THE WHISKERED SPY
1
The Brookridge Park Horror
I was sitting in an elm tree looking down at the world below, minding my own business, when the stirring events I’m about to relate took place. As it happens, it was my favorite tree to sit and watch the world go by while licking any part of my anatomy that needed licking. Not that I’m a philosopher, per se. But I’m a cat and, closely following Chapter 3, Paragraph 6, Section 8 of the Cat Guild Book of Regulations, sitting in trees is a task highly recommended to fill at least one time slot a day, an average time slot equaling more or less 7 human hours. And it was as the last minutes of my tree-sitting time for the day were ticking away, that I became aware of strange happenings down on the ground below.
The perch I had chosen for my tree time was located in the middle of the Brookridge park, which has, among its many other points of interest, a very large population of birds that like to occupy its various trees—closely following the rules oftheir particular guild. And as everyone knows, chasing birds is clearly outlined in Chapter 1 of the Cat Guild rulebook as one of the mainstays of an adult cat’s life. But apart from cats, trees and birds, another life form habitually infests the Brookridge park: humans. And it were two members of this odd species who were now hobnobbing under my tree’s foliage.
Clearly laboring under the misapprehension that they were alone, they were speaking in the hushed tones of the professional hobnobber. I pricked up my ears and studied the duo intently. One was a female human, oddly enough dressed up in white, as if preparing to attend a wedding, the other a male. And for a moment I had labeled their actions as part of the mating ritual humans like to observe: first they spend the longest time talking, then some form of physical contact follows, and finally they start locking lips, something I’ve never been able to endure with fortitude.
And I was about to hop to the next tree and save myself the sickening spectacle, when words reached my ears that perked me up considerably.
“I think he’s on to us,” said the female.
“Are you sure?” said the male.
No reply followed, but from the next sentence spoken by the male, it was obvious the woman had given him some form of nonverbal confirmation.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “That means we’ll have to take him out.”
I can tell you right now that my tail shivered from stem to stern at these words.‘Take him out’. That could only mean… Here, through some form of divine intervention, I had stumbled upon a secret meeting between two spies! I knew of course that Brookridge is a veritable nest of spies and its local park their favorite hangout, but it was the first time I’d ever encountered two real-life spies in the flesh. And under my favorite tree no less! Talk about ringside seats.
The woman gasped.“Take him out!” she said. It was obvious to me that she didn’t agree with her fellow spy’s assessment of the situation. “Are you nuts?”
“Nuts about you,” whispered the man. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that little weasel get in the way of our future happiness. Either he goes, or I go.”
“No! Jack!” cried the woman. “Don’t go!”
At these words, my tail stopped shivering and my ears flopped. This was not the talk of two spies planning to take out some unfortunate competitor, but of two lovers, plotting to do away with a husband or wife or possibly both. I heaved a deep sigh to signify the premature dashing of all my hopes and dreams and languidly trotted to the edge of the branch I’d been sitting on to prepare for my departure from the lurid scene. It no longer held any interest for me.
Unfortunately, just in that moment, another cat arrived on the scene and engaged me in conversation. It was Dana, the highly strung Siamese belonging to one of the neighbors.
“Hello, Tom,” she said in her customary sultry voice. “What are you doing out so late? Don’t you have to be home with daddy around this time of night?”
“Hi there, Dana,” I said in my most casual way. “Where did you spring from all of a sudden?”
“Oh, I was just hopping around here and there, checking out the neighborhood, when I happened to run into Stevie. You know Stevie, don’t you? Father Sam’s Ragamuffin?”
Yes, I knew Stevie. The mongrel ate a mouse I’d marked for my own one night when I wasn’t watching. “Shh,” I said, for I noticed Dana’s jabbering had interrupted the easy flow of conversation coming from the couple downstairs.
“Shh, yourself,” said Dana, amused. “No one shushes me, Tom. You know that. As I was saying, I ran into Stevie and noticed he’d done something different with his whiskers. They seemed, I don’t know, longer or something. So I said, ‘Stevie. I like what you’ve done with your whiskers. What’s your secret?’ And Stevie said, ‘Extensions. It’s the new craze.’ And I said—”
“Will you please be quiet!” I hissed. For my sensitive ears had picked up something else now. The woman had begun softly sobbing and the man was now whispering something consoling into her ear and patting her gently on the back. It wasn’t this patting on the back that worried me, though, but the long and shiny butcher’s knife he was pulling out of his pocket with his free hand and carefully poising behind the woman’s back.
“Well, I never,” said Dana, shocked at being spoken to like that by a mere tabby.
But then I directed her attention to the two people down below, and when she saw the moonlight glitter on the knife, she let rip a cry so piercing, it stayed the hand of the man just on the verge of plunging the knife into the woman’s back. Both the man and the woman looked up to see what all the ruckus was about.
“He’s got a knife!” trilled Dana.
I rolled my eyes at this piece of old news.“I can see that,” I said. “And it looks like he’s not afraid to use it.”
“But then, he’s a murderer!” cried Dana.
“Yah,” I said. “Obviously.”
“We have to stop him. Oh, Tom, do something!”
Now, humans habitually call for help on these occasions. Well, you’re a human. You know the drill. You yell, ‘Police! Help!’, at the top of your lungs and more often than not someone will show up. Unfortunately, we cats can yell all we want but no police or help will show up. What we can do is cry our little hearts out, though, and if we’re lucky, one of those fellows with a hard hat and a red coat will come running and save us from the tree. Firemen, I think humans call them. Exceedingly fine fellows I’ve always thought, and I’m on a first-name basis with most of Brookridge’s finest.
“Let’s pretend we’re stuck in this tree and perhaps a fireman will show up,” I said therefore.
“But why?” said Dana, frowning confusedly. “We’re not stuck in this tree.”
“I know we’re not stuck in this tree, but that woman down there is going to get it in the neck if we don’t do something quick!”
Her eyes lit up with the dim light of intelligence.“Oh, I see. We yell for help and when one of those nice red men show up, the killer will think twice about doing whatever he—”
She didn’t finish her sentence for she had happened to glance down and I saw every thew and sinew in her slender body stiffen with apprehension. Following her gaze I started. The woman was now lying facedown on the grass, the man standing over her with the knife still in his hand. He was cleaning it methodically with a large handkerchief.
2
Murder in the Park
“He did it!” cried Dana. “He murdered that poor, poor woman!”
I wanted to point out that for all we knew the woman had simply decided to take a nap, the man preparing to butter a piece of toast for when she woke up, but it was obvious Dana was right for a change: a murder had taken place and we were both eyewitnesses.
“Dang,” I said, as I stared my eyes out at the murder scene. It doesn’t happen every day that you see a murder take place. Now, mind you, we hadn’t actually seen ‘it’ happen, more like the before and after. But it wasn’t hard to imagine what had happened in between. When you see a fellow raise a knife behind a woman’s back and next thing you know the woman is lying lifeless on the ground and the man is cleaning the knife, the thing speaks for itself.