Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Tailed A Thief

It had stopped snowing when Qwilleran finally went home, and he was surprised to find footprints in the fresh snow on his front walk, leading to and from his doorstep. They were a woman's footprints. There were no tire tracks. She lived in the Village and had walked. Who in the Village would pay a call without phoning first or being invited? Not Hixie or Fran. Certainly not Amanda Goodwinter. Opening the storm door, he found a gift on the threshold, wrapped in conservative holly paper and about the size and weight of a two-pound box of chocolates. He felt obliged to quote Lewis Carroll: Curiouser and curiouser! He carried it indoors, hoping it was not chocolates.

The Siamese, dozing on the sofa, raised their heads expectantly.

"Three guesses!" he said to them as he tore open the paper. It was a book with an unusual binding: leather spine and cloth-covered boards in a red and green Jacobean design, leafy and flowery. The gold tooling on the spine spelled out The Old Wives' Tale.

"Hey," he yelped, alarming the cats. Arnold Bennett was one of his favorite authors, and this was considered his best novel. It was obviously a special edition of the 1908 book, with heavy quality paper, deckled edges, and woodcut illustrations. There was a note enclosed:

Qwill - You mentioned Bennett in your column last week, and I thought you'd like to have this precious book from my father's collection.

-Your Number-One Fan - Sarah

Qwilleran was flabbergasted. Sarah Plensdorf was the office manager at the Something - an older woman, rather shy. She lived alone in the Village, surrounded by family treasures.

Clutching the book, he dropped into his favorite easy chair and propped his feet on the ottoman. Koko and Yum Yum came running. Reading aloud was one of the things they did together as a family.

Bennett had been a journalist, and his novels were written in an unromantic style with detailed descriptions. As Qwilleran read, he dramatized with sound effects: the resounding call of the cuckoo in the English countryside, the clanging bell of the horse-car in town, the snores of Mr. Povey, asleep on the sofa with his mouth wide open. (He had taken a painkiller for his aching tooth.) When the prankish Sophie reached into the gaping mouth with pliers and extracted the wobbly tooth, Mr. Povey yelped. Qwilleran yelped, Yum Yum shrieked. But where was Koko?

Some muttering could be heard in the foyer, where Qwilleran had piled all the Christmas gifts; Koko was doing his best to open the carton containing the set of Melville's works.

Was he attracted to the leather bindings? Did he detect codfish on a set of old books from Boston? Could he sense that the box contained a novel about a whale? He was a smart cat, but was he that smart?

Koko did indeed have a baffling gift of extrasensory perception. He could tell time, read Qwilleran's mind, and put thoughts in Qwilleran's head. All cats do this, more or less, at feeding time. But Koko applied his powers to matters of good and evil. He sensed misdeeds, and he could identify misdoers in an oblique sort of way. Melville's novels were concerned with good and evil to a large degree; was Kao K'o Kung getting the message?

Was it coincidence that he pushed the The Thief off the bookshelf when Pickax was plagued with petit larceny - and some not so petit?

Trying to find answers to such questions could drive a person mad, Qwilleran had decided. The same approach was to be receptive, open-minded. There was one clue, however, that he had divined: Normal cats have twenty-four whiskers on each side, eyebrows included. Koko had thirty!

-4-

Between Christmas and New Year's, Qwilleran took Celia Robinson's grandson out on an assignment. He had been scheduled to interview an innkeeper in Trawnto Beach, but a dowser in Pickax seemed more likely to interest a future scientist. Furthermore, the dowser lived nearby, and Qwilleran could avoid sixty miles of driving in the company of a precocious fourteen-year-old. Admittedly, summer would be more appropriate for a dowsing story, but the interview could be conducted during Clayton's visit and put on hold. Then, after spring thaw, Qwilleran cold return for a demonstration of the mysterious art.

When he drove into Celia's parking lot, he saw Clayton on the snowblower, spraying his grandmother with plumes of white flakes, while she pelted him with snowballs in gleeful retaliation. Brushing snow from their outerwear, they approached Qwilleran's car, and Celia made the introductions: "Mr. Qwilleran, this is my famous grandson... Clayton, this is the famous Mr. Q. I call him `Chief. ` "

"Hi, Chief," the young man said, thrusting his hand forward. His grip had the confidence of a young teen who is expecting a scholarship from M.I.T.

"Hi, Doc," Qwilleran replied, referring to his role in the Florida investigation. He sized him up as a healthy farm-bred youth with an intelligent face, freshly cut hair, and a voice deeper than the one on last year's tape recording. "Got your camera? Let's go!"

"Where are we off to, Chief?" Clayton asked as they turned into Park Circle.

"We're going to Pleasant Street to interview Gil MacMurchie. His ancestors came here from Scotland about the time of Rob Roy. Do you know about Rob Roy? Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel with that title."

"I saw the movie," Clayton said. "He wore skirts."

"He wore a kilt, customarily worn by Scottish Highlanders for tramping across the moors in wet heather, and also as a badge of clansmanship. During the Jacobite rebellion, clans were stripped of their names and kicked off their land. Rob Roy had been chief of the MacGregor clan but changed his name to Campbell. `Roy' refers to his red hair."

"How do you know all that?"

"I read. Do you read, Doc?"

"Yeah, I read a lot. I'm reading Einstein's Philosophy of Civilization."

"I'm glad you're not waiting for the movie... Mr. MacMurchie is retired from the plumbing and hardware business, but he's still active as a dowser. Know anything about dowsing? Scientists call it divining. It's also known as water witching."

"Sure, I know about that! When our well ran dry, my dad hired a water witch. He walked around our farm with a branch of a tree and found underground water. I don't know how it works."

"No one knows exactly, but there are plenty of guesses. Geologists call it an old wives' tale."

"What does that mean?"

"Folklore....superstition. Yet proponents of dowsing say it works, in spite of the controversy."

Pleasant Street was an old neighborhood of Victorian frame houses ornamented with quantities of jigsaw trim around windows, porches, rooflines, and gables. The large residences had been built by successful families like the MacMurchies and Duncans in the heyday of Moose County.

"This street looks like Disneyland," said Clayton. "It doesn't look real."

"There may be no other street in the United States with so much gingerbread trim still intact. Right now there's a proposal to restore all the houses and have it recognized as a historic neighborhood."

Qwilleran parked in front of a neat two-tone gray house that still had a stone carriage step at the curb. The sidewalk and the steps of the house had been recently broomed, showing the streak marks of the broom straw in the snow. As they walked up the front steps, Clayton asked, "What kind of pictures shall I take?"

"Close-ups of Mr. MacMurchie and his dowsing stick, plus anything else that looks interesting. If you get some good shots, the paper might do a picture spread and give you a credit line."

Clayton had never seen a doorbell in the middle of the door, and he snapped a picture of it. he had never heard the raucous clang it made either.

"Remember, Doc," Qwilleran said. "I ask the questions; you click the camera, but do it unobtrusively."