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He darted around a cell phone mast, which had a blinky light at the top, and almost caught up with our perpetrator.

“Stop!” Chase yelled. “Stop right there!”

But the man clearly wasn’t in a mood to comply. Instead, he accelerated, and promptly hit his head against a metal rod that was sticking out a piece of wall.

“Ouch,” he muttered, then sort of staggered back, Chase making a grab for him, but managed to steer clear of the cop’s long arms, and suddenly disappeared from view altogether.

“Where did he go?” asked Chase.

I glanced around, then down, and then I saw him: the burglar was making his way down the wall that led to a terraced section of roof about thirty feet below us.

He glanced up, then, gave Chase a sort of cheery wave, and disappeared through a metal door.

“Well, shoot,” Chase said, looking around for a way to get down there. “How did he…”

I pointed to a ladder, well concealed beneath us. Chase rode that ladder down like a trained fireman, hopped onto that flat piece of roof and tried the door.

Locked, of course.

And so our intrepid human had to admit defeat. The burglar had got away.

“Where is he?” asked Marion, now joining me.

“He went that way,” I said, pointing to the door which Chase was now kicking, which didn’t seem like a good idea, since he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

“Where did he go?” asked Dooley, the last one to arrive.

“Through that door,” I said, pointing at Chase, who was now hopping on his left leg, while holding his right foot in his hands for some reason, and releasing a long stream of invective. Humans often do that to blow off steam, or when they’ve done a silly thing like kicking a metal door with their bare foot.

“That’s the door that leads to the staff wing,” said Marion. “Barney and I live there, and so does Audrey when she’s here. And B?bel, of course.”

“So… do you think our burglar could be a member of staff?” I asked.

“Could be,” said Marion. She gave me a smile. “Something to discuss with Barney, I’d imagine. Though he won’t like it. I can tell you that already.”

“He won’t?” asked Dooley.

“No, imagine if he found out a member of his staff committed multiple burglaries and a murder? The blow to the hotel’s reputation would be terrible. No, he won’t like this at all.”

CHAPTER 26

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“What! Where! How!” Barney yelled as he practically stumbled over his feet entering the room. “Did you catch him? Where is he!”

“I’m sorry to say I lost him,” said Chase gloomily.

“Parbleu!” the manager cried, and freely clutched his head.

Chase didn’t look happy either as he nursed his damaged appendage. Apart from being a little banged up, his feet also looked very dirty. Clearly the cleaning staff of the Fritz-Parlton had better things to do than to give the roof of the hotel a thorough rinse from time to time. Then again, probably not many guests go up there of an evening, leaving all of that fine real estate the purview of pigeons and cats like myself and Dooley.

And Marion, of course, who now approached her human and stropped her back against his leg.

Automatically he picked her up and started stroking her, his eyes still riveted on Chase, the man he’d singled out as the prime source of information on all things cat burglar.

“He tried to break into this room,” Odelia explained as she extracted what looked like a metal splinter from her husband’s foot. “So Chase chased him across the roof, but he managed to escape through… some door?”

“Yeah, he escaped through a metal door on a lower-lying flat roof more or less…” He glanced at the ceiling, then pointed in a South-South-Western direction.

Barney’s eyes rolled up in his head as he tried to figure out where Chase’s target might have gone, then those eyes widened when he realized what this meant.

“But… that is the staff building. That is where I have my room, and where housekeeping and the kitchen and other essential services are located.”

“Yeah, I thought as much,” said Chase, darting an appreciative glance in my direction. I had, of course, put Odelia in possession of the information Marion had supplied, which I had a feeling would prove very useful indeed.

“So… what does this mean!” cried the manager.

“That our guy is a member of your staff?” Odelia suggested.

“Mais non! C’est pas vrai!” Barney said in a whimper. “Audrey will kill me!”

“Who’s Audrey?” asked Chase.

“My ex-wife. We more or less run the hotel together,” he said as he gazed off into space, trying to come to terms with this new development.

“You… run this hotel with your ex-wife?”

Barney nodded as he chewed his bottom lip.“We were terrible as a couple, but great as a team. Though I might wait to tell her. She calls me every day,” he explained. “Or even several times a day. Audrey is a workaholic, just like me.”

“So where is she?” asked Odelia.

“The South of France,” I explained.