The Cat Who Turned on and Off (19 page)

“I went to the Ellsworth house the next day, and there was a bare patch under Cobb’s car, indicating that it was snowing while he was stripping the house. The funny thing is: another car had been there at the same time. It left its outline on the ice, and from the shape of the impression, I would guess the second car had a fender missing.” Qwilleran paused and watched Ben’s face.

“Mischief, thou are afoot!” said Ben, looking mysterious.

Qwilleran tried other approaches to no avail. The old actor was a better actor than he. The newsman kept an eye on his watch; he had to shave and dress before calling for Mary.

He made one more attempt. “I wonder if it’s true,” he said, “that Ellsworth had some dough hidden—”

He was interrupted by a noise from the desk. “Hawnnk . . . ssss . . . hawnnk . . .”

“Koko! Scram!” he yelled, and the cat jumped to the floor and up on the mantel, almost in a single swoop. “If it’s true that the old house had some hidden treasure,” Qwilleran continued, “perhaps Cobb got his hands on it—”

The tape recorder went on: “Hawnnk . . . sssss . . . ppphlat!”

“And perhaps someone came along and gave him a shove.” Qwilleran was lounging casually in his chair but watching Ben sharply, and he thought he detected a wavering eye—a glance that was not in the actor’s script. “Someone might have shoved him down the stairs and grabbed the loot . . .”

“Hawnnk . . . ppphlat!” said the recorder. Then “Grrrummph! Whazzat? Whatcha doin’?” There followed the murmur of blank tape. then: “Wool over my eyes, you old fool . . . . Know what you’re up to . . . . Think you can get away with anything . . . . Over my dead body!”

It was Cobb’s recorded voice, and Qwilleran sat up straight.

The tape said, “Those creeps comin’ in here . . . . Horse brasses, my eye! . . . Know where you get your deliveries . . . . You! Scroungin’ at the Garrick! That’s a laugh!”

Ben dropped his glass of brandy and heaved himself out of the rocker.

“No!” yelled Qwilleran, erupting from the Morris chair and leaping toward the desk. “I’ve got to hear this!”

The tape said, “Me marchin’ on the picket line, a lousy three bucks an hour, and you get ten for a deck . . .”

The newsman stared at the machine with incredulity and triumph.

The tape said, “Not any more, you don’t . . . . You’re gonna cut me in, Ben Baby . . . .”

There was a flash of red in the room. Qwilleran saw it from the corner of his eye. It moved toward the fireplace, and the newsman spun around in time to see Ben reaching for the poker. Then a big black Santa Claus boot kicked out, and the tea table went flying across the room.

Qwilleran reached for the desk chair, without taking his eyes from the red suit. He grabbed the chair roughly by its back, but all he got was a handful of spindles; the back came off in his hand.

For an instant the two men were face to face—Ben bracing himself on the hearth and brandishing the poker, Qwilleran holding a few useless dowels. And then—the iron thing shot forward. It skidded off the mantel, catching Ben in the neck. As the poker flew through the air, Qwilleran ducked, skidded on an oyster, and went down on his right knee with a thud.

The scene of action froze in a tableau: Santa Claus on the floor, flattened by the Mackintosh coat of arms; Qwilleran on his knees; Koko bending over a smoked oyster.

After the police had taken Ben away, and while Iris and Dennis were helping to straighten up the room, the telephone rang, and Qwilleran walked slowly and painfully to the desk.

“What’s the matter, Qwill?” asked Mary’s anxious voice. “I just heard the siren and saw them taking Ben away in the police car. “What’s wrong?”

Qwilleran moaned. “Everything! Including my knee.”

“You’ve hurt it again?”

“It’s the
other
knee. I’m immobilized. I don’t know what to do about the party.”

“We can have the party at your place, but what about Ben?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.”

She came wearing blue chiffon and bearing Christmas gifts. “What on earth has happened to Ben—and your knee?” she demanded.

“We caught a murderer here tonight,” Qwilleran said. “With the aid of your tape measure I placed Ben at the scene of Cobb’s accident.”

“I can’t believe it! Did he admit he killed C.C. ?”

“Not in so many words. He merely gave his landlord Godspeed with an auspicious push.”

“Was it true about buried treasure at the Ellsworth house?”

“No, it was a case of blackmail. Ben was pushing heroin, Mary. He met his supplier at the abandoned theatre and bagged the stuff in five-grain decks.”

“How did you find out?”

“The cats brought me a deck from Ben’s apartment, and Andy’s novel gave me another tip. The junkies would identify themselves in Ben’s shop by asking for horse brasses.”

“That was a clever arrangement.”

“But the addicts sometimes wandered into the wrong shop, and Cobb apparently caught on. And here’s the incredible part of the story: When Cobb
was demanding a cut of Ben’s profits, the complete conversation was recorded on tape! I think Koko flipped the switch on Iris’s tape recorder when Cobb was trying to make his deal with Ben.”

“What a fantastic coincidence!”

“Fantastic, yes! But if you knew Koko, you wouldn’t be too sure it was coincidental. It must have happened Sunday morning when Iris was at church and I was at the drugstore.”

“Koko, you’re a hero!” Mary said to the cat, who was now taking his lordly ease on the daybed. “And you’re going to have a reward. Pressed duck!” She turned to Qwilleran. “I took the liberty of ordering dinner. It’s being sent over from the Toledo Restaurant. I hope you like oysters Rockefeller and pressed duck and Chateaubriand and French Strawberries.”

“But no more rich food for the cats,” he said. “They’ve eaten a whole can of smoked oysters, and I’m afraid they’ll be sick.” He looked at Koko with speculation and added, “There’s one thing we’ll never know. How did the Mackintosh coat of arms happen to slide off the mantel at the strategic moment? Just as Ben raised the poker to beat my brains out, that chunk of iron delivered a karate chop.”

He gazed at Koko with conjecture and admiration, and the cat rolled over and licked the pale fur on his stomach.

The telephone rang. “Probably our police reporter,” Qwilleran said. “I asked him to call me when the police had more details.”

He went limping to the desk.

“Yes, Lodge. Any developments? . . . That’s what I guessed . . . . How did he find out? . . . He had his finger on everything, that boy! . . . Yes, I’ve met the guy . . . . No, I won’t mention it.”

When the newsman hung up, he refrained from telling Mary that the Narcotics Squad had been watching Junktown for three months and that Hollis Prantz was an undercover agent. Nor did he tell her immediately about Ben’s complete confession.

Dinner arrived from the city’s most expensive restaurant—in chafing dishes and under silver covers and on beds of crushed ice—and Mary presented her Christmas gifts: a case of canned lobster for the cats and a pair of Scottish brass candlesticks for Qwilleran.

“I have a surprise for you, too,” he told her, “but first you must hear some painful truths. Andy’s death was not accidental. He was Ben’s first victim.”

“But why? Why?”

“Ben was afraid Andy would turn him in. Both Andy and Cobb had learned about Ben’s sideline. Our actor friend was in danger of losing the thing he valued most in the world—an audience—even though he had to buy their applause. On the night of October sixteenth, after he saw Cobb leave Andy’s shop, he slipped in and staged the so-called accident.”

“And did he kill that poor man in the alley?”

“No. Ben declined to take bows for that one. The police were right that time. One out of three.”

Mary caught her breath. “But what will happen now? There will be a trial! I’ll have to testify!”

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “Everything’s arranged so that you can come out of hiding. For the last two days I’ve been meeting with
Fluxion
executives and the mayor’s aides and your father. I’ve proposed an idea—”

“My father!”

“Not a bad guy—your dad. The city is going to establish a Landmarks Preservation Committee, prompted by the
Fluxion
and underwritten by your father’s bank as a public service. He’s agreed to act as honorary chairman. But
you
are going to spearhead the program.”

“I?”

“Yes, you! It’s time you started putting your knowledge and enthusiasm to work. And here’s something else: scrounging is going to be legalized. All you need is a permit and—”

“Qwill, did you do all this for Junktown?”

“No. Mostly for you,” he said. “And if you make this contribution to the success of Junktown, I don’t think you’ll be bothered by those crank calls any more. Someone wanted to scare you—to chase you out of the neighborhood. I think I know who, but the less said the better.”

Mary’s expression of delight and gratitude was all the Christmas that Qwilleran needed—better, much better, than the brass candlesticks—better, almost, than the $1,000 prize he was sure of winning.

His satisfaction was short-lived, however. The
girl’s eyes clouded, and she swallowed hard. “If only Andy were here,” she mourned. “How he would—”

“Koko!” shouted Qwilleran. “Get away from that wall!”

Koko was standing on the daybed and sharpening his claws on Andy’s carefully pasted wall covering.

“He’s been working on that blasted wall ever since we moved in,” the man said. “The corners are beginning to curl up.”

Mary looked across the room, blinking her eyes emotionally. Then she stood up quickly and walked to the daybed. Koko scampered away.

“Qwill,” she said, “there’s something else here.” She pulled at one of the curled corners, and a page of
Don Quixote
started to peel off.

Qwilleran hobbled across the room and joined her on the daybed.

“There’s something pasted underneath this page,” she said, peeling it slowly and carefully.

“Greenbacks!”

“Money!”

Under the page that Mary was pulling off there were three hundred-dollar bills.

Qwilleran peeled a page of Samuel Pepys and found three more. “Iris told me Andy had used peelable paste, and now we know why!”

“Where did Andy get these?” Mary cried. “He didn’t make this kind of money! Any profit he made went right back into antiques.” She peeled off another page. “This whole wall is papered with currency! How did Andy—”

“Maybe he had a sideline,” said Qwilleran. “Do you suppose he did business with Papa Popopopoulos?”

“I can’t believe it!” Mary said. “Andy was so . . . He was so . . . Why would he
hide
it like this?”

“The usual reason,” Qwilleran said, clearing his throat diplomatically, “has to do with unreported income.”

He said it as gently as he could, but Mary collapsed in tears. He put his arms around her and comforted her, and she was willing to be comforted.

Neither of them noticed Koko as he rose weightlessly to the swanlike daybed. Standing on his hind feet he rubbed his jaw against the carved wood. He stretched his neck and rubbed the nearby doorjamb. He rubbed against the light switch, and the apartment was thrown into darkness.

In the moments that followed, the pair on the daybed were blissfully unaware of two pale apparitions hovering over the dinner table in the vicinity of the pressed duck.