a fitting sacrifice. 
KILLER CAT

It had occurred to him quite suddenly and he had acted on the impulse before there was time to ponder the matter. He had the little paper open and was slipping the barbital powder into a glass when the idea first came to him. For a half minute he just stood there while his heart beat faster. Then he dumped in three more of the powders and walked to the bedroom where his Aunt Martha lay softly moaning. She swallowed the drug without even opening her eyes and one hour later she was dead. It was as simple as that. Dr. Myerbron assured him that her heart had given out, showed no surprise and even hinted that he had expected her demise long before. Dennis Stonegate was no calloused murderer. Far from it. After the funeral when he had finally moved into his aunt's house for good, he assured himself on that point. He had, he told himself, acted through mercy. His aunt was suffering; Dr. Myerbron had tacitly admitted more than once that she would not recover; and certainly a few weeks or even months could make little difference to the semi-conscious invalid. Better to relieve her of suffering rather than permit her to linger and perhaps undergo worse tortures later on when her last powers of resistance were spent. He repeated this to himself so often he finally came to believe it. But secretly he knew otherwise. Some small insistent chamber in his brain kept whispering the truth. The truth was he had grown tired of waiting. At first all seemed to go well. Now that he was relieved of a certain measure of responsibility, he began to enjoy life. Of course, for a time, he had to put on a sober countenance when he left the house in the morning. And he had to act properly subdued on certain occasions. But that was easy enough. He even prided himself a little on his acting ability. Sometimes he played the part so well he could feel himself becoming melancholy. And then he would laugh, struck by the irony of the situation. His Aunt Martha had never meant very much to him. She had merely been an obstacle to be removed. The first time the cat annoyed him he dismissed the incident without further thought. It was a big black Persian with a silky plume of a tail and luminous yellow eyes and it had been his aunt's favorite pet for years. One night after he had mashed some sardines in its dish, he became irritated when, instead of running up to eat, it drew back and spit at him. But he merely shrugged and went back to the paper. The next day it again refused to eat. He speculated, idly, assumed that it was undergoing a disorder, or distemper, or whatever it was that cats undergo, and forgot the matter. A week or so later however, the cat's actions began to annoy him. He remembered then 

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