The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (3 page)

“Richard, are you implying that Uncle Jock is over a hundred and still active and virile?”

“A hundred and sixteen and still jumping his friends’ wives, daughters, mothers, and livestock. And has three wives of his own under the Iowa senior-citizen cohabitation code, one of them—my Aunt Cissy—being still in high school.”

“Richard, I sometimes suspect that you are not always entirely truthful. A mild bent toward exaggeration.”

“Woman, that is no way to talk to your future husband. Behind you is a terminal. Punch it for Grinnell, Iowa; Uncle Jock lives just outside. Shall we call him? You talk to him real pretty and he might show you his pride and joy. Well, dear?”

“You are just trying to get out of taking me back to bed.”

“Another waffle?”

“Quit trying to bribe me. Uh, a half, maybe. Split one with me?”

“No. A whole one for each of us.”

“‘Hail, Caesar!’ You’re the bad example I’ve always needed. Once we’re married I’m going to get fat.”

“I’m glad you said that. I had hesitated to mention it but you
are
a bit on the skinny side. Sharp corners. Bruises. Some padding would help.”

I’ll omit what Gwen said next. It was colorful, even lyrical, but (in my opinion) unladylike. Not her true self, so we won’t record it.

I answered, “Truly, it’s irrelevant. I admire you for your intelligence. And your angelic spirit. Your beautiful soul. Let’s not get physical.”

Again I feel that I must censor.

“All right,” I agreed. “If that’s what you want. Get back into bed and start thinking physical thoughts. I’ll switch off the waffle iron.”

Somewhat later I said, “Do you want a church wedding?”

“
Coo!
Should I wear white? Richard, are you a church member?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. I don’t think you and I really belong in churches.”

“I agree. But just how do you want to get married? So far as I know there isn’t any other way to get married in the Golden Rule. Nothing in the Manager’s regulations. Legally the institution of marriage does not exist here.”

“But, Richard, lots of people do get married.”

“But how, dear? I realize they do but, if they don’t do it through a church, I don’t know how they go about it. I’ve never had occasion to find out. Do they go to Luna City? Or down dirtside? How?”

“Whatever way they wish. Hire a hall and get some VIP to tie the knot in the presence of a crowd of guests, with music and a big reception afterwards…or do it at home with just a few friends present. Or anything in between. It’s your choice, Richard.”

“Huh uh, not mine. Yours. I simply agreed to go along. As for me, I find that a woman is at her best if she is a bit tense through being unsure of her status. Keeps her on her toes. Don’t you agree?
Hey!
Stop that!”

“Then stop trying to get my goat. If you don’t want to sing soprano at your own wedding.”

“You do that once more and there ainta gonna be no wedding. Dear one, what sort of a wedding do you want?”

“Richard, I don’t need a wedding ceremony, I don’t need witnesses. I just want to promise you everything a wife should promise.”

“You’re sure, Gwen? Aren’t you being hasty?” Confound it, promises a woman makes in bed should not be binding.

“I am not being hasty. I decided to marry you more than a year ago.”

“You did? Well, I’ll be—Hey! We met less than a year ago. At the Day One Ball. July twentieth. I remember.”

“True.”

“Well?”

“‘Well’ what, dear? I decided to many you before we met. Do you have a problem with that? I don’t. I didn’t.”

“Mmm. I had better tell you some things. My past contains episodes I don’t boast about. Not exactly dishonest but somewhat shady. And Ames is not the name I was born with.”

“Richard, I will be proud to be addressed as ‘Mrs. Ames?’ Or as…‘Mrs. Campbell’… Colin.”

I said nothing, loudly—then added, “What more do you know?”

She looked me firmly in the eye, did not smile. “All I need to know. Colonel Colin Campbell, known as ‘Killer’ Campbell to his troops…and in the dispatches. A rescuing angel to the students of Percival Lowell Academy. Richard, or Colin, my oldest daughter was one of those students.”

“I’ll be eternally damned.”

“I doubt it.”

“And because of this you intend to marry me?”

“No, dear man. That reason sufficed a year ago. But now I’ve had many months to discover the human being behind the storybook hero. And… I did hurry you into bed last night but neither of us would marry for that reason alone. Do you want to know about my own tarnished past? I’ll tell.”

“No.” I faced her, took both her hands. “Gwendolyn, I want you to be my wife. Will you have me as your husband?”

“I will.”

“I, Colin Richard, take thee, Gwendolyn, to be my wife, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, as long as you will have me.”

“I, Sadie Gwendolyn, take thee, Colin Richard, to be my husband, to care for and love and cherish for the rest of my life.”

“Whew! I guess that does it.”

“Yes. But kiss me.”

I did. “When did ‘Sadie’ show up?”

“Sadie Lipschitz, my family name. I didn’t like it so I changed it. Richard, the only thing left to make it official is to publish it. That ties it down. And I do want to tie it down while you’re still groggy.”

“All right. Publish it how?”

“May I use your terminal?”

“
Our
terminal. You don’t have to ask to use it.”

“‘Our terminal.’ Thank you, dear.” She got up, went to the terminal, keyed for directory, then called the
Golden Rule Herald
, asked for the society editor. “Please record. Dr. Richard Ames and Mistress Gwendolyn Novak are pleased to announce their marriage this date. No presents, no flowers. Please confirm.” She switched off. They called back at once; I answered and confirmed.

She sighed. “Richard, I hurried you. But I had to. Now I can no longer be required to testify against you in any jurisdiction anywhere. I want to help in any way that I can. Why did you kill him, dear? And how?”

“In waking a tiger, use a long stick.”

MAO TSE-TUNG
1893-1976

I stared thoughtfully at my bride. “You are a gallant lady, my love, and I am grateful that you do not want to testify against me. But I am not sure that the legal principle you cited can be applied in this jurisdiction.”

“But that’s a general rule of justice, Richard. A wife can’t be forced to testify against her husband. Everyone knows that.”

“The question is: Does the Manager know it? The Company asserts that the habitat has only one law, the Golden Rule, and claims that the Manager’s regulations are merely practical interpretations of that law, just guidelines subject to change—change right in the middle of a hearing and retroactive, if the Manager so decides. Gwen, I don’t know. The Manager’s Proxy might decide that you are the Company’s star witness.”

“I won’t do it! I won’t!”

“Thank you, my love. But let’s find out what your testimony would be were you to be a witness in—what shall we call it? Eh, suppose that I am charged with having wrongfully caused the death of, uh, Mr. X… Mr. X being the stranger who came to our table last night when you excused yourself to visit the ladies’ lounge. What did you see?”

“Richard, I saw you kill him. I saw it!”

“A prosecutor would require more details. Did you see him come to our table?”

“No. I didn’t see him until I left the lounge and was headed for our table…and was startled to see someone sitting in my chair.”

“All right, back up a little and tell me exactly what you saw.”

“Uh, I came out of the ladies’ room and turned left, toward our table. Your back was toward me, you’ll remember—”

“Never mind what I remember; you tell what you remember. How far away were you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Ten meters, maybe. I could go there and measure it. Does it matter?”

“If it ever does, you can measure it. You saw me from about ten meters. What was I doing? Standing? Sitting? Moving?”

“You were seated with your back to me.”

“My back was toward you. The light wasn’t very good. How did you know it was I?”

“Why—Richard, you’re being intentionally difficult.”

“Yes, because prosecutors are intentionally difficult. How did you recognize me?”

“Uh—It was
you
. Richard, I know the back of your neck just as I know your face. Anyhow, when you stood up and moved, I
did
see your face.”

“Was that what I did next? Stand up?”

“No, no. I spotted you, at our table—then I stopped short when I saw someone seated across from you, in my chair. I just stood there and stared.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No. I don’t think I ever saw him before.”

“Describe him.”

“Uh, I can’t, very well.”

“Short? Tall? Age? Bearded? Race? How dressed?”

“I never saw him standing up. He wasn’t a youngster but he wasn’t an old man, either. I don’t think he wore a beard.”

“Moustache?”

“I don’t know.” (I did know. No moustache. Age about thirty.)

“Race?”

“White. Light skin, anyhow, but not blond like a Swede. Richard, there wasn’t time to catch all the details. He threatened you with some sort of weapon and you shot him and you jumped up as the waiter came over—and I backed up and waited until they took him away.”

“Where did they take him?”

“I’m not sure. I backed into the ladies’ lounge and let the door contract. They could have taken him into the gentlemen’s room just across the passage. But there’s another door at the end of the passage marked ‘Employees Only.’”

“You say he threatened me with a weapon?”

“Yes. Then you shot him and jumped up and grabbed his weapon and shoved it into your pocket, just as our waiter came up on the other side.”

(Oho!) “Which pocket did I put it in?”

“Let me think. I have to turn myself that way in my mind. Your left pocket. Your left outside jacket pocket.”

“How was I dressed last night?”

“Evening dress, we had come straight from the ballet. White turtleneck, maroon jacket, black trousers.”

“Gwen, because you were asleep in the bedroom, I undressed last night here in the living room and hung the clothes I was wearing in that wardrobe by the outer door, intending to move them later. Will you please open that wardrobe, find the jacket I wore last night, and get from its left outside pocket the ‘weapon’ you saw me place in it?”

“But—” She shut up and, solemn-faced, did as I asked.

In a moment she returned. “This is all there was in that pocket.” She handed me the stranger’s wallet.

I accepted it. “This is the weapon with which he threatened me.” Then I showed her my right forefinger, bare. “And this is the weapon I used to shoot him when he pointed this wallet at me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Beloved, this is why criminologists place more faith in circumstantial evidence than they do in the testimony of eyewitnesses. You are the ideal eyewitness, intelligent, sincere, cooperative, and honest. You have reported a mixture of what you did see, what you thought you saw, what you failed to notice although it was in front of you, and what your logical mind fills in as necessities linking what you saw and what you thought you saw. This mixture is now all solidly in your mind as a true memory, a firsthand, eyewitness memory. But it didn’t happen.”

“But, Richard, I
did
see—”

“You saw that poor clown killed. You did not see him threatening me; you did not see me shoot him. Some third person shot him with an explosive dart. Since he was facing you and it hit him in the chest, that dart must have come right past you. Did you notice anyone standing?”

“No. Oh, there were waiters moving around, and busmen, and the maître d’ and people getting up and sitting down. I mean I didn’t notice anyone in particular—certainly not anyone shooting a gun. What sort of a gun?”

“Gwen, it might not look like a gun. A concealed assassin’s weapon capable of shooting a dart short range—It could look like anything as long as it had one dimension about fifteen centimeters long. A lady’s purse. A camera. Opera glasses. An endless list of innocent-appearing objects. This gets us nowhere as I had my back to the action and you saw nothing out of the way. The dart probably came from behind your back. So forget it. Let’s see who the victim was. Or whom he claimed to be.”

I took out everything from all the pockets of that wallet, including a poorly-concealed “secret” pocket. This last held gold certificates issued by a Zurich bank, equivalent to about seventeen thousand crowns—his get-away money, it seemed likely.

There was an ID of the sort the Golden Rule issues to each person arriving at the habitat’s hub. All it proves is that the “identified” person has a face, claims a name, has made statements as to nationality, age, place of birth, etc., and has deposited with the Company a return ticket or the equivalent in cash, as well as paying the breathing fee ninety days in advance—these latter two being all the Company cares about.

I do not know as certainty that the Company would space a man who, through some slip, has neither a ticket away nor air money. They might let him sell his indentures. But I would not count on it. Eating vacuum is not something I care to risk.

This Company ID stated that the holder was Enrico Schultz, age 32, citizen of Belize, born Ciudad Castro, occupation accountant. The picture with it was that of the poor slob who got himself killed through bracing me in too public a place…and for the steenth time I wondered why he hadn’t phoned me, then called on me in private. As “Dr. Ames” I am in the directory…and invoking “Walker Evans” would have got him a hearing, a private hearing.

I showed it to Gwen. “Is that our boy?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“I am sure. As I talked to him face to face for several minutes.”

The oddest part about Schultz’s wallet was what it did not contain. In addition to the Swiss gold certificates it held eight hundred and thirty-one crowns and that Golden Rule ID.

But that was all.

No credit cards, no motor vehicle pilot’s license, no insurance cards, no union or guild card, no other identification cards, no membership cards, nit. Men’s wallets are like women’s purses; they accumulate junk—photos, clippings, shopping lists, et cetera without end; they need periodic housecleaning. But, in cleaning one out, one always leaves in place the dozen-odd items a modern man needs in order to get by. My friend Schultz had nothing.