She wore only a rich blue lounging robe, which was figure-fitting though it came down past her heels and was clasped in a high collar around her pale throat.
“I think it’s time for you to come to bed, Marie,” she said. “Hello, Thorpe.”
“Hello,” I said.
Marie got up wordlessly and pressed my hand, and smiled again, that faint imitation, and went off. Ruth stood there in the doorway from the dining room and as though it was a signal — which I suspect it was — Duff Ryan got up.
“I guess it’s time for us to go, Martin,” he said.
“You don’t say,” I said.
He looked at me fishily. “Yeah. I do say. We’ve got a job to do. Do you know what it is, Martin? We’ve got to kill a kitten. A poor little kitten.”
I started to answer but didn’t. The way he was saying that, and looking at me, put a chill up my back that made me suddenly ice cold. I began to tremble all over. He opened the door and motioned for me to go out.
That cat thing was a gag of some kind, I thought, and I was wide awake for any funny stuff from detectives, but Duff Ryan actually had a little kitten hidden in a box under the front steps of the house. He picked it up now and petted it.
“Got hit by a car,” he said. “It’s in terrible pain and there isn’t a chance for recovery. I gave it a shot of stuff that eased the pain for a while but it must be coming back. We’ll have to kill the cat.”
I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t killed it in the first place, whenever he had picked it up from under the car, but I kept my mouth shut and we walked along, back across the street to the Clark campus. There were no lights at all here and we walked in darkness, our feet scuffing on the dirt of the football gridiron.
“About that night of the murder, Martin,” Duff said. “You won’t mind a few more questions, will you? We want to do something to save Tommy. I made the arrest but I’ve been convinced since that he’s innocent. I want desperately to save him before it’s too late. It’s apparent that we missed on something because — well, the way things are.”
I said, “Are you sure of Tommy’s innocence, or are you stuck on Ruth?”
“Sure of his innocence,” he said in that soft voice. “You want to help, don’t you, Martin? You don’t want to see Tommy die?”
“Quit talking to me like a kid,” I said. “Sure I want to help.”
“All right. What were you doing over there that night?”
“I’ve answered that a dozen times. Once in court. I was seeing Marie.”
“Mr. Smith — that is, her father — chased you out of the house though, didn’t he?”
“He asked me to leave,” I said.
“No, he didn’t, Martin. He ordered you out and told you not to come back again.”
I stopped and whirled toward him. “Who told you that?”
“Marie,” he said. “She was the only one who heard him. She didn’t want to say it before because she was afraid Ruth would keep her from seeing you. That little kid has a crush on you and she didn’t think that had any bearing on the case.”
“Well, it hasn’t, has it?”
“Maybe not,” snapped Duff Ryan, “but he did chase you out, didn’t he? He threatened to use his cane on you?”
“I won’t answer,” I said.
“You don’t have to,” he told me. “But I wish you’d told the truth about it in the first place.”
“Why?” We started walking again. “You don’t think I killed him, do you?” I shot a quick glance in his direction and held my breath.
“No,” he said, “nothing like that, only—”
“Only what?”
“Well, Martin, haven’t you been kicked out of about every school in the state?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say
Duff said, “Quite a few though, eh?”
“Enough,” I said.
“That’s what I thought.” He went on quietly, “I went over and had a look at your record, Martin. I wish I had thought of doing that sooner.”
“Listen —”
“Oh, don’t get excited,” he said, “this may give us new leads, that’s all. We’ve nothing against you. But when you were going to school at Hadden, you took the goat, which was a class mascot, upstairs with you one night and then pushed him down the stairs so that he broke all his legs. You did that, didn’t you?”
“The goat slipped,” I said.
“Maybe,” whispered Duff. He lit a cigarette, holding on to the crippled cat with one hand. “But you stood at the top of the stairs and watched the goat suffer until somebody came along.”
“I was so scared I couldn’t move.”
“Another time,” Duff continued, “at another school, you pushed a kid into an oil hole that he couldn’t get out of and you were ducking him — maybe trying to kill him — when someone came along and stopped you.”
“He was a sissy. I was just having some fun!”
“At another school you were expelled for roping a newly born calf and pulling it up on top of a barn where you stabbed it and watched it bleed to death.”
“I didn’t stab it! It got caught on a piece of tin from the drain while I was pulling it up. You haven’t told any of this to Marie, have you?”
“No,” Duff said.
“All those things are just natural things,” I said. “Any kid is liable to do them. You’re just nuts because you can’t pin the guilt on anybody but the guy who is going to die Friday and you’re trying to make me look bad!”
“Maybe,” Duff answered quietly, and we came into the chapel now and stopped. He dropped his cigarette, stepped on it, then patted the cat. Moonlight shone jaggedly through the rotting pillars. I could see the cat’s eyes shining. “Maybe,” Duff breathed again, “but didn’t you land in a reform school once?”
“Twice,” I said.
“And once in an institution where you were observed by a staff of doctors? It was a state institution, I think. Sort of a rest home.”
“I was there a month,” I said. “Some crab sent me there, or had me sent. But my dad got me out.”
“Yes,” Duff replied, “the crab had you sent there because you poisoned two of his Great Dane dogs. Your dad had to bribe somebody to get you out, and right now he pays double tuition for you here at Clark’s.”
I knew all this but it wasn’t anything sweet to hear coming from a detective. “What of it?” I said. “You had plenty of chance to find that out.”
“But we weren’t allowed to see your records before,” Duff answered. “As a matter of fact I paid an orderly to steal them for me, and then return them.”
“Why, you dirty crook!”
I could see the funny twist of his smile there in the moonlight. His face looked pale and somehow far away. He looked at the cat and petted it some more. I was still shaking. Scared, I guess.
He said, “Too bad we have to kill you, kitten, but it’s better than that pain.”
Then, all at once I thought he had gone mad. He swung the cat around and began batting its head against the pillar in the chapel. I could see the whole thing clearly in the moonlight, his arm swinging back and forth, the cat’s head being battered off, the bright crimson blood spurting all over.
He kept on doing it and my temples began to pound. My heart went like wildfire. I wanted to reach over and help him. I wanted to take that little cat and squeeze the living guts out of it. I wanted to help him smash its brains all over the chapel. I felt dizzy. Everything was going around. I felt myself reaching for the cat.
But I’m smart. I’m no dummy. I’m at the head of my class. I’m in high school. I knew what he was doing. He was testing me.
