So I headed the car for the far side of town. Pete Workus was alone in his shop when we went in. I knew him only slightly; he’d been in business there only a year or so.
“Hello, Pete,” I said. “This is Miss Weyburn. We’re trying to trace a man who bought five cats at our place yesterday. He wanted more than that, and I thought maybe he came here.”
Workus nodded. “He did. Or anyway, there was a guy here who bought us out of cats, so I suppose it’s the same one. I sold him three of them.”
“Did he leave a name and address?”
Workus leaned an elbow on the counter and rubbed his chin. “Uh, I guess he gave me his name, but I don’t remember. It was a common name, I think.”
“Smith?”
“Yeah, I guess that was it. But not his address. Anyway, he doesn’t want any more cats, Evans, so you can stop hunting for him. I offered to get him some more, but he figured he had enough with what I sold him. Come to think of it, he mentioned your place; he said he got five from you, and he’d got one somewhere else, and with the three I had, he figured nine would be enough.”
“I don’t want to sell him any more cats,” I said. “What happened is that we sold him one too many, by mistake. Miss Weyburn’s cat. And I got to get it back for her.”
“Hm-m-m, that’s tough. Well, I hope you find him then; but I don’t know how to help you.”
“Maybe,” I suggested, “you can add to the description of him that we have.”
Workus closed his eyes to think. “Well, he was maybe five feet seven or eight inches, about a hundred and seventy pounds—”
I nodded. “That fits ma’s description. And he wore dark glasses while he was here?”
“Yes, yellowish sun glasses. He didn’t wear a hat, and he was bald, and he had a mustache. That’s…that’s all I can remember about him. Say, Evans, while you’re here will you take a look at a puppy of mine? I hear you’re something of a vet, and maybe you can tell me whether it’s got distemper or not.”
“Sure,” I said. “Be glad to. Where is he?”
“Back this way.” He opened the door to the room behind the shop, and I went in after him. I turned around to ask the girl if she minded waiting a few minutes, but she was following us. She said, “May I watch?”
“Sure,” I told her, and we followed Workus into the back room.
He was leading the way back past a row of cages when it happened. Up at shoulder height, a small brown monkey arm darted out through the bars of one of the upper cages, and grabbed.
Workus swore suddenly as his hair vanished into the monkey cage. Then, his face a bit red, he said, “Excuse my language, miss. But that’s the second time that d-darned monkey caught me napping.”
He opened the door of the cage and reached in to recover his toupee, which the now-frightened and jabbering monkey had dropped just behind the bars.
I hadn’t known, until now, that Workus wore a toupee; and I’d jumped a bit at the apparent spectacle of a man being scalped. For under the toupee, Workus was completely bald.
“Say,” I said, half jokingly and half seriously, “it wasn’t by any chance you who bought these cats of ours, was it? If you left off your toupee and hat, and put on dark glasses and a mustache—”
Workus had closed the door of the monkey cage, and was adjusting the toupee on his head. He looked at me strangely. “Are you crazy, Evans? Or joking? Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
“I haven’t any idea,” I said cheerfully. And I hadn’t. But something was beginning to buzz at the back of my mind, and without stopping to think it over, I went on talking. “But one thing does strike me funny. My mother described the mysterious Mr. Smith as being about your height and weight. Now what made her say that? She’s seen you only a few times in her life. But, in thinking what the man who bought the cats was like, she used your name. Doesn’t it seem that it might have been because—sort of subconsciously—she saw through the disguise, and recognized your walk, or your voice, or something?”
Workus was frowning. He said, “Are you accusing me of—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. If it was you, there’s nothing criminal about buying cats. All we want is Miss Weyburn’s cat back, and we’ll…I’ll pay for it. That sale wasn’t legal, anyway. We can get a writ of replevin for the animal. But I hope we won’t have to go to the police.”
And having gone that far, I decided to bluff it on out, and added, “Or will we?”
He didn’t answer at all for a moment. Then, quite suddenly and surprisingly, he grinned at us. “O.K.,” he said. “You win. It was me. And I’ll see that you get your cat back, Miss—Weyburn, is it? I’ll give you a note to the man who has it, and his address.”
He crossed toward the desk at one side of the room, and I turned and looked at Miss Weyburn, and said: “See? The Bon Ton Pet Shop gets results. Even if we have to turn into a detective agency. We get our cat. Like the Northwest—”
But she was looking past me, toward Workus. Suddenly, at the startled look on her face, I whirled around. Workus was holding a gun on us. A .38 automatic that looked like a cannon when seen from the front. He said, “Don’t move.”
For a moment, I thought he was crazy. But I lifted my hands shoulder-high, and I tried to make my voice calm and reasonable. I said, “What’s the idea? In the first place, Workus, you can’t get away with this. And in the second—”
“Be quiet, Evans. Listen, I don’t want to kill you unless I have to, and if you’re reasonable, maybe I won’t have to. But I can’t let you out of here; you’d go to the police and they just might decide to investigate what you told them. Even if you got your cat back, you might.”
“Listen,” I said. “What’s all this about? Am I crazy, or are you? Why this fuss about cats?”
“If you knew that, I’d have to kill you. Still want to know?”
“Well,” I said, “if you put it that way, maybe not. But—about holding us here. How long—”
“Tomorrow. I’m through here, and leaving town after tonight. Tomorrow I won’t care what you tell the cops. I’ll be clear.”
I grunted. “But dammit—” I turned my head toward the girl. “I’m sorry, Miss Weyburn. Looks like I got you in a mess.”
She managed a fleeting smile. “It isn’t your fault. And—”
The sound of a door opening behind me made me start to turn my head farther around, but Workus’ voice barked, “Look this way.” And the snick of the safety catch on the automatic backed it up, and I turned.
“You first, Evans,” Workus snapped. “Put your hands behind you to be tied.”
I obeyed, and somebody behind me did a good job of tying my wrists. Then a blindfold was tied over my eyes and a clean handkerchief from my own pocket used as a gag. When, on instructions, I sat down and leaned back against the wall, my ankles, too, were tied.
Then, after Miss Weyburn had been similarly tied and placed beside me, I heard the footsteps of Workus going back to the store at the front. The other man opened and closed a door, and I heard his steps on stairs, but don’t know whether he was going up or down them.
And then, for a long time, nothing happened.
I tried, experimentally, to reach the knots in the cord that bound my wrists, but couldn’t touch them, even with the tip of one finger. I might have been able to loosen the cord by rolling around until I found a rough edge somewhere to rub it against, but every ten or fifteen minutes, all afternoon, I’d hear Workus’ footsteps coming to the door to look in at us, or coming on into the back room on some errand or other. So, for the present, there was nothing I could do—except wait and hope for the best.