why doesn’t it matter? If somebody is strange—not what they should be—in a murder case, it always matters. Bill says so.”

“All right, darling,” Jerry said. “It matters, Mrs. Williams killed Mr. Sproul because she made calf eyes at a man with straight shoulders and a broad nose. And I’m going to bed.”

Pam said she didn’t see how he could, with so much going on, but all right and she would be along in a minute. Jerry went and as he undressed reflected hazily on his own psychological vagaries. Because, Jerry thought, I am not feeling at all the way I should expect myself to feel. I ought to be stirred up and excited, because of Sproul’s murder, and I am merely tired and rather sleepy and—yes, relaxed.

Remarkably relaxed, Jerry thought, stretching out in the twin bed nearest the door. Which merely proved that a man’s own nerves were shamefully egocentric and that they didn’t, really, care at all what happened to other people. Whatever the mind may say, Jerry reflected, dreamily.

Because, he thought, my nerves are lying down and purring because the speech is all over. It doesn’t matter how it ended, or what happened to Sproul, because my nerves don’t give a damn about anybody but me. A nerve’s love, Jerry thought; there’s nothing in the world like the love of a nerve for its body. Whistler’s nerve. It isn’t that I’m callous, really, but just that my nerves don’t care. If it came down to it, I’d make a speech every day to keep anybody from being murdered and anybody would, but that isn’t what the nerves care about. The nerves are primo—prime—the nerves don’t give a twinge what happens to anybody else and—

“What?” Jerry’s mind came back, bumping, from the stream of sleepiness in which it was floating.

“Are you asleep?” Pam asked again. “Because if you are I don’t want to wake you and I’ll be very quiet. Only I want to know what you really think.”

“Think?” Jerry said.

“You were asleep,” Pam said. “Go right back.”

“Think about what?” Jerry demanded.

“Never mind, dear,” Pam said. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Apparently Pam had come in and undressed while he was thinking about his nerves, because now she was in the other bed. Jerry sat up in his bed and looked at her excitedly.

“Think about what?” he demanded. “Think about what, for heaven’s sake?”

“What?” Pam said, a little mistily. “Jerry. I was just getting set to sleep, like a bud.”

“Bud?” Jerry repeated, running a hand through his hair. “What do I think about a bud?”

“Never mind,” Pam said. “You’re sleeping. I can tell. I mean sleep was setting like a bud; like a plant getting set to bud. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Jerry took a firm grip on himself, beginning with his hair. He spoke slowly and carefully. He said, “Listen, dear.”

“Listen, dear,” Jerry said. “I was asleep. You wake me up to ask what I think. Then you talk about a bud. Then you say wait until morning. What is all this?”

“Go to sleep, darling,” Pam said. “You’ll wake the nieces.” Then she listened. Then she said, “Why, Jerry!”

Jerry turned on the light.

“What,” he said, “do I think about what?” He said it with a kind of grim resolution.

“Oh,” Pam said. “I’ve almost for—oh, Mrs. Williams, I guess. Do you think she murdered Mr. Sproul?”

“No,” Jerry said. “I do not think she murdered Mr. Sproul.”

“I do,” Pam said. “Or maybe I don’t, really. But I think she’s eligible. Because of the discrepancy. But I want to go to sleep now. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“Pam,” Jerry said.

“Please, darling,” Pam said. “Not tonight. I’m just ready to fall off. Can’t it wait until morning? Then we’ll talk as much as you want to. About Mrs. Williams and buds and everything. I’ve had such a day, Jerry. Nieces and—everything.”

The last word unexpectedly trailed off. Jerry waited a moment and realized there was no doubt about it. Pamela had, with the graceful ease of a young cat, gone to sleep while she was still talking. Jerry looked at her and thought she looked very nice and turned off the light and lay down. He lay very quietly, ready to welcome sleep. He lay for a long time, ready to welcome sleep, and listened to Pam’s easy, sleepy breathing and waited for his nerves to relax. And he had never, he grimly discovered, felt more wide awake in his life. There was nothing to indicate that he was ever going to sleep again.

He did, eventually. Not really very long after the banjo clock struck two, in tones to waken the dead.

An hour or more earlier Bill Weigand swept his notes together,” wadded them into a pocket and said they might as well call it a night. At that time he knew that Loretta Shaw had gone downtown to her apartment in Bank Street; that George Schwartz had seen her there and taken the subway back uptown, presumably for his long vacant chair on a copy desk rim, and that Mr. Bandelman Jung, with slightly suspicious skill, had lost his tail in the Grand Central Station. Or had he not been skilful, but merely done, unsuspectingly and by chance, one of the things with which no detective, however able, can single-handedly cope?

Bill Weigand took Dorian, who was waiting, and drove downtown in the Buick to their new apartment just off Washington Square, and within a block or two of the Norths’. Dorian’s head subsided on his shoulder after a few blocks, and he looked down at her fondly and wished for a world in which there were fewer murders to distract a man from things which were really important. And he thought, ruefully, that when—and if—Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley discovered what had happened to Sproul’s lecture notes there might be, for him, markedly fewer murders. Then he brightened. Perhaps O’Malley would then approve his resignation, and he could take the intelligence majority which the army dangled in front of him. If O’Malley did, the Commissioner might make an exception to his stern rule that resignations from the force for army duty were unacceptable.