Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Sniffed Glue

"Not that I'm aware. No doubt the police have suspects who are being questioned, but the authorities aren't giving out any information. You can't blame them. How have you been, Polly?"

"Fine."

"Could you have dinner with me tonight?"

She hesitated. "I suppose your rehearsal is canceled on account of..."

"The show is called off altogether, and I'm not getting involved in any more plays. You were right, Polly; they're too time-consuming. I'd like very much to see you tonight."

There was a weighty pause, then: "Yes, I'd like to have dinner. I've missed you, Qwill."

His sigh of relief was audible. "I'll pick you up at the library at closing time."

He walked home with a light step, stopping at Lanspeak's store to buy a silk scarf in Polly's favorite shade of blue, which he had gift-wrapped.

Returning home to shower and shave and dress for dinner, he bounded up the stairs three at a time, but lost his exuberance when the Siamese did not come to greet him. Where were they? He knew he had not locked them in their apartment. Mr. O'Dell had not been there to clean. He peered into the living room, but Koko was not on the bookshelves with the biographies, and Yum Yum was not curled up in her favorite chair.

Had someone broken in and stolen the cats? He rushed to their apartment. They were not there! He checked their bathroom. No cats! He called their names. No answer! In a panic he searched the bedroom. They were nowhere in sight. Were they shut up somewhere? He yanked open dresser drawers. On hands and knees he examined the back comers of the closet. He called again, but the apartment was silent as death. Fearfully he approached his writing studio. It was never tidy, but this time there were signs of vandalism: desk drawers open, papers scattered about the floor, desktop ransacked, paper clips everywhere!

It was then that he noticed two silent figures - one on top of the filing cabinet and the other on a wall shelf with Roger's Thesaurus and a bottle of rubber cement. Yum Yum was crouched on the shelf in her guilty position - a compact bundle with elevated shoulders and haunches. Koko was on the filing cabinet, sitting tall but without his usual confidence.

Qwilleran gazed down at the papers on the floor. To his surprise they were all envelopes. New envelopes. His stationery drawer was open. When he scooped up the scattered items he noticed fang marks in the comers, and all the gummed flaps had been licked clean.

Sitting down in his desk chair he swiveled to face the culprits. He surmised that Yum Yum had opened the drawers with her famous paw, and Koko, who was attracted to any kind of adhesive, had been on a glutinous binge. Once before, he had ungummed a whole sheet of stamps, and had paraded impudently around the apartment with an airmail stamp stuck on his nose.

"Well, my friends," Qwilleran began calmly, "do I have to start locking my desk drawers? What's the matter with you two? Are you bored? Unhappy? Is there something lacking in your life? Is your diet inadequate?"

Koko, the usual spokesman for the pair, had no comment.

"You have epicurean food and the recommended daily allowances of vitamins. Do you realize there are cats who have to scrounge for their food in garbage cans?"

There was no reply.

"Has the cat got your tongue?"

Still no answer. Qwilleran doubted that Koko was even listening.

"You don't know how lucky you are. Some cats live outdoors all year in snow and sleet and torrential rains. You have a steam-heated apartment with private bath, TV, wall-to-wall carpeting, and..."

Qwilleran huffed into his moustache as the truth dawned upon him. Koko - with a glazed expression in his eyes and a peculiar splay-legged stance - was high on glue!

"You devil!" he blurted. And then he had a second thought. Koko never did anything unusual without a good reason. But what could this reason be?

-Scene Seven-

Place: Tipsy's Restaurant in North

Kennebeck

Time: Later that evening

Introducing: POLLY DUNCAN

MR, O'DELL, Qwilleran's

part-time houseman

LORI BAMBA, a friend of

Koko and Yum Yum

WHEN QWILLERAN picked up Polly Duncan at the library he asked, "I'm glad you can have dinner with me. Do you mind if we drive out into the country? The bad news has made me restless and uneasy, I need to talk about it."

Her voice was soft and gentle, with a timbre that he I found both soothing and stimulating, "I understand, I Qwill, A tragedy like this makes people want to huddle together." She gave him a needful glance that was all too brief.

"I thought we might go to go to Tipsy's. Do you know anything about it?"

"The food is good, and it's very popular," Polly said brightly, as if determined to make this a cheerful evening. "Did you know the place was named after a cat? The founder of the restaurant was a cook in a lumbercamp and then a saloonkeeper. During Prohibition he went Down Below and operated a blind pig. After Repeal he came back up here with a black-and-white cat named Tipsy and opened a steakhouse in a log cabin."

"What was his name?"

"Gus. That's all I know. But he was legendary around here, and so was Tipsy. That was fifty or sixty years ago.

The place has changed hands many times, but they always retain the name."

They drove through typical Moose County terrain: rolling pastureland dotted with boulders and sheep, dairy farms with white barns, dark stretches of woods, abandoned mines with the remains of shafthouses. At a fork in the road a signpost indicated that it was three miles to West Middle Hummock. The other branch of the road led to Chipmunk (2 miles) and North Kennebeck (10 miles).

"West Middle Hummock isn't far from Chipmunk, is it?" Qwilleran observed. "A study in contrasts," Polly said. The highway soon ran through a cluster of substandard dwellings: cottages with sagging porches and peeling paint, sheet-metal shacks, trailer homes hardly larger than gypsy wagons, and larger houses advertising rooms to rent.

"The rooming houses were brothels in the early days of Chipmunk," she said.

Youths were hanging around the burger palace and the party store, drinking from cans and blasting the atmosphere with their boom boxes. Qwilleran thought, Are these the rowdies who broke into the school, trashed the dental clinic, and opened the hydrants? Is this where Chad Lanspeak hangs out? Are the Fitch murderers holed up in this town?

North Kennebeck, on the other hand, was a thriving community with a grain elevator, condominiums, an old railway depot converted into a museum, and Tipsy's - a log-cabin restaurant that attracted diners from all parts of the county.

The exterior logs were dark and chinked; the interior was whitewashed and inviting, with rustic furnishings and a casual crowd of diners. Under a spotlight in the main dining room hung a portrait of a white cat with black boots and a black patch that seemed to be slipping down over one eye. It gave her the look of a tipsy matron.

Polly said, "She also had a deformed foot that made her stagger and added to her inebriated image. How are your cats, Qwill?"

"Koko is happy that I've started collecting old books. He prefers biographies. How he can distinguish Plutarch's Parallel Lives from Wordsworth's poems is something I don't understand."

"And how is dear little Yum Yum?"

"That dear little Yum Yum has developed an unpleasant habit that I won't discuss at the dinner table."

He ordered dry sherry for Polly and, for himself, Squunk water with a dash of bitters and a slice of lemon. (The village of Squunk Comers was noted for a flowing well, whose waters were said to be therapeutic.) Raising his glass in a toast, he said, "To the memory of a promising young couple!"

"Harley was an admirable young man," Polly said sadly.

"Koko took an instant liking to him. No one seems to know much about his wife. The paper said they were married in Las Vegas, and I thought that unusual. The affluent families around here seem to like big weddings at the Old Stone Church - with twelve attendants and five hundred guests and a reception at the country club."