The Cat Who Turned on and Off (17 page)

The newsman quietly left The Lion’s Tail, wondering where Ben acquired the cash to buy the applause that he craved—and whether he had known that the box at the Garrick was a booby trap.

Qwilleran went home. He found the cats asleep on their cushions, which bent their whiskers into half-smiles, and he retired to his own bed, his mind swimming with questions. What was Ben’s racket? Was the actor as nutty as he appeared? Was his sudden affluence connected with the Ellsworth house? Ben had been there, Qwilleran was sure. He had seen the evidence in the dust—feathery arabesques made by the tassels of his muffler. Still, Ben’s reception at The Lion’s Tail indicated that his audience was accustomed to his largess.

The newsman remembered something Cobb had said. “The nearest Ben ever got to Broadway was Macy’s toy department.” Then a few minutes later
Cobb had contradicted himself. “Ben’s got a bundle. He used to make big money.” And at this remark Iris had glanced at her husband in surprise.

Did Ben have a shady sideline that supplied him with the money to bribe his audience into attention and applause? Did Cobb know about it? Qwilleran’s answers were only guesses, as unprovable as they were improbable, and the questions kept him awake.

Deliberately he turned his mind to a more agreeable subject: Christmas Eve at the Press Club. He could picture the society writers—and Jack Jaunti—doing a double take when he walked in with Mary, and he could see the newshounds being outwardly casual but secretly impressed by the magic name of Duxbury. Qwilleran realized he ought to cap the evening with a Christmas gift for Mary, but what could he buy for the daughter of a millionaire?

Before he fell asleep, the answer spread over his consciousness like a warm blanket. It was a brilliant idea—so brilliant that he sat up in bed. And if the
Daily Fluxion
would cooperate, it would save Junktown.

Qwilleran made a mental note to call the managing editor the first thing in the morning, and then he slept, the pillow turning up one end of his moustache in a half-smile.

Waking on Wednesday morning, Qwilleran was vaguely aware of a lump in his armpit. It was Yum Yum, hiding under the blankets in the safest spot she could find. But while she had run for cover, Koko was investigating the shattering noise that alarmed her. With his hind feet on a chair and his forepaws on the window sill, he was watching the pellets of ice that bounced off the panes of glass.

“Hailstorm!” Qwilleran groaned. “That’s all we need to ruin the Block Party!”

Koko left the window and routed Yum Yum out of bed.

The hail sheathed the city in ice, but by eleven o’clock that morning, the weather developed a conscience and the sun broke through. Junktown sparkled like a jewel. Buildings became crystal palaces. Utility wires, street signs, and traffic lights wore a glistening fringe of icicles, and even the trash cans were beautiful. It was the only decent gesture the weather had made all winter.

By noon the junkers were flocking into Zwinger Street. Angels flew from the lampposts, carolers were caroling, and Ben Nicholas in white beard and Santa Claus pantaloons held audience on the stoop in front of his shop. Tiny Spooner was there, taking pictures, and even the
Morning Rampage
had sent a photographer.

Qwilleran mixed with the crowd and eavesdropped in the shops, until it was time to return to the Junkery and take his turn at tending the shop. He found Cluthra on duty.

“This chair is
very
old,” she was telling a customer. “It has the original milk paint. You’d better grab it. At twenty-seven fifty Mrs. Cobb isn’t making a penny on it, I can guarantee. Why, on Cape Cod you’d have to pay sixty-five dollars!”

The customer capitulated, wrote a check, and left the shop in high glee, carrying a potty chair with sawed-off legs.

Cluthra turned the cashbox over to Qwilleran and explained the price tags. “Do you understand the code, hon?” she asked. “You read the numbers backwards to get the asking price, and then you can
go up or down a few dollars, depending on the customer. Be careful of that banister-back chair; it has a loose leg. And don’t forget, you’re entitled to strangle every third customer who tells you about her grandmother.”

The traffic in and out of the shop was heavy, but the buyers were less plentiful than the lookers and askers. Qwilleran decided to keep a log for Mrs. Cobb’s benefit:

—Sold two blue glass things out of window, $18.50.

—Woman asked for Sheffield candlesticks.

—Man asked for horse brasses.

—Sold spool chest, $30.

—Kissed female customer and sold tin knife box, $35.

The customer in question had rushed at Qwilleran with a gay little shriek. “Qwill! What are you doing here?”

“Rosie Riker! How are you? You’re looking great!” Actually she was looking matronly and somewhat ludicrous in her antiquing clothes.

“How’ve you been, Qwill? I keep telling Arch to bring you home to dinner. Mind if I sit down? I’ve been walking around for three hours.”

“Not in the banister-back, Rosie. The leg’s loose.”

“I wish they’d turn those carol singers off for five minutes. How’ve you been, Qwill? What are you doing here?”

“Keeping shop while Mrs. Cobb’s at her husband’s funeral.”

“You’re looking fine. I’m glad you’ve still got that romantic moustache! Do you ever hear from Miriam?”

“Not directly, but my ex-mother-in-law puts the bite on me once in a while. Miriam’s in that Connecticut sanitarium again.”

“Don’t let those vultures take advantage of you, Qwill. They’re plenty well off.”

“Well, how’ve you been, Rosie? Are you buying anything?”

“I’m looking for a Christmas present for Arch. How are your cats?”

“They’re great! Koko’s getting smarter all the time. He opens doors, turns light on and off, and he’s learning to type.”

“You’re kidding.”

“He rubs his jaw against the levers and flips the carriage or resets margins—not always at the most opportune time.”

“He’s cleaning his teeth,” Rosie explained. “Our vet says that’s how cats try to clean their teeth. You should take Koko to the dentist. Our gray tabby just had a dental prophylaxis . . . . Say, have you got any tin? I want to buy something for Arch.”

She found a tin knife box, and Qwilleran—torn between two loyalties—guiltily knocked two dollars off Mrs. Cobb’s asking price.

Rosie said, “I thought your story on the auction was great!”

“The story behind the story is better.”

“What’s that? Arch didn’t tell me. He never tells me anything.”

Qwilleran reconstructed the night of Andy’s accident. “I can’t believe,” he said, “that Andy simply missed his footing and fell. He’d have to have been an acrobat to land on the finial the way he did. There were customers coming to look at a chandelier that night. If he was in the process of getting it down off the ceiling, it would mean they had already okayed it; in other words, they were there when he fell! . . . It doesn’t click. I don’t think they ever got in the store. I think the whole accident was staged, and Andy was dead when the customers arrived.”

As he talked, Rosie’s eyes had been growing wider and wider. “Qwill, I think Arch and I . . . I think we might have been the customers! When did it happen?”

“Middle of October. The sixteenth, to be exact.”

“We wanted to get this chandelier installed before our Halloween party, but I didn’t want to buy it without Arch seeing it. He came home to dinner, and then we drove back to Junktown. Andy was going to open up especially for us. But when we got there, the store was locked up, and no one was in sight. In the meantime I noticed a chandelier in the Cobbs’ window that looked good, so we bought that one instead.”

“Were the Cobbs open at that late hour?”

“No, but we saw someone going up the steps and asked him if the Cobbs would mind coming down to
show us the fixture. He went upstairs and got Mrs. Cobb, and we bought it. It was a couple of weeks later that one of my junking friends told me about Andy’s accident, and I never connected—”

“Who was the man who was going up the Cobbs’ front steps?”

“He’s a dealer himself. He has the Bit o’ Junk shop. It really worked out better for us, because the fixture we bought from Mrs. Cobb was painted tin, and I realized afterwards that Andy’s brass chandelier would have been too formal for our dining room.”

“Did you say brass?”

“Yes. Sort of Williamsburg.”

“Not glass? Not a chandelier with five crystal arms?”

“Oh, no! Crystal would be much too dressy for our house.”

That was when Qwilleran kissed Rosie Riker.

Later in the afternoon he made a few additional entries in the log:

—Sold turkey platter, $75.

—Customer broke goblet. Collected $4.50. Showed no mercy.

—Sold apple peeler to make into a lamp, $12.

—Sold bronze grille from Garrick Theatre, $45.

—Photographer sat in banister-back chair.
Fluxion
will pay for damage.

—SOLD ROLL-TOP DESK, $750!

The woman who came bursting into the shop, asking for a roll-top desk, was not an experienced
junker. Qwilleran could tell that by her enthusiasm and her smart clothes.

“The man next door told me you have a roll-top desk,” she announced breathlessly, “and I must have one before Christmas.”

“The one we have is in use,” said Qwilleran, “and the user would be extremely reluctant to part with it.”

“I don’t care what it costs,” she said. “I’ve got to have it for my husband’s Christmas gift. I’ll write you a check, and my driver will pick it up in the morning.”

Qwilleran felt pleased with himself that evening. He had personally taken in almost $1,000 for Mrs. Cobb. He had gleaned information from Rosie Riker that reinforced his theory about the finial incident. And he had broached an idea to the managing editor of the
Daily Fluxion
that had made a big impression; it if proved to be workable—and the boss felt that it might—it would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

After dinner Qwilleran was removing his belongings from the pigeonholes of the roll-top desk when he heard a heavy tread coming up the stairs. He opened his door and hailed his neighbor. Ben was still wearing his Santa Claus disguise.

“Ben, what’s a roll-top desk worth?” Qwilleran asked. “There’s no price tag on the one I’m using, and I sold it for seven hundred and fifty, chair included.”

“Oh, excellent swindle!” said the dealer. “Sir, you
should be in the business.” He trudged toward his apartment, then turned around and resolutely trudged back. “Will you join me in a drop of brandy and a crumb of rare cheese?”

“I’ll go for some of that cheese,” Qwilleran said. He had just finished an unsatisfactory dinner of canned stew.

His host moved a copper wash boiler from the seat of a Victorian sofa, leaving an oval silhouette in the dust on the black horsehair, and the newsman sat on the clean spot and surveyed the appointments of the room: a bust of Hiawatha, a wooden plane propellor, empty picture frames, a wicker baby carriage, a leather pail labeled FIRE, a wooden washboard, a wigless doll.

Ben brought Qwilleran some cheese and crackers on a plate decorated with an advertisement for an 1870 patent medicine that relieved itching. Then he lowered himself with a groan into a creaking chair of mildewed wicker. “We are faint,” he said. “Our gashes cry for help.” He drank fastidiously from a cracked teacup.

Ben had removed his white beard, and now he looked absurd with rouged nose and cheeks, pale jowls, and powdered artificial eyebrows.

Qwilleran said, “I’ve been in Junktown a week now, and frankly I don’t know how you dealers make a living.”

“We muddle through. We muddle through.”

“Where do you acquire your goods? Where does it all come from?”

Ben waved a hand at the sculptured head of an angel, minus nose. “Behold! A repulsive little gem from the façade of the Garrick Theatre. Genuine stone, with the original bird droppings.” He waved toward a discolored washbowl and pitcher. “A treasure from Mount Vernon, with the original soap scum.”

For half an hour Qwilleran plied his host with questions, receiving flowery answers with no information whatever. At last he prepared to leave, and as he glanced at a few stray cracker crumbs on the seat of the black horsehair sofa, he saw something else that alerted him—a stiff blond hair. He casually picked it up.

Back in his own apartment he examined the hair under a lamp. There was no doubt what it was—three inches long, slightly curved, tapering at one end.

He went to the telephone and dialed a number.

“Mary,” he said, “I’ve made a discovery. Do you want to see something interesting? Put on your coat and run over here.”

Then he turned to the cats, who were lounging contentedly on their gilded chairs.

“Okay, you guys!” he said. “What do you know about this?”

Koko scratched his left ear with his hind foot, and Yum Yum licked her right shoulder.

Qwilleran heard Ben Nicholas leave the house, and shortly afterward the downstairs buzzer sounded, and Mary Duckworth arrived with a fur parka thrown over a skyblue corduroy jumpsuit.

She examined the stiff blond hair.

“Know what it is?” Qwilleran asked.

“A bristle. From some kind of brush.”

“It’s a whisker,” he corrected her, “from some kind of cat. I found it on Ben’s living room sofa. Either my two rascals have found a way to get into the apartment next door, or the spirit of Mathilda Spencer is getting pretty cheeky.”

Mary examined the cat whisker. “It’s mottled—white and gray.”

“It obviously belongs to Yum Yum. Koko’s are pure white.”

“Have you any idea how they could get through the wall?”

Qwilleran beckoned her to follow as he led the way to the dressing room. “I’ve checked out the bathroom. The wall is solid tile. The only other possibility is in here—behind these bookshelves.”

Koko followed them into the dressing room and rubbed his jaw ardently against the books on the lower shelf.

“Beautiful bindings!” Mary said. “Mrs. Cobb could sell these to decorators for several dollars apiece.”

There was a yowl from Koko, but it was a muffled yowl, and Qwilleran looked down in time to see a tail tip disappearing between two volumes—in precisely the spot where he had removed the bound copies of
The Liberator.

“Koko, come out!” he ordered. “It’s dusty back there.”

“Yow!” came the faint reply.

Mary said, “He sounds as if he’s down a deep well.”

The man attacked the bookshelf with both hands, pulling out volumes and tossing them on the floor. “Bring the flashlight, Mary. It’s on the desk.”

He flashed the light toward the back wall, and its beamed picked up an expanse of paneling similar to
the fireplace wall in the living room—narrow planks with beveled edges.

“Solid,” said Qwilleran. “Let’s clear more shelves . . . Ouch!”

“Careful! Don’t twist your knee, Qwill. Let me do it.”

Mary got down on her hands and knees and peered under a low shelf. “Qwill, there’s an opening in the wall, sure enough.”

“How big?”

“It looks as if a single board is missing.”

“Can you see what’s beyond? Take the flashlight.”

“There’s another wall—about two feet back. It makes a narrow compartment—”

“Mary, do you think . . . ?”

“Qwill, could this be . . . ?”

The idea occurred to them both, simultaneously.

“An Underground Railway station,” Qwilleran said.

“Exactly!” she said. “William Towne Spencer built this house.”

“Many abolitionists—”

“Built secret rooms—yes!”

“To hide runaway slaves.”

Mary ducked her head under the shelf again. “It slides!” she called over her shoulder. “The whole panel is a sliding door. There’s a robe in here.” She pulled out twelve feet of white cord. “And a toothbrush!”

“Yow!” said Koko, making a sudden appearance
in the beam of the flashlight. He stepped out from his hideaway and staggered a little as he gave a delicate shudder.

“Close the panel,” Qwilleran directed. “Can you close it?”

“All but half an inch. It seems to be warped.”

“I’ll bet Koko opened the panel with his claws, and Yum Yum followed him through. She’s the one who did the fetching and carrying . . . . Well, that solves one mystery. How about a cup of coffee?”

“Thanks, no. I must go home. I’m wrapping Christmas presents.” Mary stopped short. “You’ve been emptying your desk! Are you moving out?”

“Only the desk is moving. I sold it this afternoon for seven hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Qwill, you didn’t! It’s worth two hundred dollars at most.”

He showed her the log of his afternoon session in The Junkery. “Not bad for a greenhorn, is it?”

“Who is this woman who wanted Sheffield candlesticks?” Mary asked, as she scanned the report. “You should have sent her to me . . . . And who was asking for horse brasses? No one buys horse brasses any more.”

“What are they?”

“Brass medallions for decorating harnesses. The English used to use them as good luck tokens . . . . Who’s the customer who got kissed? That’s a devious way to sell a tin knife box.”

“She’s the wife of our feature editor,” Qwilleran said. “By the way, I’ve brought a present for Arch
Riker—just a joke. Would you gift-wrap it for me?” He handed Mary the rusty tobacco tin.

“I hope,” she said, reading the price tag inside the cover, “that the Weird Sisters didn’t charge you ten dollars for this.”

“Ten dollars?” Qwilleran felt an uncomfortable sensation on his upper lip. “They were asking ten, but they gave it to me for five.”

“That’s not bad. Most shops get seven-fifty.”

Gulping his chagrin, Qwilleran escorted her down the stairs, and as they passed Ben’s open door he asked, “Does the Bit o’ Junk do a good business?”

“Not particularly,” she replied. “Ben is too lazy to go out looking for things, so his turnover is slow.”

“He took me to The Lion’s Tail last night, and he was throwing money around as if he had his own printing press.”

Mary shrugged. “He must have had a windfall. Once a year a dealer can count on a windfall—like selling a roll-top desk for seven hundred and fifty dollars. That’s one of the great truths of the antique business.”

“By the way,” Qwilleran said, “we went scrounging at the Garrick last night, but all that was left was a crest on one of the boxes, and I almost broke my neck trying to get it.”

“Ben should have warned you. That box has been unsafe for years.”

“How do you know?”

“The city engineers condemned it in the 1940s
and ordered it padlocked. It’s called the Ghost Box.”

“Do you think Ben knew about it?”

“Everyone knows about it,” Mary said. “That’s why the crest was never taken. Even Russ Patch refused to risk it, and he’s a daredevil.”

After Qwilleran had watched her return to her own house, he climbed the stairs pensively. At the top of the flight the cats were waiting for him in identical poses, sitting tall with brown tails arranged in matching curves. One inch of tail tip lifted inquiringly.

“You scoundrels!” Qwilleran said. “I suppose you’ve been having a whale of a time, coming and going through the walls like a couple of apparitions.”

Koko stropped his jaw on the newel post, his tiny ivory tusks clicking against the ancient mahogany.

“Want to go and have your teeth cleaned?” the man asked him. “After Christmas I’ll take you to a cat dentist.”

Koko rubbed the back of his head on the newel post—an ingratiating gesture.

“Don’t pretend innocence. You don’t fool me for a minute.” Qwilleran roughed up the sleek fur along the cat’s fluid backbone. “What else have you been doing behind my back? What are you planning to do next?”

That was Wednesday night. Thursday morning Qwilleran got his answer.

Just before daylight he turned in his bed and
found his nose buried in fur. Yum Yum was sharing his pillow. Her fur smelled clean. Qwilleran’s mind went back forty-odd years to a sunny backyard with laundry flapping on the clothesline. The clean wash smelled like sunshine and fresh air, and that was the fragrance of this small animal’s coat.

From the kitchen came a familiar sound: “Yawwck!” It was Koko’s good-morning yowl combined with a wake-up yawn, and it was followed by two thumps as the cat jumped down from refrigerator to counter to floor. When he walked into the living room, he stopped in the middle of the carpet and pushed his forelegs forward, his hind quarters skyward, in an elongated stretch. After that he stretched a hind leg—just the left one—very carefully. Then he approached the swan bed and ordered breakfast in clarion tones.

The man made no move to get out of bed but reached out a teasing hand. Koko sidestepped it and rubbed his brown mask against the corner of the bed. He crossed the room and rubbed the leg of the book cupboard. He walked to the Morris chair and stropped his jaw on its square corners.

“Just what do you think you’re accomplishing?” Qwilleran asked.

Koko ambled to the pot-bellied stove and looked it over, then selected the latch of the ashpit door and ground his jaw against it. He scraped the left side of his jaw; he scraped the right side. And the shallow door clicked and swung ajar. The door opened only
a hair’s-breadth, but Koko pried it farther with an inquisitive paw.

In a split second Qwilleran was out of bed and bending over the ashpit. It was full of papers—typewritten sheets—a stack of them two inches thick, neatly bound in gray folders. They had been typed on a machine with a loose E—a faulty letter that jumped above the line.