The Judge Is Reversed

by Frances Lockridge

  They turned into their apartment house. Dr. Oscar Gebhardt, cat specialist, sat on a stone bench. He did, Pam thought, brighten up the lobby, dressed as he was for his Sunday rounds. (He had explained that several times: When a man works twelve hours a day, seven days a week, it becomes difficult to tell days apart. If one cannot rest on the Sabbath, one can at least relax in costume.) Gebhardt got up from the bench and came toward the Norths, his eyebrows bristling. He said he had been about ready to give them up.

  “Gebby,” Jerry North said, “do you know you’re parked in front of a fire plug?”

  “Obviously,” Gebhardt said. “Only place I could find.”

  Which, clearly, settled that. What Oscar Gebhardt paid in traffic fines would have kept him in taxicabs for life, a fact he cheerfully admitted. But he preferred to drive the Cadillac. For one thing, his calls frequently took him far from the city. For another, he liked to drive Cadillacs.

  “Happened to be down here,” Gebhardt said, in the elevator going up. “Thought I’d say hello.”

  “Hello, Gebby,” Pam said. “Do you know where I can get a Siamese that isn’t pointed?”

  “Hard thing to do,” Gebhardt said, as Jerry let them into the apartment. “Damn near all of them are pointed. Damn fool cat people.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” Pam said.

  “Can’t stay long,” Oscar Gebhardt said, sitting down and putting his black bag on the floor beside him. “Got a very bad vitamin deficiency in Sutton Place. Keep feeding him crab meat. The things people feed cats!”

  Pam went into the kitchen. Oscar Gebhardt looked around the room. “Strange not to see her here,” he said. “Spunky little thing, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Jerry said, and spoke in a low tone and looked toward the open kitchen door.

  “All right,” Gebhardt said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut. She still cry?”

  “Not as much,” Jerry said, and then Pam came back, and said it wouldn’t be a minute. She looked at Gebhardt’s hard, wonderfully deft, hands. There was a new bandage now, this one on the left index finger. Cats are more deft than the deftest hands.

  “Intestinal stoppage,” Gebhardt said. “Came from eating mouse bones. And hide, of course. Damn fool owner was afraid to get a good grip. Afraid she’d break. Look—I take it you two know these policemen?”

  “Yes,” Pam said. “For a long time, Gebby.”

  “The big one,” Gebhardt said, “is a pain in the neck. You tell him the truth and where does it get you?”

  “Mullins,” Jerry said. “Sergeant Mullins. It got him scratched.”

  “Bitten,” Gebhardt said.

  “You could have had one of us hold her,” Pam said. “We know how. Poor Mullins.”

  “I weep for him,” Gebhardt said, with sudden gaiety. He sobered.

  “Look,” he said, “are they going to get the idea I killed John? Make a hell of a lot of trouble about it? Because, I haven’t got time to waste on that sort of thing.”

  Oscar Gebhardt seemed very serious about it. He seemed, further, to be rather concerned about it.

  “Mullins had to find out,” Pam said. “Nobody’ll think you had anything to do with it. Why should they?”

  “No reason,” Gebhardt said. “Anyway—no, no reason.”

  Pam said, “It’s boiling by now,” and went, and, within minutes, returned with coffee on a tray.

  “All right, Gebby,” Jerry North said, when the coffee had been served. “Let’s have it.”

  Gebhardt looked astonished—or, they both thought, tried to look astonished. He said there was nothing for anybody to have. He said the coffee was very fine coffee.

  “You want what?” Jerry said. “Intercession? For us to tell Bill Weigand you’re not the kind of man who goes around killing people? Particularly clients. We’ll be glad to, Gebby. But listen—”

  Gebby listened, while Gerald North said the obvious, carefully. Policemen like Weigand are impartial. They are also shrewd, also experienced. A person who says he found a man dying, a person who has a key to the apartment in which the man dies—obviously, he must explain himself. As obviously, Gebhardt had. Which would end it.

  “In a word,” Pam said, “you’re making a mountain, Gebby.”

  Which, she thought, isn’t at all like you, Gebby.

  Gebhardt listened, he nodded his head. He sipped coffee. He said he probably was making a mountain. Then he said, “Only—”

  They looked at him.

  “All right,” he said, “John left me somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars, I imagine. When they find out about it—well. There you are.”

  “My,” Pam said. “What a lot of money.”

  “To,” Gebhardt said, “start a research hospital—center—with. But whether his will makes that clear—” He shrugged, wide shoulders under the reddish tweed jacket. “Of course,” he said, and brightened, “could be he changed his mind. Couple of years ago he told me about it.” They waited. “It was this way,” Gebhardt said.

  A couple of years ago, with a patient attended to, Blanchard and Dr. Gebhardt, over coffee, had discussed cats—cats in general. And, to sympathetic ears, Oscar Gebhardt had expanded on an idea he had had long in mind, and expected never to do anything about—an idea that, some time, somebody should do something about.

  Veterinary medicine lacked research facilities. Gebhardt did not argue that the need for such facilities had a high order of precedence. Other things should, obviously, come first. “But not,” he said now, with some bitterness, “shooting skyrockets at the moon.” Also, concentrated research on the diseases of animals—and particularly of small animals—would almost inevitably carry the possibility of greater usefulness. “Incidentally,” Gebhardt said, “where do people think Pasteur started? Anthrax. That’s where. Bunch of sheep. Damn silly things, sheep.”

  Gebhardt did not contend that much valuable work was not being done. At, for example, Cornell. But not enough. With enough money—

  “Well,” he said, “I got steamed up about it. Told John what I’d like to do would be to start a hospital which would be, mainly, a research center and really find out a few things. Not that I don’t know more than most. But none of us knows enough.”

  Gebhardt supposed that, unconsciously, he had been making a pitch. But it had been unconscious, he insisted, and the Norths believed. He had ridden a hobby, with no destination in mind.

  He had, he said—and the Norths believed—been vastly surprised when, a few months later (while he was treating another Blanchard cat) John Blanchard had said, casually, “By the way, Gebby. About that research hospital of yours. I’m leaving you some money for it. Enough to get it started, anyway. What you said would get it started.”

  Gebhardt had said that to build, equip, get going, something like two hundred thousand dollars would be necessary. If they were really to do a job.

  “I guess my mouth fell open,” he said, talking now to the Norths. “Anyway, he said, ‘Only, Gebby, I never felt better in my life, so don’t get your hopes up.’ Since he was only a couple of years older than I am, and in, from the looks of him, a hell of a lot better condition, I didn’t get them up.” He paused. “That sounds wrong,” he said. “John—I liked John.” He paused and finished his coffee. He said, well, there they had it.

  “This bequest,” Jerry said. “Would it be to—some sort of foundation? Or, for a specified purpose? Or—just to you, Gebby?”

  “To me, I gathered,” Gebhardt said. “No strings. John wouldn’t have tied strings to it, I imagine. I don’t actually know. It would make a difference, wouldn’t it? In the way it looked?”

  “It might,” Jerry said. “But I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about, really. Bill Weigand’s not a man to jump at things. And, he’ll listen to things. I wouldn’t worry.”

  “This man you call Mullins,” Gebhardt said, with doubt.

  Weigand, they told him, was the man who would decide, the man to be considered. Not that Mullins wouldn�
�t listen, too. Not that Mullins pushed people around.

  Gebhardt seemed to accept that statement with some scepticism. He said, but with doubt, that after all, they knew Mullins and he didn’t. His eyebrows, Pam thought, didn’t bristle quite so resolutely. She offered, he took, another cup of coffee. She changed the subject. Did he know anything about a Madeline Somers? Who, it appeared, ran a cat store?

  He did. He knew most people who associated themselves with cats.

  As pet shops went, that of Miss Somers was pretty good. He didn’t argue that it was a place to go for a prize cat. He didn’t argue that there were not some cats on sale at Miss Somers’s “store” who were culls from established catteries. But—the cats Miss Somers had for sale were healthy cats. He knew the “vet”—he paused, corrected himself, said “veterinarian”—who checked on them. They would be inoculated. And it might, at that, be a place to find a Siamese who wasn’t pointed.

  “Because,” he said, “you don’t win prizes with them now unless they are, and more’s the pity. So a cattery might let a cat with a cat’s face go cheap. Not, Mrs. North, that your Miss Somers is going to.”

  There was only one thing he knew against Miss Madeline Somers. She was one of some damn fool collection of crackpots who called themselves “The Committee Against Cruelty.” They had tried to get Dr. Oscar Gebhardt to lend his support, and he had told them where to jump.

  “Crackpots,” he repeated. “And that man Ackerman—ought to be locked up. Happen to read that advertisement?”

  They had.

  “John wrote a letter taking their hides off,” Gebhardt said. “Showed it to me a couple of days ago. Don’t know whether he sent it to anybody.”

  He had, they told him. He had sent it to the Times. Which had printed it.

  “Don’t have time for the papers,” Gebhardt said. “Make this nut Ackerman sore as hell, I’d think. No telling what a crackpot—” He stopped, abruptly. He looked from Pam to Jerry and back to Pam again. He told them he’d be damned.

  Sergeant Mullins did not precisely say he had told anybody so. For one thing, he admitted to himself that he had not. Which was not to say he had not had his thoughts. Red coat and green pants, and said he was a doctor.

  “Helluva lot of money to leave to a cat doctor,” Mullins did say. “Must have been pretty fond of cats, this Blanchard.”

  There was only one answer to be made to this, and Bill Weigand made it—“Right.” It was a hell of a lot of money to leave to anybody. Two hundred thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of money. “To my friend, Oscar Gebhardt, to be used at his discretion for purposes we have discussed, the sum of two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Build an old cats’ home, you think?” Mullins suggested.

  Bill smiled mildly, and said he didn’t think anything one way or the other, having no material for thought. Except, again, that it was a lot of money to leave to anybody.

  It was evident that John Blanchard had had a lot of money—or had thought he had. Or had had at the time, some eighteen months before, when he had made his last will and testament, of which the document they had found in the safe was a copy. (The will had been drawn up by Cameron, Notson and Fleigel, which, it was to be assumed, had retained the original. Cameron, Notson and Fleigel would be consulted.)

  Substantial as it was, the bequest to Dr. Oscar Gebhardt was not the largest provided. The largest was to Hilda Latham, of Southampton, Long Island, and was in the amount of half a million dollars. “Phew!” Mullins said, hitting the nail on the head. “Why?”

  Nothing in the will answered that question, and it puzzled Bill Weigand. The daughter of an old friend—yes. A young woman toward whom Blanchard—“Uncle John” of other days—might have felt as toward a favorite niece. But still—

  He had gathered, although from no specific facts, that the Lathams were in no need of money. He checked his memory, seeking the grounds for this assumption. Except that Hilda, after saying that her father was Graham Latham, had hesitated momentarily, as if identification of the name was to be expected—as if the name were almost as likely to be identified as, say, Rockefeller. Graham Latham, Southampton, membership in the West Side Tennis Club—there were implications of the luxurious. Of course, even people with a great deal of money do not, presumably, mind being given more. And do, Bill thought, seem uncommonly likely to be given more. But still—

  “You know,” Mullins said, “it’s kind of a funny thing she’d come all the way up here to save a hotel bill. Ain’t it? Won’t need to now, will she?”

  Bill looked at Mullins thoughtfully. He was not surprised; he does not underestimate Sergeant Mullins. He was, admittedly, a little chagrined at having missed a point. However—

  Robert and Helen Sandys (or the survivor), if in Blanchard’s employment at the time of his death, were to receive fifty thousand dollars and the apartment, which Blanchard owned, and there were no strings to this, either—no requirement that they provide for whatever cats were also surviving (and in Blanchard’s employment) at the time of his death. From the little he had seen of the Sandyses, Bill supposed that no such stipulation was necessary, and that Blanchard had known it.

  There was a clause directing the executors of the estate to set aside a sufficient sum from the residue to provide an annual scholarship of two thousand dollars to be given to “the boy, not over seventeen, who shall, in the opinion of the selection committee of the United States Lawn Tennis Association, be, in any year, the most promising junior player of United States citizenship, providing that he is financially unable to start, or to continue in, study at the college or university of his choice.”

  The remainder of the estate—“Remainder?” Mullins said, in a tone of some incredulity—was to be divided evenly among the Greenwich Village Humane Society, the Authors’ League Fund and the ASPCA.

  They were sitting at a desk in Blanchard’s office, Mullins at the end of the desk. A long-haired red cat leaped (and where had he been?) onto the other end of the desk, reached out a paw, and delicately patted the will of his late master.

  “My God,” Sergeant Mullins said. “All over the place, ain’t they, loot?” He looked at the red, who looked at him with considerable interest. “All kinds, too,” Mullins said. “You’d think—”

  What you would think did not immediately become apparent. They were interrupted. A long thin man with a long sad face stood in the open doorway. “Dope from downtown,” he said, unhappily. He held papers out to Weigand. “Interesting, sort of,” he said. The fact seemed to depress him. “Gives an angle,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Only, pretty confusing. To me.” He went mournfully out. The cat went with him.

  Bill looked. He said, “Well, well,” and handed the laboratory reports to Mullins. Mullins said he’d be damned. He did, Bill thought, seem a little disappointed.

  On a corner of the base of one of the cat-scratching posts, the lab men had found two human hairs. They had also found hairs of several cats—a black cat, a brownish cat, a reddish cat. They had found several paw marks—hind paw marks—on the surface of the base. The red cat, from the length of the hair, apparently was a Persian.

  The human hairs conformed to specimens provided by the mortuary, from the head of the late John Blanchard. There were no visible vestiges of blood on any corner of any of the three posts submitted. Chemical analysis had not been completed.

  “Wouldn’t have to be,” Mullins said. “Just caved in. Didn’t bleed much.”

  There were no fingerprints on any of the bases. The carpet covering of the posts would not, of course, take prints.

  Two tennis rackets had been submitted, both in covers and presses. The wood of one of the presses was too rough to take prints; the wood of the other—this one rectangular; the other a truncated triangle—was smooth enough to take prints. The prints, all apparently made some time ago, were those of the deceased (these the most numerous) and of another man. The latter were fragmentary, inadequate for identification. “Probably Sandys’s,” Bill
said.

  Both rackets had leather grips. On one of them were the prints, again not recent, of the deceased. On the other were also prints left by John Blanchard and, overlying them, much more recent prints which coincided with prints taken from a glass submitted at the direction of Captain William Weigand, but not identified by him. These prints were in such position on the racket handle as to indicate that the unknown person, almost certainly male, had held the racket, recently, as he might in play, employing the standard Eastern grip.

  They looked at each other.

  “For once,” Mullins said, “it ain’t going to be screwy. Even if the Norths are in it.” But then a shadow passed over his ruddy face. “I hope,” Mullins said. “Only—you suppose it’s too easy, loot? Because, after all, they are.”

  That was at a little after nine in the evening. Doug Mears did not show up at the Forest Hills Inn, where he was staying, until a little after eleven thirty. He was awaited; he was taken to Manhattan, to the offices of the Homicide Squad in West Twentieth Street.

  9

  It was Pam who made up their minds for them. She said it was simple, really. She said, “Listen, dear,” and Jerry listened.

  “If it was just boy meets girl over spaghetti,” she said, “then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t, because what difference would it make? They’ve a perfect right, so far as we know. Not as if either of them was married to somebody else. Unless, of course, one of them is. Anyway—if it’s only that, there’s no harm in our telling Bill. But if it isn’t only that, and has something to do with this, there’d be harm in our not telling, or might be, and anyway Bill ought to decide and how can he if we don’t?”

  She paused; looked at Jerry expectantly.

  “It was a little simpler before you explained it,” Jerry said. “But—I suppose you’re right. Makes me feel a little like a divorce snooper.”

  Pam said she didn’t see why he complicated things by bringing divorce into it. She said nobody had said anything about a divorce. She pointed out that people have to be married before they can be divorced, and that if he was going to be sensitive about it she’d just as soon call. After all, she was the one who had seen them first, so the responsibility was hers.