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inner square, with rooms opening from it on both sides—the outer and more opulent having windows on the street or on a court; the inner rooms (the trapped rooms) having no windows at all, but only air vents. The kitchen was one of the trapped rooms. It was at the rear of the apartment. The corridor provided a race course for cats.
    From the foyer, Gebhardt had, he said, gone to his right. Not that it mattered; he could have gone either way. As he passed doors, he opened them and looked inside for cats. The second door he opened was that to a corner room—a library which actually had the appearance of one, being walled with books.
    â€œYou figured this—cat—you wanted would be in there? With the door closed? When you had heard her in the rear of the apartment?”
    â€œSergeant,” Gebhardt said, “I never figure where a cat won’t be. I never match guesses with a cat. I just look.”
    â€œO.K.,” Mullins said. “And he was lying on the floor. In about the center of the room.”
    â€œHe was.”
    â€œAnd not dead?”
    â€œDying,” Gebhardt said.
    He was told that he seemed very sure.
    â€œI was,” Gebhardt said. “There’s not much difference between humans and other animals when it comes to dying.”
    Aloysius Mullins frowned and started to say something. He remembered he was, after all, a cop. Not, for example, a theologian.
    â€œDid you do anything for him?”
    â€œMade sure. There wasn’t anything to be done. Not with his head bashed in the way it was.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œWent to find a telephone. There isn’t one in the library. As one of your—mob, must have noticed.”
    Gebhardt had called at twelve minutes after ten, which fitted and which the records verified. He had gone back to the library.
    â€œHe was dead then,” Gebhardt said. “And if you want to know how I knew, sergeant—he wasn’t breathing. When they don’t breathe, they’re dead.”
    Oscar Gebhardt was somewhat disgruntled himself. He explained things in the simplest terms, to the simplest, and made no bones about it.
    â€œUsually,” Gebhardt added, in the interest of scientific accuracy, but somewhat blunting his point.
    He had waited for the police to arrive. He had told a prowl car patrolman what he knew, and told it again to detectives from the precinct and now he had told Mullins three times. It was now twenty minutes after one. Oscar Gebhardt looked pointedly at his watch.
    â€œYou’d known him a long time? Since he didn’t make anything of letting you have the key?”
    â€œTwenty years,” Gebhardt said. “He’s had cats for twenty years and I’ve treated his cats for twenty years. He wrote a book about cats—damned good book—and I gave him some pointers. And I haven’t the faintest idea who killed him. And I didn’t. He was hit one blow, very heavy, with a dull object and it crushed his skull and he died of it. An hour, maybe not more than half an hour, before I found him. His name, in case you haven’t found that out, was John Blanchard. He—”
    Mullins reddened slightly. He said thanks for nothing, thanks a lot for nothing.
    â€œAnd,” Oscar Gebhardt said, “I’ve got calls to make. Whether you like cats or not. No use going to White Plains now. But I’ve got five calls in Manhattan, and one up in the Bronx and two in New Jersey. And if you still think I’m not who I say I am, there are a hundred people—two hundred—right here in Manhattan. Call them up and say you’ve got a little bald man with eyebrows, wearing funny clothes who says he’s Dr. Oscar Gebhardt, a cat specialist. Ask them if they’ve ever heard he goes around killing people and—”
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œSuch as what—oh.” Gebhardt paused and his eyebrows quivered. “Good many out of town on a nice weekend