“Oh, we eat like this all the time,” he answered her airily.
“Oo! oo! oo!”
“Shut up, Lulu,” Tucker warned the pigeon beneath his breath. He’d worked like a beaver to bring this dinner party off, and impress Miss Catherine favorably, and he wasn’t about to put up with any of Lulu’s sarcasm now.
“I believe,” the Siamese said condescendingly, “that before I meet the animal we ought to discuss—”
“Miss Catherine!” That was too much for Tucker—good impression or not. “Please! You wouldn’t call him an ‘animal.’ He’s a dog—a very nice little dog, called Huppy.”
“So Harry has told me,” replied Miss Catherine with dry ice in her voice. “A little dog who’s so nice you’re afraid he’s becoming a criminal.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that—” began Tucker.
“I would!” Harry Cat finished it for him. “She’s right. Face facts. Huppy’s going to the dogs.”
“Oo! oo! oo!”
“Now what’s so hilarious?” demanded Tucker.
“Huppy’s going to the dogs,” said the pigeon. “Where else would a puppy go?”
“That isn’t funny!” shouted the mouse. “Lulu—just keep quiet, please. Since this doesn’t concern you.”
“Sure it does!” She flapped her wings grandly. “I love Huppy too!”
“One wonders,” purred Miss Catherine, smooth as silk now, “why there should be any problem at all. When the dog has such splendid, intelligent friends.”
The pigeon was too good-natured—her enemies would have said stupid, if she’d had any—to understand a cat’s wisecrack, even when it was aimed at her. “There is no problem! Just leave him be. Max is grooming him swell. He’s already his sidekick. May even take over the pack some day. Be a really top dog in New York!”
“What more could one ask?” smirked Miss Catherine, with a sidelong glance at Harry.
He wasn’t laughing with her, however. He avoided her eyes, as much for her own sake as anyone else’s—that she should behave this way. And Tucker was not amused at all. A frown wrinkled his face. He distrusted most cats—except Harry—and especially distrusted a cat being catty.
But blissful Lulu plunged right on, unaware of the tension building around her. “You guys should see Max and Huppy together! He’s teaching the kid to fight.”
“Fight?” said Harry. This was an unwelcome development. “Since when?”
“Since this afternoon, just before I left. Sicked him onto big dumb Louie, Max did. Oo! oo! oo! The funniest thing I ever saw!”
“I’m sure it was charming,” cooed Miss Catherine without so much as a flicker of an eyelid to suggest she was mimicking Lulu.
“There was the little guy, hanging onto the big guy’s—hey, are you making fun of me, sister?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it!”
“’Cause if you are—”
Harry Cat stepped forward. “I think maybe we ought to go down to the park right now.”
“That’s a grand idea!” Tucker seconded him enthusiastically. He was beginning to think there was something about the Huppy problem that brought out the worst in everyone and made all New York animals want to fight with each other. “The sooner we can get him up to Miss Catherine’s apartment—”
“There’s no question of that!” said Miss Catherine firmly. “A great clumsy dog?—in our apartment? Ridiculous!—with all our lovely things all around. It won’t do. Why, Horatio and I—we’d feel absurd—”
“Welcome to the club,” mumbled Tucker.
Luckily, Miss Catherine didn’t hear. She was too busy exclaiming about the idiocy of the whole idea. “But in the basement of the apartment house—we’ll see. At least several weeks, I should think. And then, if I’m able to train him, perhaps for an hour or two each day, in one of the rear rooms—”
“Are you going to let this hunk of fluff take our Huppy uptown?”
“Are you referring to me, Miss Pigeon?”
“No, dear, I’m referring to my right eyeball.” Lulu turned back to Harry and Tucker. “Are you? Ol’ Puss-in-Boots’ll just turn him into a prissy puppy—”
“Harry! I insist that you make this feathered thing stop calling me names!”
“Honey, this feathered thing”—Lulu hitched up her chest—“is about to knock you for a loop!”
Harry and Tucker had been sitting on the sidelines, staring in glazed fascination as the cat and the bird got more and more angry.
“Mousiekins,” said Harry, just before he acted, “New York is really a wonderful city. Imagine being big enough to hold both Lulu and Miss Catherine. Ladies—please!”
“Ladies,” said Tucker Mouse to himself, as he watched his friend try to separate them both. “Between two crazy ladies like Lulu Pigeon and Catherine Cat, a sane mouse could lose his mind!”
He was just about to suggest that the ladies be permitted to slug it out, when the coming brawl was abruptly interrupted—and not by Harry Cat.
NINE
Police!
Lulu was hauling off with one wing and Miss Catherine had the claws of both front paws extended. Violence was imminent, despite Harry’s gentle efforts to prevent it. But before the first blow could be struck, a furor was heard from outside the pipe, in the subway station. There were shouts—from several human beings; there was running—impossible to tell how many people and animals running; and there was, unmistakably, at least one frantic barking dog!
“Harry!” Tucker yelled from the opening. “Come quick! It’s Huppy—the cops are chasing him!”
The others crowded around the mouse, their own quarrels now completely forgotten.
Down the stairs from the street, half tumbling and half running, came Huppy. And behind him—three policemen, taking the stairs two at a time.
“Watch out for that dog!” shouted one officer to the people in the subway station. There weren’t too many, this late at night, but the ones who were there were jumping like rabbits, out of the way.
“Mad dog!” a second policeman called.
“Mad dog?” Tucker echoed fearfully, with a terrified look at Harry. The cat’s eyes answered him with an equal expression of horror.
Huppy bounded up in front of them and skidded to a halt. “Tucker—Harry—help!”
“You got rabies, kiddo?” said Lulu Pigeon curiously.
“’Course not!” the puppy yelped. “In the park—we were fighting, earlier—not fighting really, just horsing around—I took on Big Louie—and all of a sudden the cops were there!” His breath came in pants. “They thought we were serious—and they don’t much like stray dogs, anyway—and they grabbed me!”
“They’re going to do it again!” shouted Tucker. “Run, Huppy!”
An officer made a dive for the dog, but seized empty air as he darted off in a flash of fur, zigzagging to escape, first right, then left, then left again. The officers were closing in. A final leap to the right—he was trapped. Not quite. He dashed between a policeman’s legs, paused an instant, and disappeared. The policeman followed him into nothing.
“Oh, my gosh!” groaned Harry. “He’s jumped down to the shuttle tracks.”
“Let’s hope she’s not running on Track Number One tonight,” said Lulu Pigeon.
“Fly out there and give us bulletins!” commanded Tucker.
Lulu paddled through the air and settled on the railing above the shuttle tracks, where a dark tunnel led toward Grand Central Station.
“That, I take it, is Huppy. A fugitive from the law. If you think—”
Harry Cat forgot his manners. “For heaven’s sake, shut up!” Then remembered them long enough to add, “Miss Catherine, please. Till we get this settled.”
“Lulu!” called Tucker. “What’s happening—”
They could hear her faintly: “Go, Huppy, go!”
In the black distance, shouting grew fainter and fainter. So did the barking. The shouting and barking stopped all at once. And changed—in
to fright. And changed direction—grew louder and louder.
“Uh-oh!” Lulu Pigeon left her perch. “She is on Number One!”
The animals in the drainpipe now had the chance to see something that very few New York human beings or animals have ever observed. And that is, a geyser of policemen erupting from the shuttle tracks and tumbling to safety. In back of them, in the biggest jump of his life—there’s nothing like the lights and roar of a subway train to give you inspiration (when you’re on the tracks, that is)—came Huppy. He landed right side up on the platform, unlike the officers, who were rolling around on their backs congratulating themselves and each other on still being alive. The dog ran to his friends.
“Are you crazy, Huppy?” said Tucker Mouse. “To jump—”
“I don’t care! I’ll do anything before I’ll ever be caught again! That’s what happened before. When the cops grabbed me, they put me in a police car. And then they shut the door! I waited there for hours while they chased the rest of the pack. But they didn’t catch anybody else. And when they came back—” He suddenly stopped.
“Yes?” prompted Harry. “When they got back?”
“Well,” Huppy stammered, “I was really awfully scared, you know—I could guess where they were taking me—so when the door to the car came open, and I saw the freedom outside, I—I—”
“Huppy,” demanded Harry sternly, “what did you do?”
“Well—I sort of bit one cop, I guess.” The dog’s shaggy head hung down.
“That’s grand!” said Tucker. “No wonder they think you have rabies.”
“By the way, you guys,” said Lulu Pigeon, perched now in the empty air above them, “I wouldn’t want to upset anybody, but—here they come again!”
“Wait!” Harry grabbed a clawful of Huppy’s tail and pulled him back out of his terrified flight. “It’s no good just running. We’ve got to get you hidden somewhere.” His eyes rummaged the subway station. The closets where the cleanup men stored their buckets and mops were too far away, but—“There. That trash basket! The rest of us’ll create a diversion, and, Huppy, you jump in. Lulu, bang around the policemen’s heads—”
“Groovy!” The pigeon clapped her wings.
“—but no pecking at eyes now. I’ll pretend to make friends and rub their legs. Tucker—just do whatever comes to mind.”
“My mad-mouse face!” decided Tucker. “It’ll scare them silly.”
“And, Miss Catherine—”
“I?” exclaimed the Siamese in astonishment. “You expect me to become involved with the police?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do! Just tiptoe out there on your little pink paws and jump in the basket after Huppy and cover him up with waste paper—”
“Really, Harry!”
“—and I’ll apologize for my language later. Ready, folks? Here we go!”
In a rush—and from nowhere, it seemed to the policemen—two cats, one pigeon, and one overactive mouse surrounded the mad dog they were after. Despite her misgivings, Miss Catherine had been swept along and contributed her bit to the chaos.
“Hey, what are these animals doing?” said one officer.
“They got a zoo down here?” said another.
“Get away from me!” said the third. He shook his left leg, where Harry Cat was scratching his back and purring like a friendly dragon.
Lulu picked out the biggest, best-looking cop and perched on his shoulder. He twisted his head, uncertain of his feelings for pigeons, and looked at her with mixed emotions. She looked right back, but with romance in her beady black eyes, and murmured coyly, “Ooooo!” Her act proved sufficiently diverting to rivet him on the spot.
Tucker finally succeeded, after several squeaks, in attracting the attention of his officer and did his mad-mouse face. Which meant, he jumped up in the air as high as he could, stuck out his tongue, and crossed his eyes. It didn’t exactly frighten the policeman—in fact, the only person it ever had frightened was Louisa, the timid, middle-aged lady who worked in the lunch stand—but it shocked him, nonetheless. (As well it might. Nothing like it had ever been seen by a member of the New York police force before.) He stared at Tucker in disbelief and said to his friends, “Will you look at this nutty mouse!”
That broke up Lulu. Her passion for the tall policeman evaporated in burbles of laughter. She got to oo-oo-ooing so loudly and uncontrollably that, in order to brace herself, she wrapped one wing around his neck and leaned her head against his head.
Under cover of all this outlandish activity, Huppy sneaked behind the officers, made a quiet leap into the trash basket and landed, with barely a rustle, in the midst of a pulled-apart copy of Sunday’s New York Times. Which meant there was quite a lot of paper to hide in. Miss Catherine followed through the air—very gracefully, for a cat her age—and began to claw the loose sheets over him.
With much effort, the two policemen managed to detach themselves from their new-found friends Harry Cat and Lulu Pigeon. Harry was finally uncoiled like a snake from one officer’s leg, and Lulu was unceremoniously scraped from a broad blue-uniformed shoulder. She was laughing too hard to fly, however, and fell down to the floor with a plop. Still shivering, she stood up and waddled into a hole in the wall. The cat pranced after her. And the mouse, after one last Halloween “Boo!”, scooted in behind the two of them.
“Boy!” Tucker’s victim—or rather, his audience—took off his cap and scratched his head. “You never know what you’re gonna see when you’ve got the duty at night in Times Square.”
“Where’s the pooch?” said a fellow officer.
“Must have made his escape.”
“Thank goodness,” breathed Harry Cat, in the drainpipe.
“Just save your thanks,” whispered Tucker. “My cop is scrounging around the trash basket.”
“Hey, you guys!” called Tucker’s cop. “There’s something in here.” His hand flashed down and pulled up—“First mice, now this!”
“This” proved to be Miss Catherine Cat. The officer was holding her by the back of the neck. And although that is the way you are supposed to hold cats, Miss Catherine resented it terribly. Horatio would never have dared to manhandle her thus. She let her disapproval be known by wriggling and spitting fiercely.
“Stop laughing, Lulu!” said Harry.
“Boy, you two throw a great dinner party!” The pigeon propped herself against the wall.
“The party was an hour ago,” said Tucker. “This is trouble!”
“Whatever it is, I love it!” gasped Lulu.
“So what’ll we do with the fur ball?” asked Tucker’s cop.
The other two thought a minute. Then Lulu’s decided, “Better take it back to the station house.”
“Yeah,” Harry’s agreed. “We lose a dog—we catch a cat.”
To Miss Catherine, the “station house” sounded very much like “jail.” Her legs flew out, stiff; her fur crackled with electricity; her spitting changed into wild shrieks: Miss Catherine became a bolt of feline lightning, held at arm’s length by a wary policeman.
“Wow! Some wildcat!”
“Harry,” urged Tucker quietly, “you’ve got to do something!”
“Aw, let ’em take her,” Lulu advised. “A night in the pokey’ll do her good!”
“Harry—they’re leaving.”
“Well, I hate to interfere with due process of law,” said Harry Cat, “but—”
He dashed from the drainpipe, slowed, slipped up behind the policemen, who were now on the stairs leading out of the station—and soundlessly mixed himself up with the feet of the one who was carrying Miss Catherine.
“Hey!”
“Watch it! There’s another one.”
Down came the officer, still holding Miss Catherine aloft. She yanked herself free, spun twice in the air, but with all her cat’s instincts still functioning, she landed right side up, on feet that already were running. In a flash she was down the stairs—in the drainpipe—safe.
Harry wrestled his way
through grasping hands. He gained open space. With a rush he, too, was among his friends.
For a while, without much enthusiasm, the policemen searched at the pipe’s opening. Tucker’s cop was even brave enough to reach in his hand—but not too far: where there was a mouse there might be rats. The animals backed against the wall.
“You want me to peck that hand?” offered Lulu.
“No!” whispered Harry. “Just hush up, that’s all.”
Before long—“The heck with it!” said Lulu’s cop.
Harry’s gave the opening a futile kick. “There’s something strange going on in there.”
He was right, of course. But not even the police know all the strange things that go on in New York.
TEN
Max
An hour later the animals were all huddled in a parking lot near the corner of Forty-second Street and Tenth Avenue. While Tucker stood guard—on the lookout for policemen and other overly inquisitive people—Harry had coaxed Huppy out of the trash basket. It took a great deal of cajoling and reassuring before the dog’s fur-covered eyes appeared beneath the book-review section of the Sunday New York Times. After much encouragement he jumped out, and everyone padded, on paws and claws, as fast and silently as they could, away from Times Square.
Silently, that is, except Lulu. She insisted on flying ahead of them and squawking warnings—“Squad car ahead!” “Two bums in a doorway on the right!”—at the top of her voice. Despite her help, they escaped from the crowded blocks to an area where even Forty-second Street was deserted.
“Well—this is it,” said Harry, with a flick of finality in his tail. “We’ve got to decide what to do.”
“Before your deliberations begin,” said Miss Catherine, “I shall bid you good night.” For most of the hour since her unladylike escape—the indignity of it still rankled—she had crouched in a cranny of the drainpipe, trembling, but now that Tenth Avenue stretched ahead of her, the path to the safety and comfort of Horatio’s apartment, her old arrogance returned. “So pleased to have met you all!” Her smile glittered as cheerfully as the ice in the parking lot behind them. “Such a nice meal, Mr. Mouse! Harry—I trust that I’ll see you again. But give me a couple of days to recuperate. I haven’t had so much excitement since the apartment two floors down caught fire!” She laughed—at nothing especially funny, perhaps just at her own embarrassment, to be leaving them in the lurch.
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