considerably; possibly the cat’s weight would bend it down to a point from which he could jump to the window sill.
Quickly the gray cat climbed the tree and worked its way warily along the branch. Yes, as it neared the end, the branch bent; his jump from the end of it wouldn’t be too difficult. But first, he looked into the room—it was a bedroom—and made sure that the door to it was open. It would have done him no good at all to get in, only to find himself blocked by a closed bedroom door.
He jumped. Then from the window sill he looked back and saw that, as he had suspected, it would not also serve him as an exit. The branch had sprung back and it was too far away from him to jump to it from the window. But other ways out would no doubt present themselves; Staunton wouldn’t keep all the downstairs windows closed or almost closed all of the time.
He ran out into the hallway and down the stairs, and then quietly padded along the hallway that led from the front doorway to the kitchen. He stopped just short of the turn in the passage; it was a perfect listening post.
There was the sound of a refrigerator door opening, and now he could hear the words that were spoken.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Are you sure you won’t have a beer with me, Miss Talley?” Doc asked. “Dictating is dry work, and taking it down must be even drier.”
Miss Talley smiled slightly, the first time Doc had seen her do so. “If you insist, Doctor. But you must promise to keep it a deep secret. In towns as small as this one, teachers simply do not drink or smoke.”
“I’ll keep your secret,” Doc said over his shoulder as he took a second can of beer from the refrigerator. “I wish I could tempt you to smoke too, but alas, I have only pipes to offer. Uh—it won’t bother you if I smoke while I’m dictating, will it?”
“Not at all. I rather like the smell of pipe smoke, except possibly in very confined quarters. And this is a magnificently large kitchen you have.”
“The better to pace in. I like it; I practically live in it. Except when I’m out fishing or in town.” He came back with two glasses of beer, put one in front of Miss Talley and the other across the table from it. He sat down. “You can put down that pencil, Miss Talley,” he said. “I’m too lazy to start dictating this minute. Unless you’d rather have me dictate than listen to me talk. Sometimes I think my students would rather have me hew to the line more than I do.”
“Your students? Are you a teacher too, Doctor?”
“Yes, Miss Talley. Physics, at M. I. T. I specialize in electronics and, though to a lesser degree, in nuclear physics.”
Miss Talley had put down her pencil; she stared at him. “Staunton—Dr. Ralph S. Staunton? Of course. And you’ve worked on all the big satellite projects.”
Doc smiled. “Not quite all. But I’m really flattered, Miss Talley, that you’ve heard of me. Are you interested in science?”
“Of course I am. Who isn’t? Especially when it comes to matters of reaching the moon and the planets. I’ve been an avid reader of science fiction for a great many years.”
“Of course. Why not?”
Why not indeed, Doc thought, feeling himself backed into a corner. He could hardly tell her that she had looked to him to be just about the least likely person to be an avid reader of science fiction, so he decided he’d best treat the “Why not?” as a rhetorical question. He said, “I’m afraid I do my escape reading in the form of mystery novels. I know some scientists do read science fiction, and enjoy it, but when I read for relaxation I like to get as far away from science as I can.”
“I can understand that,” Miss Talley said. “Is what you’re going to dictate now scientific matter, or are you just catching up on correspondence?”
“Not either—and I’m afraid it’s difficult to explain just what I am doing. But something strange has been going on near here. I’ve been—well, investigating a bit, and I want to put what I’ve learned thus far down in the form of a statement of my investigation to date, before I might forget a point or two.”
Miss Talley stared at him. “You mean—the suicides?”
“Yes. Don’t tell me they’ve aroused your curiosity too? I thought everyone around here, from the sheriff down, took them as perfectly ordinary events.”
“Not quite, Doctor. Incidentally, I know now where I saw you before—at the inquest on Tommy Hoffman. You must have been at the back; I passed you on my way out.”
Doc filled his pipe and started to tamp it down. “I was there. I didn’t see you, that I recall, but that’s because I was trying to keep my eye on Mr. Garner and reach him before he got away. I didn’t succeed, but talked to the sheriff instead.”
“You mean you had further information on something connected with— Oh, never mind answering that, Doctor. If it’s anything connected with Tommy’s suicide, I’ll learn about it while you’re dictating; there’s no need for you to say it twice.”
Doc waited till he finished lighting his pipe before answering. “That makes sense, Miss Talley. But you say you’ve been interested too, so I’m going to ask what you know first. If you have any relevant facts that I don’t already have, I might as well learn them before I start so I can add them to what I do know. Now, on Tommy Hoffman, do you know anything at all that didn’t come out at the inquest?”
“Not facts exactly, but I knew Tommy. Charlotte, too, for that matter. I taught them both freshman English and had them in a class of mine in great English literature again last year. And I know that Tommy was as sane a boy as I’ve ever known. Not bright and not much of a scholar, but sane, ordinary, and uncomplicated. And perfectly sound physically. I talked to Dr. Gruen—he delivered Tommy and was his doctor all of his life—and he tells me that Tommy was in perfect physical shape. Measles and whooping cough, both years ago, were the only illnesses he ever had.”
“But that could mean the doctor hadn’t seen him for quite a few years.”
“It could, but as it happens it doesn’t. Tommy was injured playing high school baseball last spring. No, not a head injury; it was a broken rib. Dr. Gruen treated it. And our school has a strict rule, a very good one I believe, requiring that when a student is injured in any athletic contest he must have a thorough physical examination before his re-admittance to the team. Dr. Gruen told me, when I asked him last week, that when he examined Tommy only about two months ago he was absolutely sound and in perfect health.
“Nor apparently,” said Doc drily, “was he suffering from sexual repression. What do you know about Charlotte Garner?”
“A good girl—and I mean that; I’m not a prude, Doctor, despite my age and occupation. And a smart girl, a little smarter than Tommy was. Even smart enough never to have let him suspect she was the smarter of the two.”
“Imaginative?”
“No, very literal, Doctor. If you’re thinking about her story about the field mouse, it would have happened just as she described it, not exaggerated in the slightest. And I admire her courage for having managed to bring it out at the inquest, despite the coroner and the sheriff both pooh-poohing it as irrelevant when they talked to her before the inquest. I don’t know how it might
“I agree with you, Miss Talley. Anything else you can tell me? Aside from what was brought out at the inquest, of course.”
“I’m afraid not. And I know very little about the suicide of Mr. Gross. I mentioned ‘two suicides’ simply because of the coincidence of two suicides so close together, in time and in location, when we hadn’t had a suicide closer than Wilcox for years, and when there could be no possible connection between them. I mean, Tommy must
