The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern (17 page)

With exaggerated decorum he offered her a glass of sherry "against the weather," and poured a deep amber potion from Harry Noyton's well-stocked bar. He poured an exceptionally large glass, and by the time the routine matters had been covered - experience, references, salary - Mrs. Hawkins had relaxed in the cushions of a suede sofa and was ready for a chatty evening.
"You're one of the newspaper fellows that came to the house to take pictures," she announced at this point, with her eyes dancing at him. "I remember your moustache." She waved an arm at the appointments of the room. "I didn't know reporters made so much money." "Let me fill your glass," said Qwilleran. "Aren't you drinking?" "Ulcers," he said with a look of self-pity. "Lordy, I know all about them!" said Mrs. Hawkins. "I cooked for two people with ulcers in Muggy Swamp. Sometimes, when Mr. Tait wasn't around, she would have me fix her a big plate of French fried onion rings, and if there's anything that doesn't go with ulcers, it's French fried onion rings, but I never argued. Nobody dared argue with her. Everybody went around on tippy-toe, and when she rang that bell, everybody dropped everything and rushed to see what she wanted. But I didn't mind, because - if I have my druthers - I druther cook for a couple of invalids than a houseful of hungry brats. And I had help out there. Paulie was a big help. He was a sweet boy, and it's too bad he turned out to be no good, but that's the way it is with foreigners. I don't understand foreigners. She was a foreigner, too, although it was a long time ago that she came over here, and it wasn't until near the end that she started screaming at all of us in a foreign language. Screaming at her husband, too. Lordy, that man had the patience of a saint! Of course, he had his workshop to keep him happy. He was crazy about those rocks! He bought a whole mountain once - some place in South America. It was supposed to be chock-full of jade, but I guess it didn't pan out. Once he offered me a big jade brooch, but I wouldn't take it. I wasn't having any of that!" Mrs. Hawkins rolled her eyes suggestively. "He was all excited when you came to take pictures of his knickknacks, which surprised me because of the way he felt about the Daily Fluxion." She paused to drain her glass. "This is good! One more little slug? And then I'll be staggering home." "How did Mr. Tait feel about the Fluxion?" Qwilleran asked casually, as he refilled Mrs. Hawkins's glass.
"Oh, he was dead set against it! Wouldn't have it in the house. And that was a crying shame, because everybody knows the Fluxion has the best comics, but... that's the way he was! I guess we all have our pecu - peculiarities....
Whee! I guess I'm feeling these drinks." Eventually she lapsed into a discourse on her former husband and her recent surgery for varicose veins. At that point Qwilleran said he would let her know about the housekeeping position, and he marched her to a taxi and gave her a five-dollar bill to cover the fare.
He returned to the apartment just as Koko emerged from some secret hiding place. The cat was stepping carefully and looking around with cautious eye and incredulous ears.
"I feel the same way," Qwilleran said. "Let's play the game and see if you can come up with something useful." They went to the dictionary, and Koko played brilliantly. Inning after inning he had Qwilleran stumped with ebionitism and echidna, cytodiagnosis and czestochowa, onychophore and opalinid.
Just as Qwilleran was about to throw in the sponge, his luck changed. Koko sank his claws into the front of the book, and the page opened to arene and argue. On the very next try it was quality and quarreled. Qwilleran felt a significant vibration in his moustache.
20
The morning after Mrs. Hawkins's visit and Koko's stellar performance with the dictionary, Qwilleran waked before the alarm clock rang, and bounded out of bed. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.
Tait must have had a grudge against the Fluxion ever since the coverage of the paternity trial. The family had probably tried to hush it up, but the Fluxion would naturally insist that the public has a right to know. None of the agonizing details had been spared. Perhaps the Rampage had dealt more kindly with the Taits; it was owned by the Pennimans, who were part of the Muggy Swamp clique.
For eighteen years Tait had lived with his grudge, letting it grow into an obsession. Despite, his subdued exterior, he was a man of strong passions. He probably hated the Fluxion as fervently as he loved jade. His ulcers were evidence of inner turmoil. And when the Fluxion offered to publish his house, he saw an opportunity for revenge; he could fake a theft, hide the jades, and let them be recovered "after the newspaper had simmered in its embarrassment.
What would be a safe hiding place for a teapot as thin as a rose petal? Qwilleran asked himself as he prepared Koko's breakfast.
But would Tait go to such lengths for the meager satisfaction of revenge? He would need a stronger motive.
Perhaps he was not so rich as his position indicated. He had lost the manufacturing plant; he had gambled on a jade expedition that failed to produce; he owed a large decorating bill. Had he devised a scheme to collect insurance? Had he and his wife argued about it? Had they quarreled on the night of the alleged theft? Had the quarrel been violent enough to cause a fatal heart attack? Qwilleran placed Koko's breakfast on the kitchen floor, slipped into his suit coat, and started filling his pockets. Here and there around the apartment he collected his pipe, tobacco pouch, matches, card case, a comb, some loose silver, his bill clip, and a clean handkerchief, but he could not find the green jade button that usually rattled around in his change pocket. He remembered leaving it on the desk top.
"Koko, did you steal my lucky piece?" Qwilleran said.
"YARGLE!" came the reply from the kitchen, a yowl gargled with a throatful of veal kidneys in cream.
Once more Qwilleran opened the envelope of photographs he was going to deliver to Tait. He spread them on the desk: wide-angle pictures of beautiful rooms, medium shots of expensive furniture groupings, and close-ups of the jades.
There was a perfect shot of the rare white teapot as well as one of the bird perched on the back of a lion. There were the black writing! desk, ebony and black marble heavily ornamented with gilded bronze; the table supported by a sphinx; the white silk chairs that did not look comfortable.
Koko rubbed against Qwilleran's ankles. "What's on your mind?" the man said. "I made your breakfast. Go and finish it. You've hardly touched that food!" The cat arched his back, curved his tail into a question mark, and walked back and forth over the newsman's shoes.
"You're getting your playmate today," Qwilleran said. "A little cross-eyed lady cat. Maybe I should take you along.
Would you like to put on your harness and go for a ride?" Koko pranced in figure eights with long-legged grace.
"First I've got to punch another hole in your harness." The kitchen offered no tools for punching holes in leather straps: no awl, no icepick, no sixpenny nails, not even an old-fashioned can opener. Qwilleran managed the operation with the point of a nail file.
"There!" he said, as he went to look for Koko. "I defy you to slip out of it again!... Now, where the devil did you go?" There was a wet, slurping, scratching sound, and Qwilleran wheeled around. Koko was on the desk. He was licking a photograph.
"Hey!" yelled Qwilleran, and Koko jumped to the floor and bounded away like a rabbit.
The newsman examined the prints. Only one of them was damaged. "Bad cat!" he said. "You've blistered this beautiful photo." Koko sat under the coffee table, hunched in a small bundle.
It was the Biedermeier armoire he had licked with his sandpaper tongue. The surface of the photograph was still sticky. From one angle the damage was hardly noticeable. Only when the light hit the picture in a certain way could the dull and faintly blistered patch be noticed.
Qwilleran examined it closely and marveled at the detail in Bunsen's photo. The grain of the wood stood out clearly, and whatever lighting the photographer had used gave the furniture a three-dimensional quality. The chased metal around the tiny keyhole was in bold relief. A fine line of shadow accentuated the edge of the drawer across the bottom.
There was another thin dark line down the side panel of the armoire that Qwilleran had not noticed before. It sliced through the grain of the wood. It hardly made sense in the design or construction of the cabinet.
Qwilleran felt a prickling in his moustache, and stroked it hurriedly. Then he grabbed Koko and trussed him in his harness.
"Let's go," he said. "You've licked something that gives me ideas!" It was a long and expensive taxi ride to Muggy Swamp. Qwilleran listened to the click of the meter and wondered if he could put this trip on his expense account. The cat sat on the seat close to the man's thigh, but as soon as the taxi turned into the Tait driveway, Koko was alerted. He rose on his hind legs, placed his front paws on the window and scolded the landscape.
Qwilleran told the driver, "I want you to wait and take me back to town. I'll probably be a half hour." "Okay if I go to the railway station and get some breakfast?" the man asked. "I'll stop the meter." Qwilleran tucked the cat under his left arm, coiled the leash in his left hand, and rang the doorbell of the Spanish mansion. As he stood waiting, he detected a note of neglect about the premises. The grass was badly in need of cutting.
Curled yellow leaves, the first of the season to fall, were swirling around the courtyard. The windows were muddied.
When the door opened, it was a changed man who stood there. Tait, despite his high color, looked strained and tired. The old clothes and tennis shoes he wore were in absurd contrast to the black-and-white marble elegance of the foyer. Muddied footprints had dried on the white marble squares.
"Come in," said Tait. "I was just packing some things away." He made an apologetic gesture toward his garb.
"I brought Koko along," said Qwilleran coolly. "I thought he might help in finding the other cat." And he thought, Something's gone wrong, or he's scared or the police have been questioning him. Have they linked the murder of his decorator with the theft of his jades?
Tait said, "The other cat's here. It's locked up in the laundry room." Koko squirmed, and was transferred to Qwilleran's shoulder, where he could survey the scene. The cat's body was taut, and Qwilleran could feel a vibration like a low-voltage electric current.
He handed the envelope of photographs to Tait and accepted an offhand invitation into the living room. It had changed considerably. The white silk chairs were shrouded with dust covers. The draperies were drawn across the windows. And the jade cases were dark and empty.
One lamp was lighted in the shadowy room - a lamp on the writing desk, where Tait had apparently been working. A ledger lay open there, and his collection of utilitarian jades was scattered over the desk - the primitive scrapers, chisels, and ax heads.
Tait yanked a dust cover off a deskside chair and motioned Qwilleran to sit down, while he himself stood behind the desk and opened the envelope. The newsman glanced at the ledger upside down; it was a catalog of the jade collection, written in a precise, slanted hand.
While the jade collector studied the photographs, Qwilleran studied the man's face. This is not the look of grief, he thought; this is exhaustion. The man has not been sleeping well. His plan is not working out.
Tait shuffled through the photographs, crimping the corners of his mouth and breathing heavily.
"Pretty good photography, isn't it?" said Qwilleran.
"Yes," Tait murmured. "Surprising detail." "I didn't realize he had taken so many pictures." "We always take more than we know we can use." Qwilleran cast a side-glance at the armoire. There was no fine dark line down the side of the cabinet - at least, none that could be discerned from where he sat.
Tait said, "This desk photographed well." "It has a lot of contrast. Too bad there's no picture of the Biedermeier wardrobe." He watched Tait closely. "I don't know what happened. I was sure Bunsen had photographed the wardrobe." Tait maneuvered the corners of his mouth. "It's a fine piece. It belonged to my grandfather." Koko squirmed again and voiced a small protest, and the newsman stood up, strolled back and forth and patted the silky back. He said: "This is the first time this cat has gone visiting. I'm surprised he's so well behaved." He walked close to the armoire, and still he could see no fine dark line.
"Thank you for the pictures," Tait said. "I'll go and get the other cat." When the collector left the room, Qwilleran's curiosity came to a boil. He walked to the armoire and examined the side panel. There was indeed a crack running vertically from top to bottom, but it was virtually invisible. Qwilleran ran his finger along the line. It was easier to feel than to see. Only the camera with its uncanny vision had observed clearly the hairline joining.
Koko was struggling now, and Qwilleran placed him on the floor, keeping the leash in his hand. Experimentally he ran his free hand up and down the crevice. He thought, It must be a concealed compartment. It's got to be! But how does it open? There was no visible hardware of any kind.
He glanced toward the foyer, listened for approaching footsteps, then applied himself to the puzzle. Was it a touch latch?
Did they have touch latches in the old days? The cabinet was over a hundred years old.
He pressed the side panel and thought that it had a slight amount of give, as if it were less than solid. He pressed again, and it responded with a tiny cracking noise like the sound of old, dry wood. He pressed the panel hard along the edge of the crack - first at shoulder level, then higher, then lower. He reached up and pressed it at the top, and the side of the armoire slowly opened with a labored groan.
It opened only an inch or two. Cautiously Qwilleran increased the opening enough to see what was inside. His lips formed a silent exclamation. For a moment he was transfixed. He felt a prickle in his blood, and he forgot to listen for footsteps. Koko's ears were pivoting in alarm.
Tennis shoes were coming noiselessly down the corridor, but Qwilleran didn't hear. He didn't see Tait enter the room... stop abruptly... move swiftly. He heard only the piercing soprano scream, and then it was too late.
The scene blurred in front of his eyes. But he saw the spike. He heard the snarls and bloodchilling shrieks. There was a shock of white lightning. The lamp crashed. In the darkness he saw the uplifted spike... saw the spiraling white blur... felt the tug at his hand... heard the great wrenching thud... felt the sharp pain... felt the trickle of blood... and heard a sound like escaping steam. Then all else was still.