Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Blew The Whistle

Carol shook her head. "Everyone in Sawdust City must be nutty from exposure to industrial pollution."

Before leaving for the rehearsal that evening, Qwilleran started to read the first few scenes of A Midsummer Night's Dream aloud. Both cats enjoyed the sound of his voice, whether he was reading great literature or the baseball scores. On this occasion Koko was particularly attentive and even got into the act a few times.

The first scene opened with an indignant father hauling his disobedient daughter before the duke for reprimand. Full of vexation am I, with complaint against my daughter, Hermia.

"Yow!" said Koko.

"That's not in the script," Qwilleran objected.

After the father had raved and ranted, the duke argued with gentle reasonableness. What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid.

"Yow!" Koko said again.

The young woman was being forced by law to marry a man of her father's choosing, or enter a convent, or die. Therefore, Hermia, question your desires.

"Yow!"

Qwilleran closed the book. He said, "This is getting monotonous, if you don't mind my saying so." Later, as he walked through the Black Forest to the theatre, he construed Koko's responses as infatuation with a certain sound. To a cat, "Hermia" might have a secret meaning. Then again, Koko might be playing practical jokes; he had a sense of humor.

The K Theatre, originally the Klingenschoen mansion, was a great three- story mass of fieldstone, transformed into a two-hundred-seat amphitheatre. From the lofty foyer a pair of staircases curved up to the lobby, from which the seating sloped down to the stage. When Qwilleran arrived, the cast was doing a run-through without the book, while the director watched from the third row and scribbled notes. Other cast members were scattered throughout the auditorium, waiting for their scenes. Quietly he took a seat behind Fran Brodie.

The "rude mechanicals" were onstage: tinker, tailor, joiner, bellowsmaker, carpenter, and the six-foot-eight weaver, who delivered the final line of the scene: Enough: Hold, or cut bowstrings.

"Break! Take five!" Fran called out. Qwilleran tapped her on the shoulder. "That line about bowstrings - I've never quite understood it."

"I take it to mean 'cooperate - or else,' but I don't know its origin. Ask Polly. She'll know."

Actors wandered up the aisle to get a drink of water in the lobby or stopped to ask Fran a question. As soon as she and Qwilleran were alone, she said in a low voice, "They've picked up Floyd's car. It was in that meadow where car-poolers park. It had been there all week, and the sheriff was aware of it, but Floyd wasn't on the wanted list then."

"Do you suppose someone tipped him off about the audit? Who could it be?"

"It looks as if an accomplice drove in from Indian Village and picked him up - Nella, for example. They're both missing."

"But how would she know about the audit?"

"Interesting question."

"If they're headed for Mexico," he said, "they've had a headstart of three days. She'd know a lot about Mexico, being from Texas."

"Wherever they went, they'll be found easily enough." Fran looked at her watch. "Time for the next scene. Don't go. I have more to report.... And do you know what? I brought your paperweight and left it in my car."

"Why don't you drive down to the barn when you're through here. I'll pour. You can bring the paperweight."

"Elizabeth Hart will be with me. Do you mind? I'm her ride tonight."

"That's fine. She's never seen the barn.... Is it okay to interview Derek now?"

"Sure. He won't be called for fifteen minutes."

Before interviewing the young actor, Qwilleran checked his bio in the most recent playbill:

DEREK CU1TLEBRINK. Veteran of five productions. Best-remembered roles: the porter in Macbeth and the villain in The Drunkard. Lifelong resident of Wildcat. Graduate of Pickax High School, where he played basketball. Currently employed as a waiter at the Old Stone Mill. Major interests: acting, camping, folk-singing, girls.

The last of these was only too true. At performances in the K Theatre there was always claque of Derek's girlfriends and ex-girlfriend and would-be girlfriends, ready to applaud a soon as he walked on stage. Whatever the source of his magnetism, his turnover in female companions was of more interest than the Dow Jones averages in Pickax. Tonight Derek was sitting with his latest, Elizabeth Hart, in the back row, where they could whisper without disturbing the proceedings on stage.

Qwilleran asked her if he might borrow Derek for a brief interview in the lobby.

"May I listen in?" she asked.

"Of course."

The eccentric young woman he had met on Breakfast Island had improved her grooming, but her taste for exotic clothing had not changed. While other club members were in grungy rehearsal togs, Elizabeth wore an embroidered vest and skullcap, possibly from Ecuador, with a balloon-sleeve white silk blouse and harem pants. Their bagginess camouflaged her thinness. The interview was taped:

QWILLERAN: You're playing the role of Nick Bottom, the weaver. How do you perceive Mr. Bottom?

DEREK: You mean, what's he like? He's a funny guy, always using the wrong words and doing some dumb thing, but nothing gets him down. People like him.

ELIZABETH: (interrupting) His malapropisms are quite endearing.

DEREK: Yeah. Took the words right outa my mouth.

QWILLERAN: How does Bottom fit into the plot?

DEREK: Well, there's a wedding at the palace, and for entertainment they've got a bunch of ordinary guys to put on a play. Bottom wants to direct and play all the roles himself.

ELIZABETH: His vanity would be insufferable, if it weren't so ingratiating.

DEREK: Yeah. You can quote me. The players rehearse in the woods, and one of the little green men turns me into a donkey from the neck up. The joke of it is: the queen of the greenies falls in love with me.

ELIZABETH: She's a bewitcher who is bewitched.

DEREK: That's pretty good. Put it in.

QWILLERAN: How do you feel about little green men in a Shakespeare play?

DEREK: No problem. He called 'em fairies; we call 'em greenies. They're all aliens, right?

QWILLERAN: What is your favorite line? DEREK: I like it when I roar like a lion... Arrrrgh! Arrrrgh! And at the end I have a death scene that's fun. Now die, die, die, die, die. That always gets a laugh.

Qwilleran, having completed his mission, more or less, returned to the barn through the Black Forest, listening for Marconi. It was still daylight, however, and Marconi was a night owl.

Yum Yum was waiting at the kitchen door. He picked her up and whispered affectionate words while she caressed his hand with her waving tail. Koko was not there. Koko was in the foyer, looking out the window.

The formal entrance to the barn was a double door flanked by tall, narrow windows. These sidelights had sills about twenty inches from the floor, a convenient height for a cat who wanted to stand on his hind feet and peer through the glass. There was something out there that fascinated Koko. With his neck stretched and his ears pricked, he stared down the orchard trail. Surveyors had been there and lumberyard trucks and carpenters' pickups and a cement mixer, but that was daytime activity, and there was no action after four-thirty. Yet Koko watched and waited as if expecting something to happen. His prescience was sometimes unnerving. He could sense an approaching storm, and a telephone about to ring. He often knew what Qwilleran was going to do before Qwilleran knew.

Koko also had a sense of right and wrong. The decoys on the fireplace cube, for example, were lined up facing east. One day Mrs. Fulgrove came to clean and left them facing west. Koko threw a fit!

On this summer evening he watched and waited, while Qwilleran listened to the tape of Derek's interview; to make an eight-inch think-piece out of it would require all his fictive skills. Only once was Koko lured away from the window, and that was when Derek roared like a lion.