Lilian Braun - The Cat Who Turned On and Off

"No clues here," Qwilleran said, starting toward the door and casually lifting his red feather from Ben's silk topper.

He yanked the leash. "And you're no help any more. It was a mistake to get you a companion. You've lost your talent." He had not noticed Koko, sitting up like a squirrel, bat- ting the tassels of Ben's long scarf.

When the time came for the meeting in Hernia Heaven, Qwilleran climbed to the third floor with some discomfort. His bad knee, although it had improved during the day, tightened up at nightfall, and he arrived at the meeting with a noticeable limp.

The dealers sat in a circle, and Qwilleran looked at their feet before he looked at their faces. They had tramped upstairs in their outdoor togs, and he saw velvet boots, a single brown suede teamed with a walking cast, some man- sized boots in immaculate white, and assorted rubbers and galoshes.

He took the nearest vacant seat — on a church pew with threadbare cushions — and found himself sitting between Cluthra's cast and Russ Patch's crutches.

"Looks like the bus stop for Lourdes," said the redhead with a fraternal lean in Qwilleran's direction. "What happened to you?" "I was felled by an avalanche." "I wouldn't have struggled up all those stairs, one sloggin' foot at a time, only I heard you were going to be here." She gave him a wink and a friendly nudge.

"How did the picture-taking go'?" he asked.

"That photographer you sent is a big hunk of man." "Did he break anything?" "Only a small Toby jug." "Newspapers always assign bulls to china shops," Qwilleran explained. He was trying to see the soles of the footwear around him, but every pair of feet remained firmly planted on the floor. He turned to Russell Patch and said, "Good-looking boots you're wearing. Where did you manage to find white ones?" "Had to have them custom-made," said the young man, stretching out his good leg for advantageous display.

"Even the soles are white!" Qwilleran said, staring at the ridged bottoms and patting his moustache with satisfaction. "I suppose those crutches cramp your style when it comes to scrounging." "I still get around, and I won't have to use them much longer." "Get anything out of the Ellsworth house'?" "No, I skipped that one. The kitchen cabinets were grabbed off before I could get there, and that's all I'm interested in." They lie, Qwilleran thought. All these dealers lie. They're all actors, unable to tell reality from fantasy. Aloud he said, "What do you do with kitchen cabinets?" "The real old ones make good built-ins for stereo installations, if you give them a provincial finish. I've got a whole wall of them myself, with about twenty thousand dollars worth of electronic equipment. Thirty-six speakers. You like music'? I've got everything on tape. Operas, symphonies, chamber music, classic jazz — " "You must have quite an investment there," Qwilleran said, alerted to the apparent wealth of this young man.

"Priceless! Come up and have a listen some night. I live right over my shop, you know." "Do you own the building?" "Well, it's like this. I rented it for a while and built in so many improvements — me and my roommate, that is — that I had to buy it to protect my investment." Qwilleran forgot to pry any further, because Mary Duckworth arrived. Wearing a short blue plaid skirt, she sat on a kitchen chair of the Warren Harding period and crossed her long elegant legs. For the first time Qwilleran saw her knees.

He considered himself a connoisseur of knees, and these had all the correct points. They were slender, shapely, and eminently designed for their function — with the kind of vertical indentations on either side of the kneecap that caused a stir in the roots of his moustache.

"My Gawd! She's here!" said a husky voice in his ear. "Keep her away from me, will you? She might try to break the other one." The redhead's ample bosom heaved with anger. "You know, she deliberately dropped a cast-iron garden urn on my foot." "Mary did?" "That woman," she said between clenched teeth, "is capable of anything! I wish she'd get out of Junktown! Her shop doesn't belong here. That high-priced pedigreed stuff spoils it for the rest of us." There was a sudden round of applause as Ben Nicholas, who had been acting as doorman down below, made a grandiose entrance in an admiral's cocked hat, and then the meeting began.

Sylvia Katzenhide reviewed the plans for the Block Party on Wednesday. "The city is going to rope off four blocks," she said, "and decorate the utility poles with plastic angels. They've run out of Christmas angels, but they have some nice lavender ones left over from last Easter. Carol singers will be supplied by the Sanitation Department Glee Club." Qwilleran said, "Could we keep The Junkery open during the party? I hate to see Mrs. Cobb lose that extra business. I'd be willing to mind the store for a couple of hours myself." Cluthra squeezed his arm and said, "You're a honey! We'll help, too — my sisters and I. We'll take turns." Then someone suggested sending flowers to the Cobb funeral, and just as they were taking up a collection, they were stunned by a blast of noise from the floor below. It was a torrent of popular music — raucous, bouncy, loud. They listened in open-mouthed astonishment for a few seconds, then all talked at once.

"What's that?" "A radio?" "Who's down there?" "Nobody!" "Where's it coming from?" "Somebody's downstairs!" "Who could it be?" "How could they get in?" "The front door's locked, isn't it?" Qwilleran was the first one on his feet. "Let's go down and see." He grabbed a wooden sledge hammer that was hanging on the wall and started down the narrow stairs, left foot first on each step. The only other men at the meeting followed — Russ on his crutches and Ben lumbering after them with a pitchfork in his hand.

The noise was coming from the Cobb apartment. The door stood open. The apartment was in darkness.

Qwilleran reached in, groped for a wall switch and flooded the room with light. "Who's there?" he shouted in a voice of authority.

There was no answer. The music poured out of the small radio on the apothecary desk.

The three men searched the apartment, Ben bringing up a delayed rear.

"No one here," Qwilleran announced.

"Maybe it has an automatic timer," Russ said.

"The thing doesn't have a timer," Qwilleran said as he turned off the offensive little radio. He frowned at the writing surface of the desk. Papers were scattered. A pencil cup was knocked over. From the floor he picked up a telephone bill and an address book — and a gray feather.

As the men emerged from the Cobb apartment, the women were beginning to venture down from the attic.

"Is it safe?" they asked.

Cluthra said, "If it was a man, which way did he go?" "What was it? Does anyone know what it was?" "That crazy radio," Russ said. "It turned on all by itself." "How could it do that?" "I don't know," said Qwilleran… but he did. After the dealers had straggled out the front door and Ben had departed for an evening at The Lion's Tail, Qwilleran unlocked his apartment door and looked for the cats. Yum Yum was sitting on top of the refrigerator with eyes bright and ears alert-eyes and ears a trifle too large for her tiny wedge-shaped face. Koko was lapping up a drink of water, his tail lying straight on the floor as it did when he was especially thirsty.

"Okay, Koko," said Qwilleran. "How did you do it? Have you teamed up with Mathilda?" The tip of Koko's tail tapped the floor lightly, as he went on drinking.

Qwilleran wandered through his suite of rooms and speculated on each one. He knew Koko could turn a radio dial by scraping it with his hard little jaw, but how was this feline Houdini getting out of the apartment? Qwilleran moved the swan bed away from the wall and looked for a vent in the baseboard. He examined the bathroom for trap doors. (turn-of- the-century plumbers had been fond of trap doors), but there was nothing of the sort. The kitchenette had a high transom window cut through to the hall, presumably for ventilation, and it would be easily accessible from the top of the refrigerator, but it was closed and latched.