EQMM 1999-09-10 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Cat Thief

by Ernest Dudley

©1999 by Ernest Dudley

Londoner Ernest Dudley is a newcomer to EQMM. “Cat Thief” was originally published in the U.K., under the title “The White Mog,” for a collection of stories by the Crime Writers Association. It then saw further life in a collection of church-related stories in the U.K. We’re happy to say that its third life is its first in the U.S. — may it have at least six lives more.

❖

First time Fred Ellis saw the white cat, it was only for a few seconds, then it I was gone. Like a ghost, you might say, it being so white and all. He saw it through the railings of the garden in the square. Obviously, it had come from one of the houses in the square. But even though it had only been this brief flash, the white cat made him catch his breath — he could feel himself drooling at the thought of grabbing it and shoving it in his sack. He reckoned Bernie ought to cough up twice as much as usual for fur like this one.

He’d been smart enough to check the time by his watch when he’d seen it. Just gone ten o’clock. Next night, he’d be there, same time. He knew from experience people mostly put their cats out about the same time every night.

It was a late summer night, and Fred Ellis had been on his usual prowl. He was a cat thief. He averaged seven to ten cats a week, at up to fifty pounds a time, cash, no questions asked by a certain Bernie Hollins, who ran a furrier’s behind Paddington Station as a cover for his activities… His vivisectionist clients looked down their noses at thin, scraggy specimens, and your fur dealers, too, go for a healthy cat with a good amount of well-kept fur. Though it was your regular vivisectionists who were your most regular customer. Needed all the cats you could throw at them, they did. Never-ending, the demand is, with vivisectionists. But take the fur business, well, it had its ups and downs.

Fred made his cat-prowl nearly every night, covering in his travels every part of London — sometimes, if he had a hunch, he’d nip out to the suburbs, like Croydon, Wimbledon, or Streatham, in his little van. This is all the gear you need for this job. A little van, as inconspicuous as you could make it, and a strong sack or two, into which you shoved the mogs. So long as they had enough air to breathe, they were okay. They might yowl and fight sometimes, but that didn’t matter, so long as you brought ’em back alive. Bernie Hollins needed a dead cat like he needed a hole in the head.

But this white mog he’d spotted in this square just off Gloucester Place, it was a real beaut. Your better-class area usually supplied your better-class cat, so he was there all right, next time. He had a specially large sack with him for the white cat.

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