Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Knew A Cardinal

"There's got to be a catalogue," Qwilleran muttered, for the benefit of any listening ear.

There was no reply from Koko. The cat was surveying the irregular stacks of boxes like a mountain goat contemplating Mount Rushmore, and soon he bounded up from ledge to ledge until he reached the summit and posed haughtily on a carton of Western Thought. Meanwhile, Qwilleran closed the door and went to work with his craft knife, slitting open a box of Dickens, labeled A-74.

It was no idle choice, Dickens being a writer he admired greatly. It was no treasure trove either; the volumes were inexpensive editions. He took time, however, to look up his favorite passages: the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities; the description of the coachman's coat in The Pickwick Papers; and a scene from A Christmas Carol that he knew virtually by heart. Every Christmas Eve, he remembered, his mother had read aloud the account of the Cratchits' modest Christmas dinner, beginning with that mouth-filling line: "Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice- turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence." A wave of nostalgia tingled his spine. The room was quiet except for an occasional murmur or grunt from Koko as he explored his private mountain, and Qwilleran read greedily from The Pickwick Papers until alerted by the unmistakable sound of claws on corrugated cardboard. The thinking man's cat was diligently scratching a box on the fifth tier, labeled "Macaulay A-106." Qwilleran immediately pulled it down, slit the flaps, and found the famous three-volume History of England, plus essays, biographies, and the questionably titled collection of poems, Lays of Ancient Rome. He huffed into his moustache as he realized that the Macaulay box had originally contained a shipment of canned salmon. Koko was no fool.

Nevertheless, Qwilleran had always wanted to check out a statement made by a typesetter of the old school - a claim that Macaulay used more consonants in his writing, while Dickens used more vowels. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with a pad of paper, he started counting consonants and vowels, selecting random excerpts from each author. It was a brain-numbing, eye-torturing task, and he was disappointed with the result. While racking up 390 consonants, Dickens used 250 vowels and Macaulay actually used more - a total of 258. The typesetter was either misinformed or a practical joker, but there was nothing he could do about it; the man had died two years before.

There was a tap on the door, and Susan called out to him, "Coffee's ready downstairs."

Qwilleran confined Koko to the room with the Dickens and Macaulay and joined her in the kitchen.

"Making good progress?" she inquired.

"I haven't found anything of value as yet," he replied, truthfully. "I've found a green dragon dish documented as fourteenth century!"

He wondered: Yes, but are the documents forged?

"I have a feeling," she said, "that a lot of these things; should go to New York for auction. They'll bring a fortune on the east coast."

If they're genuine, Qwilleran thought.

After coffee he returned upstairs, and as he opened the door Koko shot out of the room and made a skidding U-turn into the study where the books were on shelves instead of in boxes. Qwilleran followed, but the cat was already on one of the top shelves, looking down impudently at his pursuer.

"Get down here!" Qwilleran demanded at his sternest. Koko rubbed his jaw against a large volume-teasing, knowing he was just beyond reach.

Qwilleran climbed on a chair and made a grab for him. With infuriating impertinence Koko slinked behind a row of books with only the tip of his brown tail giving a clue to his whereabouts.

"I'll get you, young man, if I have to strip this whole bookcase!" Shifting the chair a few feet, he started removing books from the top shelf, piling them in his left arm, until the cat was revealed, crouched mischievously in his hiding place.

"You devil!" Qwilleran clutched him with his free hand, stepped off the chair, dumped his armful of gooks on the desk, and deposited the cat in the other room, slamming the door as a rebuke. Then he returned to the study to replace the dislodged books, which appeared to be a collection of eighteenth-century "erotica. Squelching his curiosity he lined the books up on the high shelf. That was when he noticed a volume that had been concealed behind the others, either purposely or accidentally. Memoirs of a Merry Milkmaid was the title tooled in gold on good cowhide. He put it under his arm and stepped off the chair. As he did so, the book rattled in a muffled way. He shook it, and it rattled again. Enjoying the excitement of discovery he returned to the Dickens-Macaulay room, closed the door, and opened the book. It was all cover and no pages!

There in the hollow volume - a secret filing place - was a small notebook, alphabetized. He turned to the letter D and found "Dickens A-74." Under M there was listed "Macaulay A-l06" as well as Mencken, Melodrama, Milton, Morality Plays and others. This was the catalogue he knew must exist. Though inadequate for finding titles, it was apparently useful for VanBrook's purposes, whatever they might be. If he had anything to hide, this was not a bad system.

There were other documents and scraps of paper in the hollow book, but for the moment the catalogue was all that mattered. Entries were grouped from A to F, evidently referring to the six rooms in which boxes were stored. It was while leafing through its pages that he spotted a small red dot alongside certain items: "Latin A-92," for instance.

Koko was sitting quietly on A-106 in his sphinx pose, guarding the salmon carton. "We've got to find A-92," Qwilleran said impatiently as he began slinging boxes around. They were stacked in no particular order, and the noise of heavy boxes being shifted soon brought a tap on the door.

"Come in," he yelled without stopping his frenzied search.

"Are you onto something?" Susan asked.

"I think so... I found the catalogue... Boxes, not titles," he said between heavy breathing. "Some have a special mark... A red dot... I'm looking for A-92."

He found it at the bottom of a stack, behind two other stacks - a vodka carton filled with textbooks, grammars, ponies, a Latin-English dictionary, and the works of Cicero and Virgil.

"They're Latin books, all right," he announced with disappointment. "Nothing but books."

"Well, let's work another half hour and then go to lunch," Susan suggested.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I'll take a raincheck, since I have Koko with me and I'm not dressed for lunch at the Mill. But if you want to pick us up again, I'll be glad to help any day you say."

He repacked A-92, shoving Koko away as the cat tried to climb into the vodka carton. Then, working fast during the next half hour, he opened other boxes that warranted a red dot. He found only books in an eclectic assortment of subjects: Nordic Mythology, Indian Authors, Chaucer, Japanese Architecture. One box contained Famous Frauds - accounts of imposters, swindlers, and other white-collar crooks. In the stacking of boxes a slight pattern emerged; the red dots were all found to the left of the door as one entered the room, concealed behind other book-boxes. Qwilleran counted the red dots in the catalogue, and there were fifty-two, distributed equally among rooms A to F.

When they pulled away from the house in Susan's wagon, Qwilleran had three books tucked under his arm. He said, "I hope no one objects if I borrow something to read. I found a couple of good titles."

"Keep them," she said. "No one will ever know or care." Sandwiched between novels of Sir Walter Scott, which came from a red-dot carton, was Memoirs of a Merry Milkmaid.

When Susan dropped her passengers off at the apple barn, Koko was greeted by his mate as if he had returned from an alien planet, contaminated by radioactive gasses. Belly to the Boor, Yum Yum crept toward him cautiously, caught a whiff of something evil, and skulked away with lowered head and bushy tail. Unconcerned, he walked to the kitchen area and stared pointedly at an empty plate on the floor until a piece of turkey appeared on it miraculously.