The Collection (147 page)

“Wade and Wheeler — they live in the city?”

“Yes, they're out of vaudeville now, of course. They get by
doing bit parts on television.”

“Um-m-m,” said Mr. Smith. “Well, thank you for signing the
renewal on your policy. And when you are out of here, I'd like to see you again
to discuss the possibility of your taking an additional policy. You are
planning to be married, you mentioned yesterday?”

“I was, yesterday,” replied Walter Perry. “I guess I still
am, unless Osburne pins a murder on me. Yes, Mr. Smith, I'll be glad to discuss
another policy, if I get out of this mess.”

Mr. Smith smiled. He said, “Then it seems even more
definitely to the interest of the Phalanx Insurance Company to see that you are
free as soon as possible. I think I shall return and talk to the sheriff
again.”

Mr. Henry Smith drove back to the Perry house even more
slowly and thoughtfully than he had driven away from it. He didn't drive quite
all the way. He parked his ancient vehicle almost a quarter of a mile away, at
the point where the road curved around the copse of trees that gave the nearest      cover.

He walked through the trees until, near the edge of the
copse, he could see the house itself across the open field. The sheriff was
still, or again, on the roof.

Mr. Smith walked out into the open, and the sheriff saw him
almost at once. Mr. Smith waved and the sheriff waved back. Mr. Smith walked on
across the field to the barn, which stood between the field and the house
itself.

The tall, thin man whom he had seen exercising the horse was
now engaged in currying a horse.

“Mr. Merkle?” asked Mr. Smith, and the man nodded.

“My name is Smith, Henry Smith. I am ... ah ... attempting
to help the sheriff. A beautiful stallion, that gray. Would I be wrong in
guessing that it is a cross between an Arabian and a Kentucky walking horse?”

The thin man's face lighted up. “Right, mister. I see you
know horses. I been having fun with those city dicks all week, kidding 'em.
They think, because I told 'em, that this is a Clyde, and that chestnut Arab
mare is a Percheron. Found out yet who killed Mr. Perry?”

Mr. Smith stared at him. “It is just possible that we have,
Mr. Merkle. It is just barely possible that you have told me how it was done,
and if we know that—”

“Huh?” said the trainer. “I told you?”

“Yes,” returned Mr. Smith. “Thank you.”

He walked on around the barn and joined the sheriff on the
roof.

Sheriff Osburne grunted a welcome. He said, “I saw you the
minute you came out into the open. Dammit, nobody could have crossed that field
last night without being noticed.”

“You said the moonlight was rather dim, did you not?”

“Yeah, the moon was low, kind of, and — let's see, was it a
half moon?”

“Third quarter,” said Mr. Smith. “And the men who crossed
that field didn't have to come closer than a hundred yards or more until they
were lost in the shadow of the barn.”

The sheriff took off his hat and swabbed at his forehead
with a handkerchief. He said, “Sure, I ain't saying you could recognize anybody
that far, but you could see— Hey, why'd you say the men who crossed that field?
You mean, you think—”

“Exactly,” cut in Mr. Smith, just a bit smugly. “One man
could not have crossed that field last night without being noticed, but two men
could. It seems quite absurd, I will admit, but by process of elimination, it
must have been what happened.”

Sheriff Osburne stared blankly.

“The two men,” said Mr. Smith, “are named Wade and Wheeler.
They live in the city, and you'll have no difficulty finding them because
Walter Perry knows where they live. I think you'll have no difficulty proving
that they did it, once you know the facts. For one thing, I think you'll find
that they probably rented the ... ah ... wherewithal. I doubt if they have
their own left, after all these years off the stage.”

“Wheeler and Wade? I believe Walter mentioned those names,
but—”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Smith. “They knew the setup here.

And they knew that if Walter inherited Whistler and Company,
they'd get the money they had coming, and so they came here last night and
killed Mr. Carlos Perry. They crossed that field last night right under the
eyes of your city detectives.”

“I'm crazy, or you are,” declared Sheriff Osburne.

“How?”

Mr. Smith smiled gently.

He said, “On my way up through the house just now, I
verified a wild guess. I phoned a friend of mine who has been a theatrical
agent for a great many years. He remembered Wade and Wheeler quite well. And
it's the only answer.

Possibly because of dim moonlight, distance, and the
ignorance of city-bred men who would think nothing of seeing a horse in a field
at night when the horse should be in the barn. Who wouldn't, in fact, even see
a horse, to remember it.”

“You mean Wade and Wheeler—”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Smith, this time with definite smugness
in his voice. “Wade and Wheeler, in vaudeville, were the front and back ends,
respectively, of a comedy horse.”

Maybe you know how it is, when a man seeks solitude to do
some creative work. As soon as he gets solitude, he finds it gives him the
willies to be alone. Back in the middle of everything, he thought, “If I could
only get away from everybody I know, I could get something done.” But let him
get away-and see what happens.

I know; I'd had solitude for almost a week, and it was
giving me the screaming meamies. I'd written hardly a note of the piano
concerto I intended composing. I had the opening few bars, but they sounded
suspiciously like Gershwin.

Here I was in a cottage out at the edge of town, and that
cottage had seemed like what the doctor ordered when I rented it. I'd given my
address to none of my pals, and so there were no parties, no jam sessions, no
distractions.

That is, no distractions except loneliness. I was finding
that loneliness is worse than all other distractions combined.

All I did was sit there at the piano with a pencil stuck
behind my ear, wishing the doorbell would ring. Anybody.

Anything. I wished I'd had a telephone put in and had given
my friends the number. I wished the cottage would turn out to be haunted. Even
that would be better.

The doorbell rang.

I jumped up from the piano and practically ran to answer it.

And there wasn't anybody there. I could see that without
opening the door, because the door is mostly glass. Unless someone had rung the
bell and then run like hell to get out of sight.

I opened the door and saw the cat. I didn't pay any
particular attention to it though. Instead, I stuck my head out and looked both
ways. There wasn't anybody in sight except the man across the street mowing his
lawn.

I turned to go back to the piano, and the doorbell rang
again.

This time I wasn't more than a yard from the door. I swung
around, opened it wide, and stepped outside.

There wasn't anybody there, and the nearest hiding place—
around the corner of the house — was too far away for anybody to have got there
without my seeing him. Unless the cat.

I looked down for the cat and at first I thought it, too,
had disappeared. But then I saw it again, walking with graceful dignity along
the hallway, inside the house, toward the living room. It was paying no more
attention to me than I had paid to it the first time I'd looked out the door.

I turned around again and looked up and down the street, and
at the trees on my lawn, at the house next door on the north, and at the house
next door on the south. Each of those houses was a good fifty yards from mine
and no one could conceivably have rung my bell and run to either of them.

Even leaving out the question of
why
anyone should
have done such a childish stunt, nobody could have.

I went back in the house, and there was the cat curled up
sound asleep in the Morris chair in the living room. He was a big, black cat, a
cat with character. Somehow, even asleep, he seemed to have a rakish look about
him.

I said, “Hey,” and he opened big yellowish-green eyes and
looked at me. There wasn't any surprise or fear in those handsome eyes; only a
touch of injured dignity. I said, “Who rang that doorbell?” Naturally, he
didn't answer.

So I said, “Want something to eat, maybe?” And don't ask me
why he answered that one when he wouldn't answer the others. My tone of voice,
perhaps. He said, “Miaourr ...” and stood up in the chair.

I said, “All right, come on,” and went out into the kitchen
to explore the refrigerator. There was most of a bottle of milk, but somehow my
guest didn't look like a cat who drank much milk. But luckily there was plenty
of ground meat, because hamburgers are my favorite food when I do my own
cooking.

I put some hamburger in a bowl and some water in another
bowl and put them both on the floor under the sink.

He was busily working on the hamburger when I went back into
the front hallway to look at the doorbell.

The bell was right over the front door, and it was the only
bell in the house. I couldn't have mistaken a telephone bell because I didn't
have a phone, and there was a knocker instead of a bell on the back door. I
didn't know where the battery or the transformer that ran the bell was located,
and there wasn't any way of tracing the wiring without tearing down the walls.

The push button outside the door was four feet up from the
step. A cat, even one smart enough to stand on its hind legs, couldn't have
reached it. Of course, a cat could have jumped for the button, but that would
have caused a sharp, short ring. Both times, the doorbell had rung longer than
that.

Nobody could have rung it from the outside and got away
without my seeing him. And, granting that the bell could be short-circuited
from somewhere inside the house, that didn't get me an answer. The cottage was
so small and so quiet that it would have been impossible for a window or a door
to have opened without my hearing it.

I went outside again and looked around, and this time I got
an idea. This was an ideal opportunity for me to get acquainted with the girl
next door — an opportunity I'd been waiting for since I'd first seen her a few
days ago.

I cut across the lawn and knocked on the door.

Seeing her from a distance, I'd thought she was a knockout.
Now, as she opened the door and I got a close look, I knew she was.

I said, “My name is Brian Murray. I live next door and I-”

“And you play with Russ Whitlow's orchestra.” She smiled,
and I saw I'd underestimated how pretty she was.

Strictly tops. “I was hoping we'd get acquainted while you
were here. Won't you come in?”

I didn't argue about that. I went in, and almost the first
thing I noticed inside was a beautiful walnut grand piano. I asked, “Do you
play, Miss—?”

“Carson. Ruth Carson. I give piano lessons to brats with
sticky fingers who'd rather be outside playing ball or skipping rope. When I
heard Whitlow on the radio a few nights ago, the piano sounded different.
Aren't you still—?”

“I'm on leave,” I explained. “I had rather good luck with a
couple of compositions a year ago, and Russ gave me a month off to try my hand
at some more.”

“Have you written any?”

I said ruefully, “To date all I've set down is a pair of
clef signs. Maybe now ...” I was going to say that maybe now that I'd met her,
things would be different. But that was working too fast, I decided.

She said, “Sit down, Mr. Murray. My uncle and aunt will be
home soon, and I'd like you to meet them. Meanwhile, would you care for some
tea?”

I said that I would, and it was only after she'd gone out
into the kitchen that I realized I hadn't asked the question I'd come to ask.
When she came back, I said:

“Miss Carson, I came to ask you about a black cat. It walked
into my house a few minutes ago. Do you know if it belongs to anybody here in
the neighborhood?”

“A black cat? That's odd. Mr. Lasky owned one, but outside
of that one, I don't know of any around here.”

“Who is Mr. Lasky?”

She looked surprised. “Why, didn't you know? He was the man
who lived in that cottage before you did. He died only a few weeks ago. He — he
committed suicide.”

The faintest little shiver ran down my spine. Funny, in a
city, how little one knows about the places one lives in. You rent a house or
an apartment and never think to wonder who has lived there before you or what
tragedies have been enacted there.

I said, “That might explain it. I mean, if it's his cat.
Cats become attached to people. It would explain why the cat—”

“I'm afraid it doesn't,” she said. “The cat is dead, too. I
happened to see him bury it in your back yard, under the maple tree. It was run
over by a car, I believe.”

The phone rang, and she went to answer it. I started
thinking about the cat again. The way it had walked in, as though it lived
there — it was a bit eerie, somehow. If it were my predecessor's cat, that
would explain its apparent familiarity with the place. But it couldn't be my
predecessor's cat. Unless he'd had more than one ...

Ruth Carson came back from the hallway. She said,

“That was my aunt. They won't be home until late tonight, so
probably you won't get to meet them until tomorrow. That means I'll have to get
my own dinner, and I hate to eat alone.

Will you share it with me, Mr. Murray?”

That was the easiest question I'd ever had to answer in my
life.

We had an excellent meal in the breakfast nook in the
kitchen. We talked about music for a while, and then I told her about the cat
and the doorbell.

It puzzled her almost as much as it had puzzled me. She
said, “Are you sure some child couldn't have rung it for a prank, and then
ducked out of sight before you got there?”