Judas Cat Read Free

used for a long time. The living room was almost dark, seeming darker after the brightness from which they had come. The blinds were drawn, but even in the dimness, they could see the figure of the old man huddled up on the sofa. His cane lay on the floor beside him.
    “He’s a goner, all right,” Waterman said. “Better not raise the shades in here till we see what happened.”
    Alex found the wall switch.
    “Holy Joseph,” Waterman said.
    The old man was twisted up like a baby, his arm over his face as though he were protecting it. His white shirt sleeve was stained with blood. The chief pulled the stiffened arm away from the face. Andy’s eyes were open. They were black and fierce, but there had been terror in them when he was dying, and it had remained after the life had gone out of him.
    “Those scratches,” Alex said, “the poor old guy.”
    “I think we better get Doc Jacobs,” Waterman said.
    “It must have been the cat,” said Alex. “But he’s had it for years.”
    “It looks like it all right. But that door was closed, and he don’t look like he got up and closed it, and then came back here to lie down in this position.”
    “I don’t get it,” Alex said.
    “I don’t either,” said Waterman. “That’s why I want Doc Jacobs up to take a look at him.”
    Mabel appeared in the doorway. “What’s happened, Fred?”
    Waterman was across the room as though he had flown it. He whirled her out. “You get out of here, Mabel Turnsby,” he said, “and stay out till you’re invited.”

Chapter 2
    A LEX WENT TO CALL the doctor, taking Mabel out of the house with him. She went reluctantly, hesitating here and there to get a look at something as they passed. It was hard to like her, Alex thought, a person with curiosity at a time like this. But then she had not seen Mattson’s face. He unlocked the door and held it for her to precede him.
    “Tell Gilbert to post Central where we are and come up here,” the chief called.
    “My, but he’s nasty this afternoon,” Mabel said.
    “Upset,” said Alex. “It wasn’t easy for him to kill that cat.”
    “Terrible,” she said. “Poor Andy’s dead, isn’t he?”
    “Very.”
    “I told Fred Waterman. I told him this morning. But he had to take his own good time getting here.”
    “May I use your phone, ma’m?”
    She led him up the back steps and through the kitchen. What a difference between her place and Andy’s, Alex thought. To a man living alone a house is nothing. To a woman, everything. The floor linoleum was waxed and highly polished. In front of a wicker rocker was a hooked rug. Mabel was famous for her rugs and quilts. In the center of the porcelain-topped table was a bowl of sweet William and marigolds.
    In the living room Mabel fluffed up the cushions while Alex phoned. She did not intend to miss the calls. Her face didn’t betray her curiosity, but it didn’t betray anything, except, perhaps, a brashness, Alex thought. It was neatly powdered and rouged, and as nondescript as her grey-white hair which she wore gathered up straight into the knob on the top of her head.
    The Turnsbys were once important people in Hillside, in fact, in the whole of Riverdale county. They had been among the first settlers over a hundred years before. A street occupied now almost entirely by the lumber and coal yards had been named after them. But somehow you never connected Turnsby Street with Mabel, or at least not until you were sitting in her living room and looking up at the faded pictures of bearded and braided Turnsbys in their oval frames. There was a strong family resemblance among all of them, and it had come down to Mabel.
    “Why’s Fred Waterman so crabbed with me?” she asked when Alex had finished his calls. “After all, he’d never come near the place if I didn’t plague him into it.”
    “What made you call him?”
    “Andy Mattson never missed a morning on that porch, rain or shine till this. And that cat—it acted