emphysema, and Dick Gage, a hired man who had been with the
Drogan family for twenty years. Gage, who was past sixty himself,
drove the big Lincoln Mark IV, cooked, served the evening sherry.
A day maid came in. The four of them had lived this way for
nearly two years, a dull collection of old people and their family
retainer. Their only pleasures were The Hollywood Squares and
waiting to see who would outlive whom.
Then the cat had come.
'It was Gage who saw it first, whining and skulking around the
house. He tried to drive it away He threw sticks and small rocks at
it, and hit it several times. But it wouldn't go. It smelled the food,
of course. It was little more than a bag of bones. People put them
out beside the road to die at the end of the summer season, you
know. A terrible, inhumane thing.'
'Better to fry their nerves?' Halston asked.
Drogan ignored that and went on. He hated cats. He always had.
When the cat refused to be driven away, he had instructed Gage to
put out poisoned food. Large, tempting dishes of Calo cat food
spiked with Tri-Dormal-G, as a matter of fact. The cat ignored the
food. At that point Amanda Drogan had noticed the cat and had
insisted they take it in. Drogan had protested vehemently, but
Amanda - had gotten her way. She always did, apparently.
'But she found out,' Drogan said. 'She brought it inside herself, in
her arms. It was purring, just as it is now. But it wouldn't come
near me. It never has ... yet. She poured it a saucer of milk. 'Oh,
look at the poor thing, it's starving,' she cooed. She and Carolyn
both cooed over it. Disgusting. It was their way of getting back at
me, of course. They knew the way I've felt about felines ever since
the Tri-Dormal-G testing program twenty years ago. They enjoyed
teasing me, baiting me with it.' He looked at Halston grimly. 'But
they paid.'
In mid-May, Gage had gotten up to set breakfast and found
Amanda Drogan lying at the foot of the main stairs in a litter of
broken crockery and Little Friskies. Her eyes bulged sightlessly up
at the ceiling. She had bled a great deal from the mouth and nose.
Her back was broken, both legs were broken, and her neck had
been literally shattered like glass.
'It slept in her room,' Drogan said. 'She treated it like a baby ...'Is
oo hungwy, darwing? Does oo need to go out and do poopoos!'
Obscene, coming from an old baffle-ax like my sister. I think it
woke her up, meowing. She got his dish. She used to say that Sam
didn't really like his Friskies unless they were wetted down with a
little milk. So she was planning to go downstairs. The cat was
rubbing against her legs. She was old, not too steady on her feet.
Half asleep. They got to the head of the stairs and the cat got in
front of her ... tripped her .. .'
Yes, it could have happened that way, Halston thought. In his
mind's eye he saw the old woman falling forward and outward, too
shocked to scream. The Friskies spraying out as she tumbled head
over heels to the bottom, the bowl smashing. At last she comes to
