The Cat Who Turned on and Off (18 page)

In the gray-white morning light of the day before the day before Christmas, Qwilleran started to read Andy’s novel. The questionable heroine of the story was a scatterbrained prattler who was planning to spike her alcoholic husband’s highball with carbon tetrachloride in order to be free to marry another man of great sexual prowess.

He had read six chapters when a uniformed chauffeur and two truckers arrived to remove the roll-top desk, and after that it was time to shave and dress and go downtown. He put the manuscript back in the ashpit reluctantly.

At the
Fluxion
office Qwilleran’s session with the managing editor lasted longer than either of them had anticipated. In fact, it stretched into a lengthy lunch date with some important executives in a private dining room at the Press Club, and when the newsman returned to Junktown in the late afternoon, he was jubilant.

His knee, much improved, permitted him to bolt up the front steps of the Cobb mansion two at a time, but when he let himself into the entrance hall, he slowed down. The Cobb Junkery was open, and Iris was there, moving in a daze, passing a dustrag over the arms of a Boston rocker.

“I didn’t expect you so soon,” he said.

“I thought I ought to open the shop,” she replied in a dreary voice. “There might be some follow-up business after the Block Party, and goodness knows I need the money. Dennis—my son—came back with me.”

“We sold some merchandise for you yesterday,” Qwilleran said. “I hated to let my desk go, but a woman was willing to pay seven hundred and fifty dollars for it.”

Iris exhibited more gratitude than surprise.

“And incidentally, were you saving any old radios for Hollis Prantz?” he asked.

“Old radios? No, we wouldn’t have anything like that.”

That evening Qwilleran finished reading Andy’s novel. It was just as he expected. The characters included a philandering husband, a voluptuous
divorcée, a poor little rich girl operating a swanky antique shop incognito, and—in the later chapters—a retired schoolteacher who was naive to the point of stupidity. For good measure Andy had also introduced a gambling racketeer, a nymphet, a dope pusher, a sodomite, a crooked politician, and a retired cop who appeared to be the mouthpiece for the author’s highminded platitudes.

Why, Qwilleran asked himself, had Andy hidden his manuscript in the ashpit of a pot-bellied stove?

At one point his reading was interrupted by a knock on his door, and a clean-cut young man wearing a white shirt and bowtie introduced himself as Iris’s son.

“My mother says you need a desk,” he said. “If you’ll give me an assist, we can bring the one from her apartment.”

“The apothecary desk? I don’t want to deprive her—”

“She says she doesn’t need it.”

“How’s your mother feeling?”

“Rough! She took a pill and went to bed early.”

They carried the desk across the hall, and a chair to go with it—a Windsor with thick slab seat and delicate spindle back—and Qwilleran asked Dennis to help him hoist the Mackintosh coat of arms to the mantel, replacing the portrait of the sour-faced kill-joy.

Then Qwilleran plunged once more into Andy’s novel. He had read worse books, but not many. Andy had no ear for dialogue and no compassion
for his characters. What fascinated the newsman, however, was the narcotics operation. One of the antique dealers in the story dispensed marijuana as well as mahogany sideboards and Meissen ewers. Whenever a customer walked into his shop and asked for a Quimper teapot, he was actually in the market for “tea.”

After four hundred pages of jumping E’s, Qwilleran’s eyelids were heavy and his eyeballs were aching. He leaned his head back in the Morris chair and closed his eyes. Quimper teapots! He had never heard of a Quimper teapot, but there were many things he had not heard of before coming to Junktown: Sussex pigs . . . piggins, noggins and firkins . . . horse brasses.

Horse brasses!
Qwilleran’s moustache danced, and he reproved it with his knuckles. No one buys horse brasses any more, Mary had said. And yet—twice during his short stay in Junktown, he had heard a request for this useless brass ornament.

The first inquiry had been at the Bit o’ Junk shop, and Ben had been inclined to dismiss the customer curtly. Yesterday the same inquiry was made at The Junkery. The two buildings were adjacent, and similar in design.

Qwilleran combed his moustache to subdue his excitement and devised a plan for the next morning. The twenty-fourth of December was going to be a busy day: the big party in the evening, another appointment with the managing editor in the afternoon, lunch with Arch Riker at the Press Club, and
in the morning—a tactical maneuver that might fill in another blank in the Junktown puzzle.

The next day Qwilleran was waked before dawn by flashing lights. Koko was standing on the bed, rubbing his teeth with satisfaction on the wall switch and turning the lamps on and off.

The man got up, opened a can of corned beef for the cats, shaved and dressed. As soon as he thought the Dispatch Desk was open, he telephoned and asked them to send a messenger at eleven thirty—no later and no earlier.

“Send me the skinniest and shabbiest one you’ve got,” he told the dispatch clerk. “Preferably one with a bad cold or an acute sinus infection.”

While waiting for the accomplice to arrive, Qwilleran moved his paper and pencils, clips and gluepot into the apothecary desk. In one of the drawers he found Iris Cobb’s tape recorder and returned it to her.

“I don’t want it,” she said with a sickly attempt at a smile. “I don’t even want to look at it. Maybe you can use it in your work.”

The youth who arrived from the Dispatch Office was unkempt, undernourished and red-eyed. Most of the
Fluxion
messengers fitted such a description, but this one was superlative.

“Yikes!” the boy said when he saw the newsman’s apartment. “Do you pay rent for this pad, or does the
Flux
pay you to live here?”

“Don’t editorialize,” Qwilleran said, reaching for
his wallet. “Just do what I say. Here’s ten bucks. Go next door—”

“Lookit them crazy cats! Do they bite?”

“Only
Fluxion
messengers . . . . Now listen carefully. Go to the antique shop called Bit o’ Junk and ask if the man has any horse brasses.”

“Horse
what?
”

“The man who runs the place is crazy, so don’t be surprised at anything he does or says. And don’t let him know that you know me—or that you work for the
Flux.
Just ask if he has any horse brasses and show him your money. Then bring me whatever he gives you.”

“Horse brasses! You gotta be kiddin’.”

“Don’t go straight there. Hang around on the corner a few minutes before you approach the Bit o’ Junk . . . . And try not to look too intelligent!” Qwilleran called after the departing messenger, as an unnecessary afterthought.

Then he paced the floor in suspense. When a cat jumped on the desk and presented an arched back at a convenient level for stroking, the man stroked it absently.

In fifteen minutes the messenger returned. He said, “Ten bucks for this thing? You gotta be nuts!”

“I guess you’re right,” said Qwilleran meekly, as he examined the brass medallion the boy handed him.

It was a setback, but the fluttering sensation in his moustache told Qwilleran that he was on the right track, and he refused to be discouraged.

At noon he met Arch Riker at the Press Club and presented him with the tobacco tin, gift-wrapped in a page from an 1864 Harper’s Weekly.

“It’s great!” the feature editor said. “But you shouldn’t have spent so much, Qwill. Hell, I didn’t buy you anything, but I’ll pop for lunch.”

In the afternoon Qwilleran spent a satisfactory hour with the managing editor, and then joined the Women’s Department for pink lemonade and Christmas cookies, and later turned up at an impromptu celebration in the Photo Lab, where he was the only sober guest, and eventually went home.

He had three hours before his date with Mary. He went to the ashpit and once more read the chapter in Andy’s novel that dealt with the dope pusher.

At five o’clock he dashed out and picked up the better of his two suits from Junktown’s dry cleaning establishment that specialized in quick service. There was a red tag on his garment.

“You musta left something in the pocket,” the clerk said, and she rummaged through a drawer until she found an envelope with his name on it.

When Qwilleran noted the contents, he said, “Thanks! Thanks very much! Have a Christmas drink on me,” and he left a dollar tip.

“It was the tape measure. Mary’s silver tape measure and a piece of folded paper.

Fingering the smooth silver case, he returned to his apartment and looked out his back window. The early winter dusk was doing its best to make the junk in the backyard look more bedraggled than
ever. The two station wagons were there, backed in from the alley—one gray and one tan.

Access to the backyard was apparently through the Cobb shop, and Qwilleran preferred to avoid Iris, so he went out the front door, around the corner and in through the alley. After a glance at the back windows of nearby houses, he measured the gray wagon. It was exactly as he had guessed; the dimensions tallied with the notations on the scrap of paper.

And as he walked around the decrepit vehicle he noted something else that checked; Ben’s wagon had a left front fender missing.

Qwilleran knew exactly what he wanted to do now. After buying a pint of the best brandy at Lombardo’s, he ran up the steps to the Bit o’ Junk shop. The front door was open, but Ben’s store was locked up and dark.

He stopped at The Junkery. “Happen to know where Ben is?” he asked Iris. “I’d like to extend the hospitality of the season.”

“He must be at Children’s Hospital,” Iris said. “He goes there every Christmas to play Santa.”

Upstairs the cats were waiting. Both were sitting tall in the middle of the floor, with the attentive attitude that meant, “We have a message to communicate.” They were staring. Yum Yum was staring into middle distance with her crossed eyes, but she was staring hard. Koko stared at a certain point in the center of Qwilleran’s forehead, and he was staring
so intently that his body swayed with an inner tension.

This was not the dinner message, Qwilleran knew. This was something more important. “What is it?” he asked the cats. “What are you trying to tell me?”

Koko turned his head. He looked at a small shiny object on the floor near the bookcase.

“
What’s that?
” Qwilleran gasped, although he needed no answer. He knew what it was.

He picked up the scrap of silvery paper and took it to the desk. He turned on the lamp. At first glance the foil looked like a gum wrapper that had been stepped on, but he knew better. It was a neat rectangle, as wide as a pencil, and as thin as a razorblade.

As he started to open the packet, Koko jumped to the desk to watch. With dainty brown feet the cat stepped over pencils, paper clips, ashtray, tobacco pouch, and tape measure, and then he stepped precisely on the green button of Iris’s portable tape recorder.

“Hawnnk . . . ssss . . . hawnnk . . . ssss . . .”

Qwilleran hit the red button of the machine and silenced the unpleasant noise. As he did so, he became aware of heavy footsteps in the hall.

Santa Claus was lumbering up the stairs, pulling on the handrail for assistance.

“Come in and toast the season,” Qwilleran invited. “I’ve got a good bottle of brandy.”

“Worthy gentleman, I’ll do that!” Ben said.

He shuffled into Qwilleran’s quarters in his big black boots cuffed with imitation fur. His eyes were
glazed, his breath was strong; he had not come directly from Children’s Hospital.

“Ho ho ho!” he said in hearty greeting when he spied the two cats.

Yum Yum flew to the top of the book cupboard, but Koko stood his ground and glared at the visitor.

“Merr-r-r-y Christmas!” boomed the Santa Claus voice.

Koko’s backbone bristled. He arched his back and bushed his tail. With ears laid back and fangs bared, he hissed. Then Koko jumped to the desk and continued to watch the proceedings—with disapproval in the angle of his ears and the tilt of his whiskers. From his perch he could survey the Morris chair, where Qwilleran sat drinking coffee, and the rocker, where Santa Claus was sipping brandy. He also had a good view of the tea table, which held a plate of smoked oysters.

At length Qwilleran said, “Let’s drink to our old friend Cobb, wherever he is!”

Ben waved his glass. “To the perfidious wretch!”

“You mean you weren’t an admirer of our late landlord?”

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” said the old actor.

“I’d like to know what happened that night at the Ellsworth house. Did Cobb have a heart attack, or did he slip on the stairs? The snow could have caked on his boots, you now. It was snowing that night, wasn’t it?”

There was no confirmation from Ben, whose rouged nose was deep in his brandy glass.

“I mean, sometime after midnight,” Qwilleran persisted. “Do you remember? Wasn’t it snowing? Were you out that night?”

“Oh, it snowed and it blowed . . . it blew and it snew,” said Ben with appropriate grimaces and gestures.