The Cat Wears a Mask Page 4

  He accepted a drink from Gail, taking several quick looks at her. “Your man Pedro is putting our stuff upstairs, and Florencia’s trotting around with towels and things. How on earth do you keep them, out here where it’s so damned lonely?”

  “I’ve been very lucky,” Gail said, “in getting hold of the right people.”

  There was an abrupt little silence, as if some of the group were thinking over a meaning buried in the words. Then conversation resumed. Grubler staved close to Gail and made small talk about the weather and her house, and glanced at her in snatches, as if afraid she might resent it. After the first startled anger at seeing Emerson, Gail had retreated into a distant, frozen politeness. The masked look that Miss Rachel remembered was back in the depths of her eyes.

  Christine, still being gay and roguish, took Hal Emerson off on a tour of the garden.

  Bob Ryker added more gin to his drink when no one but Miss Rachel was looking. Over the rim of his glass he winked at her.

  “There’s just one more to come,” Ilene Taggart said suddenly from the other end of the wicker seat. “Zia. She’s lovely, like the Indian maidens on old-fashioned calendars. When she gets here, we’ll all be together again just as we were in college.” Ilene’s gaze was fixed on her lap, on the clasp of her big purse, and Miss Rachel couldn’t be sure that the words were meant for her.

  “Only, of course,” Ilene went on more softly, “there is such a difference in being together because you’re all interested in writing and in being together because you are afraid.”

  Her tone had been monotonous and quiet. Probably no one had heard what she had said except Miss Rachel. At any rate, here was one who hadn’t been fooled about the purpose of the house party.

  Miss Rachel decided that she had better get on with the business upstairs.

  As preliminary, she yawned a little, as though Ilene’s soft words hadn’t registered. “The heat makes me drowsy. I believe I’ll go up to my room and lie down.” Her cat ambled towards her, giving up the experiment of outstaring the lizard, and together they went into the hall and up the stairs to the second gallery.

  There was a little breeze there, but it was hot. Rachel waited to make sure that Pedro and Florencia were out of the way. To the left, open arches looked out over the enclosed garden, the tangle of flowers and vines, to the sunny Arizona desert beyond. On the right were the bedrooms, a long row of them—once the accommodations for the overnight guests of the stage depot. The wall had been replastered effectively with cream-colored stucco and there were black beams overhead. Beside each door hung a cluster of gourds and pods, painted brightly in Indian colors, the traditional symbol of the welcome and the hospitality of the old Southwest.

  The first room was Miss Rachel’s and she ignored it. She experimented at the second, Christine Rykeris, and found it locked. This was no surprise, considering Christine’s desire for privacy with her luggage. Miss Rachel tried a hairpin without any luck.

  The third door opened easily. Inside on a luggage rack was a battered bag she recalled Pedro bringing from the station wagon—either Ilene’s or Bob’s. The contents instantly betrayed their owner. There were three bottles of vodka, a little tin of dried onion flakes, a blue scarf, some exceptionally heavy driving gloves, a deck of cards, two clean shirts and two changes of underwear and socks, and a very old pair of felt bedroom slippers.

  The closet was bare. The door which led into the adjoining room, Christine’s, was bolted on its other side.

  “No letter among his things,” Miss Rachel told her curious cat. “Perhaps he didn’t think it important enough to bring along.”

  On the gallery again, she listened. She could hear Christine’s chatter and Bob Ryker being argumentative with Grubler about whether he ought to have another drink. Ilene’s voice kept suggesting a sandwich.

  “Listen, my inhibited chick,” Bob answered, “you need a coupla drinks yourself. Keep your sandwiches off me.”

  Miss Rachel went into the fourth room quickly, confident that their efforts with Bob would keep them busy below.

  A plain black bag on the foot of the bed contained a lot of white muslin underwear of a type which Miss Rachel could not recall having seen displayed in a store for the last twenty years. Ilene must make a special effort to find it. The slips, drawers, and chemises were coarse, shapeless, sexless. In the closet where Florencia had hung them to shake out their wrinkles were Ilene’s other clothes: a rusty brown suit of the kind social workers favor, a dull goose-gray dinner gown, and a play suit which was definitely bashful.

  “How old does she think she is?” Miss Rachel worried to· her cat. “What’s come over her? Her figure isn’t bad. She has pretty hair, and the mouse type always attracts a certain number of men …” She dug deeper into the suitcase. Away at the bottom were a black net nightgown and a black chiffon negligee trimmed with sly little pink ribbons. These garments were new, still had price tags hanging from them, and were done up precisely in white tissue paper, as though Ilene wasn’t sure she’d need them.

  There was no clue in the room to indicate any note-making.

  Her cat growled a little.

  Miss Rachel turned to find Ilene just inside the door, her figure stiff with shock. “You—you’re prying into my things! How dare you?”

  For a moment Miss Rachel just stood, regretting that for once she couldn’t think of a suitable lie—usually they came readily. Then she found herself blurting something which turned out to be the truth. “I was hoping you’d brought that note—the pieced-together thing you’ve all been getting.”

  “Oh—that.” Suspicion died slowly in Ilene’s eyes. “Yes, I brought it. I don’t mind your seeing that.” Her glance touched the suitcase and jerked away. “You won’t know what it means and you mustn’t ask me to explain.” She opened the huge handbag and examined its contents with the air of checking a filing cabinet.

  The general appearance of the note was much the same as Gail’s.

  Star bright, star bright

  Where are all the stars tonight?

  Couldn’t have love, did get gold,

  And now BR—but it’s cold!

  KACHINA

  “I don’t mind you seeing it. I rather thought, when I met you, that Gail might have wanted your advice.” Ilene’s fingers twisted the knob of the catch on the handbag. “But you can’t tell her what it says.”

  Miss Rachel saw the shamed fear in her eyes. “I won’t tell. Can’t you even explain the reference to the stars?”

  “Well … That part must refer to the spell of partial blindness I suffered seven years ago. We were all working on the yearbook and I had charge of the illustrations, and then everything sort of—of blew up for me. Now I’m just near sighted.” She wasn’t looking at Miss Rachel. She was watching the tip of the cat’s tail. Samantha was under the bed, perhaps after another little lizard. “That’s all I can explain. The last two lines don’t mean anything except just meanness and gossip.”

  Miss Rachel scanned the message again and then said softly, as if to herself: “These initials—who would B. R. be?”

  Of course Bob Ryker must be the answer, and Ilene wouldn’t give it. Her voice was hoarse, hurried. “No, no—they aren’t initials. The cold, you see. My cold, lonely life …”

  Miss Rachel asked gently, “Is it?”

  Ilene turned and went to the window. “There are lots of ways of not being lonely, ways that don’t show and that people might not understand. Like reading, and helping at the day nursery, and writing letters for the people at the blind institute—” She broke off, pointing to Samantha’s tail. “Like keeping a cat and loving it. I suppose she’s a lot of company for you.”

  Miss Rachel laid the note upon the dresser, sensing that Ilene was not going to talk about it any further. “She’s awfully bossy for a pet. I think she has the idea that she owns me, that I’m the one being kept for companionship.”

  Ilene smiled briefly. The hot light from the open window showed perspirati
on on her face.

  The cat stuck her head out from under the bed in a sudden attitude of listening. At the same time, beside the window, Ilene stiffened a little. There had been a faint dry rattle, not very near, just loud enough to be sensed in the vibration of the air. The cat came out into the middle of the floor. Her ears twitched.

  The sound came again, almost drowsily, as though something scaly and loose-jointed had stirred itself rhythmically and then died away.

  Ilenc’s eyes were hollow and afraid. “Did you hear anything?”

  Miss Rachel was frowning. “I’m trying to remember. Beads, I think. Dry beads. Amber—like a string of my mother’s I played with when I was small.”

  The cat looked towards the window and said something deep and uneasy in cat language.

  “I—I thought of paper crackling,” Ilene said.

  “Listen.”

  They waited, but all they heard for a moment was the slam of a door somewhere along the gallery. Then a last rhythmic whisper, as dry as pebbles being shaken in the bottom of an Indian basket. But torpid and alive … Ilene’s hands were twisted into the window drapery as though she needed support.

  The cat put her claws into the counterpane and worked with frustrated energy until Miss Rachel pulled her away.

  Ilene tugged at her hat, as though any pressure on her head had become suddenly unendurable. “Was the sound inside the house, do you think?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  Ilene slumped to the edge of the bed. “I must be tired from the trip—tireder than I thought. My nerves are on edge. Perhaps I should lie down until dinner.” The expression of fear, of listening, hadn’t left her.

  “We’ll run along.” Miss Rachel took her cat and went to the door. As she went out she caught the quick move Ilene made to look under the bed. N

  Christine Ryker was on the gallery, in the act of unlocking her door. Her mouth was tight, the pose of her head angry and nervous. She glanced up at Miss Rachel’s approach, smiled with grim politeness, waited until Miss Rachel was at the stairs before opening her room.

  Gail was in the long living room across the hall. This had once been the dining room of the depot. When Gail had bought the place it had been even more a ruin than the rest of the house, since passers-by on the road to Winslow had stabled horses in it. It had taken a lot of work, a lot of money to transform broken walls and floor to what they were now. The ceiling was low, white-plastered. Walls were painted a soft green for coolness. The floor was dark green tiles covered partially with Navajo rugs. The furniture was Spanish oak, massive and dark; Gail was at a desk in a corner beside an open window, making entries in an account book.

  She raised her eyes. “Oh. I thought you might be resting.”

  “It seemed a good time to talk. Are the others upstairs?”

  “Mr. Emerson is still in the garden.” She said the name with frozen preciseness. “But out of earshot, I’m sure. I’ll be through here in a moment. If I don’t keep track of every dime—” She cut off what she had been saying, as if not wanting to trouble Miss Rachel with her affairs. “Sit down in that little chair with the rawhide seat. It’s much more comfortable than it looks. What do you think of these people?”

  “I’ve scarcely had time to form an opinion of any of them,” Miss Rachel said thoughtfully. “It struck me that Mrs. Ryker acted peculiarly about her luggage. She keeps her door locked. She was unlocking it as I came down.”

  “She and Mr. Emerson had some sort of quarrel over behind the arbor,” Gail said emotionlessly. “I think she went upstairs a trifle angry.” She lifted her eyes from the account book and studied their shadows, close together on the pale green wall. Miss Rachel’s shadow looked a little odd since Samantha, on the window sill behind her, gave her the shape of ears thrust up on the top of her head. “But Christine’s always been nervy and touchy. She has all the money—none of it is Bob’s—and she wants her business affairs run perfectly, and her clothes to be perfect, and a general air of having money to show.”

  “Mr. Ryker seems rather wearied and cynical for his age.”

  “He’s mildly pickled almost all of the time. As for being weary, there must be times when Christine literally drives him to drink.”

  “I’m quite interested in Miss Taggart. I’ve been with her for a little while in her room. Her air of repression verges on the neurotic, or it’s an act. And her habit of not quite looking at anyone is disconcerting.”

  “The repression is genuine,” Gail assured her. “Ilene has had an awfully tough time. She’s been an orphan since she was fourteen. In college we were all sure she’d go places as an artist. She did splendid, vivid stuff. Then while we were getting out the anthology she developed some kind of eye trouble—perhaps overwork. She had to quit drawing and reading and feel her way around the campus like a blind person. Losing that chance, and being cut off abruptly from the rest of us, did something to Ilene. She turned bitter, queer, and that air of repression and avoidance of people seemed to develop in her overnight. As for not looking directly at anyone—that’s nearsightedness, a lack of focusing. The worst break of all was that after she left school a great-aunt died and left her some money. Too late, you see. The chance for normal friendships was gone. Now she gets around all right, but she doesn’t ever try to paint anything, not even when I urge her with my own materials out here. And as for looking at a man—I guess she’d die first.”

  “What about these letters—she has one, but she could have sent it to herself. And she may feel you all let her down during her illness.”

  Gail shook her head. “We didn’t do that, you see. Bob Ryker and I made the most efforts to keep her in the group, but no one passed her up. She made the break of her own free will. And there’s no trait in Ilene of wanting to hurt anyone else. Her bitterness is turned inward.”

  Couldn’t have love, did get gold,

  And now BR—but it’s cold!

  The dry, whispery shaking returned to Miss Rachel’s memory. Ilene had been terrified by it.

  Life was cold and frightening when a drowsy rattle could scare you.

  Of course they were in snake country here; there was the ever-present danger of a rattler slipping into the place: But there was something more.… Miss Rachel frowned at the attempt to remember.

  On a shelf across the room was a row of Kachina dolls, little carved figures representing, in Hopi-Indian fashion, the good and evil spirits of the hereafter. Miss Rachel’s eyes grew wide.

  In bright ceremonial colors, the Kachinas seemed to parade along the shelf. And each held, in a miniature hand, a gourd.

  Chapter 5

  Miss Rachel walked across the room to the shelf of figures. She lifted the center one to examine it more closely. It was surprisingly light in weight, carved from some porous desert wood, and the figure it represented wore a helmet-shaped mask covering the head to the shoulders and topped with a tuft of feathers. There was a stiff white skirt or kirtle from waist to knees, highly decorated boots, circlets of paint at wrists and neck. In the hands were ceremonial objects, a gourd rattle in perfect miniature and a spatula-shaped wand painted with symbols of mountains and storms. The total height was about ten inches.

  Gail had taken a sheaf of canceled checks from between the pages of the account book and was ruffling the yellow slips absently. “In the Hopi concept of things, the dead are among the living always. The Kachina dolls, however, are not revered as religious idols. They are more apt to be made as toys for the children. A lot of them, of course, are sold now to tourists. Originally the idea seemed to be that of close, loving association with the dead.”

  The little figure had a certain vigor and grace; its colors were bright, primitive, lavish. “Not the white man’s idea of a ghost,” Miss Rachel observed, “though I suppose if you were being haunted, one kind might be as uncomfortable as another. Why should your poison-pen writer choose the name?”

  Gail tapped the checks together on the open page of the account book, then thrust
them half out of sight between the rear pages. “I’ve tried to figure out a connection. We’re all familiar with the Hopi religious ideas; you can’t live in Arizona and not be. But the idea of the Kachina is that of one all-knowing who has died.” She waited a moment, as if thinking, then closed the account book.

  “Mr. Emerson had been out of touch with the others. A figurative death, one might say.”

  Gail turned her head. “His … methods are more direct.”

  There was a sound at the doorway. Bob Ryker stood there, leaning to the left, as though something had gone awry with his sense of balance. “Somebody’s been in my room, Gail. I don’t mean Florencia, either.” His smile was tight, querulous.

  For an instant Gail looked at Miss Rachel, a glance full of guilt and question. Perhaps Ryker didn’t see it. He was at the end of the room, facing the light, behind him the shadows of the hall. Gail asked, “Is something missing from your things?”

  “Damned right.” He walked in, still with that effect of imbalance which never quite tipped over, and fell into a deep red-cushioned chair.

  Miss Rachel breathed again. She hadn’t taken anything; she could not, in fact, believe that she had left any traces of her visit.

  “Who’d want my driving gloves, Gail, and why?” Bob Ryker demanded.

  Again the swift, guilty glance from Gail. This time Miss Rachel was a little irritated by it. People wanted you to advise them, and when you did a bit of reasonable poking about …

  “What were they like?” Gail asked.

  “Heavy as the dickens. Always reminded me of welder’s gauntlets. Not that I ever did any welding.” His smile assured them that he saw the humor of this just as they saw it. “I brought them along because a friend in Phoenix who’s a rock hound wanted me to look over the country out here for some jaspar. I wouldn’t know jaspar when I saw it, but my conscience was happy when I stuck in the gloves. You know—you pick up a bit of stone and tap it professionally with a little hammer and shine it in the light. That kind of rot. I was depending on you for the hammer.”