“Is it possible your husband may have seen one or both of them within the past two days?”

  “Not Potter. He saw ’em night before last. Harry’s been makin’ a little side-money, sort of, see, sir. Miss Euphemia wanted the landlord to do some decoratin’ and paperin’, and a little carpentry, and they wouldn’t do it. So, more’n a month ago, she asked Harry if he wouldn’t do it on the sly, and she said she’d pay him, although less than if a reg’lar decorator did it. So he’s been doin’ it spare time, mostly late afternoons and nights—he’s handy, Potter is. He’s most done with the job. It’s pretty paper, ain’t it? So he saw Miss Euphemia night before last.” A calamitous thought struck her, apparently, for her eyes rolled and she uttered a faint shriek. “I just thought if—if anythin’s happened to the cripple, we won’t get paid! All that work…And the landlord—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Ellery impatiently. “Mrs. Potter, are there mice or rats in this house?”

  Both women looked blank. “Why, not a one of ’em,” began Mrs. Potter slowly. “The exterminator comes—” when they all spun about at a sound from the foyer. Some one was opening the door.

  “Come in,” snapped Ellery, and strode forward; only to halt in his tracks as an anxious face poked timidly into the bedroom.

  “Excuse me,” said the newcomer nervously, starting at sight of Ellery and the two women. “I guess I must be in the wrong apartment. Does Miss Euphemia Tarkle live here?” He was a tall needle-thin young man with a scared, horsy face and stiff tan hair. He wore a rather rusty suit of old-fashioned cut and carried a small handbag.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Ellery with a friendly smile. “Come in, come in. May I ask who you are?”

  The young man blinked. “But where’s Aunt Euphemia? I’m Elias Morton, Junior. Isn’t she here?” His reddish little eyes blinked from Ellery to Miss Curleigh in a puzzled, worried way.

  “Did you say ‘Aunt’ Euphemia, Mr. Morton?”

  “I’m her nephew. I come from out of town—Albany. Where—”

  Ellery murmured: “An unexpected visit, Mr. Morton?”

  The young man blinked again; he was still holding his bag. Then he dumped it on the floor and eagerly fumbled in his pockets until he produced a much-soiled and wrinkled letter. “I—I got this only a few days ago,” he faltered. “I’d have come sooner, only my father went off somewhere on a—I don’t understand this.”

  Ellery snatched the letter from his lax fingers. It was scrawled painfully on a piece of ordinary brown wrapping paper; the envelope was a cheap one. The pencilled scribble, in the crabbed hand of age, said:

  Dear Elias:—You have not heard from your Auntie for so many years, but now I need you, Elias, for you are my only blood kin to whom I can turn in my Dire Distress! I am in great danger, my dear boy. You must help your poor Invalid Aunt who is so helpless. Come at once. Do not tell your Father or any one, Elias! When you get here make believe you have come just for a Visit. Remember. Please, please do not fail me. Help me, please! Your Loving Aunt—

  Euphemia

  “Remarkable missive,” frowned Ellery. “Written under stress, Miss Curleigh. Genuine enough. Don’t tell any one, eh? Well, Mr. Morton, I’m afraid you’re too late.”

  “Too—But—” The young man’s horse-face whitened. “I tried to come right off, b-but my father had gone off somewhere on a—on one of his drunken spells and I couldn’t find him. I didn’t know what to do. Then I came. T-t-to think—” His buck teeth were chattering.

  “This is your aunt’s handwriting?”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.”

  “Your father, I gather, is not a brother of the Tarkle sisters?”

  “No, sir. My dear mother w-was their sister, God rest her.” Morton groped for a chair-back. “Is Aunt Euphemia—d-dead? And where’s Aunt Sarah?”

  “They’re both gone.” Ellery related tersely what he had found. The young visitor from Albany looked as if he might faint. “I’m—er—unofficially investigating this business, Mr. Morton. Tell me all you know about your two aunts.”

  “I don’t know m-much,” mumbled Morton. “Haven’t seen them for about fifteen years, since I was a kid. I heard from my Aunt Sarah-Ann once in a while, and only twice from Aunt Euphemia. They never—I never expected—I do know that Aunt Euphemia since her stroke became…funny. Aunt Sarah wrote me that. She had some money—I don’t know how much—left her by my grandfather, and Aunt Sarah said she was a real miser about it. Aunt Sarah didn’t have anything; she had to live with Aunt Euphemia and take care of her. She wouldn’t trust banks, Aunt Sarah said, and had hidden the money somewhere about her, Aunt Sarah didn’t know where. She wouldn’t even have doctors after her stroke, she was—is so stingy. They didn’t get along; they were always fighting, Aunt Sarah wrote me, and Aunt Euphemia was always accusing her of trying to steal her money, and she didn’t know how she stood it. That—that’s about all I know, sir.”

  “The poor things,” murmured Miss Curleigh with moist eyes. “What a wretched existence! Miss Tarkle can’t be responsible for—”

  “Tell me, Mr. Morton,” drawled Ellery, “it’s true that your Aunt Euphemia detested cats?”

  The lantern-jaw dropped. “Why, how’d you know? She hates them. Aunt Sarah wrote me that many times. It hurt her a lot, because she’s so crazy about them she treats her own like a child, you see, and that makes Aunt Euphemia jealous, or angry, or something. I guess they just didn’t—don’t get along.”

  “We seem to be having a pardonable difficulty with our tenses,” said Ellery. “After all, Mr. Morton, there’s no evidence to show that your aunts aren’t merely off somewhere on a vacation, or a visit, perhaps.” But the glint in his eyes remained. “Why don’t you stop at a hotel somewhere nearby? I’ll keep you informed.” He scribbled the name and address of a hotel in the Seventies on the page of a notebook, and thrust it into Morton’s damp palm. “Don’t worry. You’ll hear from me.” And he hustled the bewildered young man out of the apartment. They heard the click of the elevator-door a moment later.

  Ellery said slowly: “The country cousin in full panoply. Miss Curleigh, let me look at your refreshing loveliness. People with faces like that should be legislated against,” He patted her cheek with a frown, hesitated, and then made for the bathroom. Miss Curleigh blushed once more and followed him quickly, casting another apprehensive glance over her shoulder.

  “What’s this?” she heard Ellery say sharply. “Mrs. Potter, come out of that—By George!”

  “What’s the matter now?” cried Miss Curleigh, dashing into the bathroom behind him.

  Mrs. Potter, the flesh of her powerful forearms crawling with goose-pimples, her tired eyes stricken, was glaring with open mouth into the tub. The woman made a few inarticulate sounds, rolled her eyes alarmingly, and then fled from the apartment.

  Miss Curleigh said: “Oh, my God,” and put her hand to her breast. “Isn’t that—isn’t that horrible!”

  “Horrible,” said Ellery grimly and slowly, “and illuminating. I overlooked it when I glanced in here before. I think…” He stopped and bent over the tub. There was no humor in his eyes or voice now; only a sick watchfulness. They were both very quiet. Death lay over them.

  A black tomcat, limp and stiff and boneless, lay in a welter and smear of blood in the tub. He was large, glossy black, green-eyed, and indubitably dead. His head was smashed in and his body seemed broken in several places. His blood had clotted in splashes on the porcelain sides of the tub. The weapon, hurled by a callous hand, lay beside him: a blood-splattered bathbrush with a heavy handle.

  “That solves the mystery of the disappearance of at least one of the seven,” murmured Ellery, straightening. “Battered to death with the brush. He hasn’t been dead more than a day or so, either, from the looks of him. Miss Curleigh, we’re engaged in a tragic business.”

  But Miss Curleigh, her first shock of horror swept away by rage, was crying: “Any one who would kill a puss so brutally is—is a monster!” Her silvery eyes were blazing. “That terrible old woman—”

  “Don’t forget,” sighed Ellery, “she can’t walk.”

  “Now this,” said Mr. Ellery Queen some time later, putting away his cunning and compact little pocket-kit, “is growing more and more curious, Miss Curleigh. Have you any notion what I’ve found here?”

  They were back in the bedroom again, stooped over the bedtray which he had picked up from the floor and deposited on the night-table between the missing sisters’ beds. Miss Curleigh had recalled that on all her previous visits she had found the tray on Miss Tarkle’s bed or on the table, the invalid explaining with a tightening of her pale lips that she had taken to eating alone of late, implying that she and the long-suffering Sarah-Ann had reached a tragic parting of the ways.

  “I saw you mess about with powder and things, but—”

  “Fingerprint test.” Ellery stared enigmatically down at the knife, fork, and spoon lying awry in the tray. “My kit’s a handy gadget at times. You saw me test this cutlery, Miss Curleigh. You would say that these implements had been used by Euphemia in the process of eating her last meal here?”

  “Why, of course,” frowned Miss Curleigh. “You can still see the dried food clinging to the knife and fork.”

  “Exactly. The handles of knife, fork, and spoon are not engraved, as you see—simple silver surfaces. They should bear fingerprints.” He shrugged. “But they don’t.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Queen? How is that possible?”

  “I mean that some one has wiped this cutlery free of prints. Odd, eh?” Ellery lit a cigaret absently. “Examine it, however. This is Euphemia Tarkle’s bedtray, her food, her dishes, her cutlery. She is known to eat in bed, and alone. But if only Euphemia handled the cutlery, who wiped off the prints? She? Why should she? Some one else? But surely there would be no sense in some one else’s wiping off Euphemia’s prints. Her fingerprints have a right to be there. Then, while Euphemia’s prints were probably on these implements, some one else’s prints were also on them, which accounts for their having been wiped off. Some one else, therefore, handled Euphemia’s cutlery. Why? I begin,” said Ellery in the grimmest of voices, “to see daylight. Miss Curleigh, would you like to serve as handmaiden to Justice?” Miss Curleigh, overwhelmed, could only nod. Ellery began to wrap the cold food leftovers from the invalid’s tray. “Take this truck down to Dr. Samuel Prouty—here’s his address—and ask him to analyze it for me. Wait there, get his report, and meet me back here. Try to get in here without being observed.”

  “The food?”

  “The food.”

  “Then you think it’s been—”

  “The time for thinking,” said Mr. Ellery Queen evenly, “is almost over.”

  When Miss Curleigh had gone, he took a final look around, even to the extent of examining some empty cupboards which had a look of newness about them, set his lips firmly, locked the front door behind him—pocketing the master-key which Mrs. Potter had given him—took the elevator to the ground floor, and rang the bell of the Potter apartment.

  A short thickset man with heavy, coarse features opened the door; his hat was pushed back on his head. Ellery saw the agitated figure of Mrs. Potter hovering in the background.

  “That’s the policeman!” shrilled Mrs. Potter. “Harry, don’t get mixed up in—”

  “Oh, so you’re the dick,” growled the thickset man, ignoring the fat woman. “I’m the super here—Harry Potter. I just got home from the plant and my wife tells me there’s somethin’ wrong up in the Tarkle flat. What’s up, for God’s sake?”

  “Now, now, there’s no cause for panic, Potter,” murmured Ellery. “Glad you’re home, though; I’m in dire need of information which you can probably provide. Has either of you found anywhere on the premises recently—any dead cats?”

  Potter’s jaw dropped, and his wife gurgled with surprise. “Now that’s damn’ funny. We sure have. Mrs. Potter says one of ’em’s dead up in 5-C now—I never thought those two old dames might be the ones—”

  “Where did you find them, and how many?” snapped Ellery.

  “Why, down in the incinerator. Basement.”

  Ellery smacked his thigh. “Of course! What a stupid idiot I am. I see it all now. The incinerator, eh? There were six, Potter, weren’t there?”

  Mrs. Potter gasped: “How’d you know that, for mercy’s sake?”

  “Incinerator,” muttered Ellery, sucking his lower lip. “The bones, I suppose—the skulls?”

  “That’s right,” exclaimed Potter; he seemed distressed: “I found ’em myself. Empty out the incinerator every mornin’ for ash-removal. Six cats’ skulls and a mess o’ little bones. I raised hell around here with the tenants lookin’ for the damn’ fool who threw ’em down the chute but they all played dumb. Didn’t all come down the same time. It’s been goin’ now maybe four-five weeks. One a week, almost. The damn’ fools. I’d like to get my paws on—”

  “You’re certain you found six?”

  “Sure.”

  “And nothing else of a suspicious nature?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Thanks. I don’t believe there will be any more trouble. Just forget the whole business.” And Ellery pressed a bill into the man’s hand and strolled out of the lobby.

  He did not stroll far. He strolled, in fact, only to the sidewalk steps leading down into the basement and cellar. Five minutes later he quietly let himself into Apartment 5-C again.

  When Miss Curleigh stopped before the door to Apartment 5-C in late afternoon, she found it locked. She could hear Ellery’s voice murmuring inside and a moment later the click of a telephone receiver. Reassured, she pressed the bell-button; he appeared instantly, pulled her inside, noiselessly shut the door again, and led her to the bedroom, where she slumped into a rosewood chair, an expression of bitter disappointment on her pleasant little face.

  “Back from the wars, I see,” he grinned. “Well, sister, what luck?”

  “You’ll be dreadfully put out,” said Miss Curleigh with a scowl. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more helpful—”

  “What did good Dr. Prouty say?”

  “Nothing encouraging. I like your Dr. Prouty, even if he is the Medical Examiner or something and wears a horrible little peaked hat in the presence of a lady; but I can’t say I’m keen about his reports. He says there’s not a thing wrong with that food you sent by me! It’s a little putrefied from standing, but otherwise it’s pure enough.”

  “Now isn’t that too bad?” said Ellery cheerfully. “Come, come, Diana, perk up. It’s the best news you could have brought me.”

  “Best n—” began Miss Curleigh with a gasp.

  “It substitutes fact for theory very nicely. Fits, lassie, like a brassière on Mae West. We have,” and he pulled over a chair and sat down facing her, “arrived. By the way, did any one see you enter this apartment?”

  “I slipped in by the basement and took the elevator from there. No one saw me, I’m sure. But I don’t underst—”

  “Commendable efficiency. I believe we have some time for expatiation. I’ve had an hour or so here alone for thought, and it’s been a satisfactory if morbid business.” Ellery lit a cigaret and crossed his legs lazily. “Miss Curleigh, you have sense, plus the advantage of an innate feminine shrewdness, I’m sure. Tell me: Why should a wealthy old lady who is almost completely paralyzed stealthily purchase six cats within a period of five weeks?”

  Miss Curleigh shrugged. “I told you I couldn’t make it out. It’s a deep, dark mystery to me.” Her eyes were fixed on his lips.

  “Pshaw, it can’t be as completely baffling as all that. Very well, I’ll give you a rough idea. For example, so many cats purchased by an eccentric in so short a period suggests—vivisection. But neither of the Tarkle ladies is anything like a scientist. So that’s out. You see?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Miss Curleigh breathlessly. “I see now what you mean. Euphemia couldn’t have wanted them for companionship, either, because she hates cats!”

  “Precisely. Let’s wander. For extermination of mice? No, this is from Mrs. Potter’s report a pest-free building. For mating? Scarcely; Sarah-Ann’s cat was a male, and Euphemia also bought only males. Besides, they were nondescript tabbies, and people don’t play Cupid to nameless animals.”

  “She might have bought them for gifts,” said Miss Curleigh with a frown. “That’s possible.”

  “Possible, but I think not,” said Ellery dryly. “Not when you know the facts. The superintendent found the skeletal remains of six cats in the ashes of the incinerator downstairs, and the other one lies, a very dead pussy, in the bathtub yonder.” Miss Curleigh stared at him, speechless. “We seem to have covered the more plausible theories. Can you think of some wilder ones?”

  Miss Curleigh paled. “Not—not for their fur?”

  “Brava,” said Ellery with a laugh. “There’s a wild one among wild ones. No, not for their fur; I haven’t found any fur in the apartment. And besides, no matter who killed Master Tom in the tub, he remains bloody but un-skinned. I think, too, that we can discard the even wilder food theory; to civilized people killing cats for food smacks of cannibalism. To frighten Sister Sarah-Ann? Hardly; Sarah is used to cats and loves them. To scratch Sister-Ann to death? That suggests poisoned claws. But in that case there would be as much danger to Euphemia as to Sarah-Ann; and why six cats? As—er—guides in eternal dark? But Euphemia is not blind, and besides she never leaves her bed. Can you think of any others?”

  “But those things are ridiculous!”

  “Don’t call my logical meanderings names. Ridiculous, perhaps, but you can’t ignore even apparent nonsense in an elimination.”

  “Well, I’ve got one that isn’t nonsense,” said Miss Curleigh suddenly. “Pure hatred. Euphemia loathed cats. So, since she’s cracked, I suppose, she’s bought them just for the pleasure of exterminating them.”

  “All black tomcats with green eyes and identical dimensions?” Ellery shook his head. “Her mania could scarcely have been so exclusive. Besides, she loathed cats even before Sarah-Ann bought her distinctive tom from you. No, there’s only one left that I can think of, Miss Curleigh.” He sprang from the chair and began to pace the floor. “It’s not only the sole remaining possibility, but it’s confirmed by several things…Protection.”