James, Fabulous Feline

by Harriet Hahn

  James sipped some more champagne and chuckled a really evil chuckle.

  At last I realized James was tiring fast, so we said good night and caught a cab home. On the way we passed a lighted bill-board from which the face of a grey cat with paws outstretched invited one and all to buy Purr-Porridge. James covered his eyes.

  “Did you enjoy the benefit?” I asked when we got home.

  James grinned.

  “Want to come in?”

  James shook his head and trotted upstairs. At the turn he stopped, looked back at me and winked. He had something on his mind that pleased him. I heard him scratching on the door upstairs as I closed the door to my flat.

  The next morning James scratched at my door very early. I was scarcely awake, but he was a determined cat. He stood in front of the framed photograph of himself and pointed.

  “You want to see Tor?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Shep?” He nodded. He continued to point. “Jane, too?” He nodded.

  “Let’s see if I have this right,” I said. “You want to see Shep and Jane as soon as possible.”

  James nodded.

  “Very well,” I said, “I’ll arrange it.” I had some misgivings. James was, at the moment, very angry with Shep and Jane, particularly Jane.

  It happened that they were free and that very afternoon both of them arrived in the van, came upstairs, stumbled over the cases of Purr-Porridge and settled down for a pleasant afternoon.

  However, James, steely determination in every move, hopped onto the windowsill and pointed to the van. Then he stood in front of Shep, then Jane, then me and pointed. His last instruction concerned the cases in the hall.

  “You mean you want us to put the cases in the van?” I asked. James nodded.

  That was what he had in mind. Shep shrugged, gave James a grin, picked up a case and started for the elevator. We loaded the cases on the elevator. Jane and James rode down. We unloaded with difficulty and eventually got the three cases in the back of the van. James jumped in last. He was carrying in his mouth the map we had used when we photographed the cats of London. Various locations were marked on it, and I had kept it on the table as a souvenir.

  James placed himself next to Shep, who was driving, and pointed to the market area where we had found the mother and kittens.

  A dim light began to glow in my mind.

  “James,” I asked, “do you want to feed starving cats?”

  James patted me gently and gave me his so-you-finally-got-it look.

  Shep started the van and we moved off in the direction of the street market.

  “How are we going to feed starving cats?” asked Jane.

  James looked disgusted. He pointed to the cases in the back of the van.

  Shep let out a howl of laughter. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “We’re going to feed Purr-Porridge to starving cats.”

  James nodded.

  “I still don’t see,” said Jane.

  Shep was laughing as he drove. “You’ll find out” was all he would say.

  We arrived at the market site. For some reason the market was not too busy, and the nearby alleys and yards were nearly deserted. Shep parked the van and opened the top case. Each can of Purr-Porridge had a self-opening top.

  James indicated that the tops were to be pulled off and left in the van. Shep set to work. James got out of the van and stood on the pavement. Shep put an open can on the street. James picked it up and carried it to a sheltered corner and laid it down. He brushed out his mouth and repeated the process, putting the open can in another protected place. James turned to Jane, who was watching, and waved at her.

  “James wants you to get to work,” laughed Shep.

  “This is silly,” said Jane. She went to work distributing cans, however.

  Once Shep had started the project he was an enthusiastic leader. He called us to a halt and looked at the map.

  “James,” he said, “look here, there are all sorts of really devastated areas of London. Let’s take our supplies there. These cats get enough out of the market.”

  James grinned and agreed. We packed up and set forth. Shep picked spots. James explored when we arrived and then showed us where to put the cans. After the first two or three cans, James refused to place them. He had to carry them in his mouth and he could not stand the taste.

  In a deserted area James had found some skinny cats and we left some Purr-Porridge. James restrained Shep as we began to leave. He wanted to see what would happen. We sat quietly for a few minutes and watched as one or two cats sniffed the proffered cans. The first reaction was indifference. However, hunger is a powerful force and at last the cats began to eat. James nodded, satisfied, and we continued on our mission of mercy until all the cases were empty and dusk was beginning to make it hard to see.

  “I’ll say this for you, James,” said Jane as we finished. “You may be a snob but you are certainly generous.”

  James gave her a small smile, the first since the commercial, stretched himself and rubbed his cheek against Shep’s face.

  “We’re friends again?” Shep asked.

  James grinned.

  “I’ll take care of the empty cases,” said Shep as he and Jane dropped us off at Baron’s. “Thanks for a great adventure.”

  We waved the van off and then went in. It was late.

  “Come in for a little supper?” I asked.

  We were in the middle of Hunter’s soup and milk when Mrs. March knocked.

  “My, you’re late tonight, where have you been?” she asked.

  “James put on a benefit,” I answered.

  “Oh, come now!” said Mrs. March. “You do have a sense of humor.”

  As he left, James shook his head and shrugged as if to say “She’ll never understand.”

  The next day James and I went marketing. He was his old, happy self. He managed to overturn a display of Purr-Porridge with a poster showing his picture, which had been set up in Sainsbury’s, but otherwise he was quite cheerful, even playful. He saw some smoked pheasant that appealed to him. Of course, I bought some.

  Helena and Poppy came by in the afternoon. Helena’s baby was due soon, and she and Lord Henry came to London often to see her doctor and take natural childbirth instruction. She stretched out on the sofa and Poppy sprawled in the big chair. James stretched out next to Helena, lying along her protruding tummy. Suddenly he started, turned and looked at the round mound next to him. He could see nothing. He lay down again. In no time he was up again.

  Helena was laughing. “That’s the baby, James dear,” she said. “It’s kicking inside me, and in about a month it will be ready to come out and live in the world.” She took James’s paws and held them against her for a minute and then released them. James, with considerable dignity, removed himself to a position near Helena’s head on the arm of the sofa and continued to watch her with some suspicion.

  “I have a great idea,” said Poppy. “I want to marry Roger and he wants to marry me but I can’t bear all his money, so I have decided that he should take as income the same amount I make, and we’ll live on that and give the rest to starving Africa.” She smiled at the success of her effort to solve the problem.

  “Possible,” said Helena, “but suppose you get pregnant and have to stop working, or you get sick, or you want to go back to do graduate work. If you have done this right, you have given all Roger’s assets to a foundation and you have only one income. Suddenly your standard of living is cut in half and you prevent Roger from doing what he does brilliantly. You would feel fulfilled and he would feel useless.”

  “I never thought of that,” Poppy admitted. “I guess we aren’t suited at all, even though we have a wonderful time together. After the benefit he came back to my apartment and he’s been there ever since, most of the time anyway. By the way, James,” she added, patting him on the head, “thank you for the earrings. I really love them.”

  James was looking at Poppy Balsom through half-shut eyes. He shook his h
ead back and forth. He clearly thinks she is eccentric. Anyone knows that wealth, preferably inherited, is a most desirable commodity without which one is forced to eat Purr-Porridge.

  “Come on, Poppy,” said Helena, getting up. “It’s time for the three of us to go.” She patted her tummy knowingly. “When does the trial start? I want to be there to see James testify,” she said at the door.

  “In two days,” I told her, and we watched them as the elevator slowly descended.

  After they left, James and I went over to Thwaites to see what was on show in the great room. There we picked up our friends and all went off to dinner at a restaurant where James is known. The conversation turned to the depredations of Mr. Wentworth. We invited Bob Scott, one of the most knowledgeable dealers in fine art in the city, and he explained the operation to us.

  “I think it all started when the board of the Huntingdown decided that the museum store should not only stock reproductions of the best-known items but also sell some little-known items that lent themselves to reproduction, along with small pamphlets of information about the objects. As long as the store was selling reproductions of very famous pieces, it had a kind of protection. Scholars knew these pieces very well. They often came to see them and would recognize a fake almost immediately. But the small eleventh-century stone figure that turns out now to have been replaced with a reproduction was not at all well known and seldom looked at by anybody. I talked to Costain about it and he thinks it was the first of Wentworth’s thefts.”

  “Doesn’t the museum have some controls?” asked someone.

  “Sure,” said Scott. “It worked this way: The decision was made to reproduce the piece. An order was sent to pick it up from its position on display—you see those little cards in museums all the time saying “Removed for study” or such like. Then Wentworth, who is very good at what he does, by the way, made his copies and returned not the original but one of the copies to an assistant in the curator’s office, who replaced it and marked the return on the appropriate form. The remaining copies would be stored for use in the shop, and the original, after a brief time, would be delivered to the dealer, who already had sold it to some collector out of the country who was willing to ask no questions. If anyone questioned the object returned to display at the time it was returned, Wentworth would say ‘Oops’ and send back the original. Nothing lost. All the paperwork straight. Lots of people handle the stuff, no trace. Now, thanks to our Yank friend here, the scam is over.”

  “Not me,” I said. “It was James who found the originals.”

  “Yes, but why the terra-cottas?” someone asked. “Weren’t they very risky?”

  “Not really,” said Scott. “After all, they had just been discovered. Almost no one had even seen them. On the other hand, people have been speculating about their existence for years, and there are other collectors besides old G. L. who would gladly pay almost any price and say not one word about where they came from.”

  He turned to me, “Could you have been fooled?” he asked.

  “The reproductions were damned good,” I had to admit. “It might have worked except that he didn’t know about the monogram and so didn’t take care to reproduce it. That’s what James found. I was suspicious, but James knew.”

  “Well, it will be interesting to see what happens,” said Scott. “There doesn’t seem to be any hard evidence to counter his claim that it was all a mistake.”

  James smiled and lapped a little more red wine. I winked at him and he winked back, and we all finished dinner, and James and I went home to bed.

  The “Old Bailey” was the name given, I think almost affectionately, to the building where the London criminal courts are housed. It is a relatively new building, square, not very attractive, not at all ornate, built on the site of the old Newgate prison. James and I presented ourselves there the next morning, with James in the carry-bag until we were in the building. We sat in the hall and waited a few minutes for Mr. Graves, who appeared neatly buttoned up with umbrella in hand, though it was a lovely summer day. He was followed shortly by Sir A. Grant Paine, Queen’s Counsel (Q.C.), which means he is a very distinguished barrister. Sir Grant looked as though he had been tearing around all night. His coattails flew as he trotted along, and all his pockets were full.

  He waved us a cheery good morning and disappeared.

  “He must get robed,” Mr. Graves explained.

  “Can we go in?” I asked.

  “Not till you are called. Witnesses are not allowed to listen to the testimony of others,” said Mr. Graves. “Someone will come to get you at the right time.”

  So we sat outside the courtroom and watched the passing scene, and James took a nap until a bailiff came to get us and we entered the courtroom, where a judge in a red robe and long curly wig sat behind a large desk with a solid front on a raised platform not too different from the courtrooms in the United States. The principal difference I could see was that the spectators were not seated in the courtroom proper, but in a balcony hanging from the side of the room, so placed that the witnesses giving evidence were facing directly away from them. I had a chance to look around, and there in the visitors’ balcony were Poppy and Helena and Lord Henry and about sixteen other people, all the gallery would hold.

  Seated at tables in front of the judge’s bench were the solicitors, Mr. Grey and his counterparts, and the barristers, who wore special white collars, gowns that looked like those worn by university graduates, and grey curly wigs with small tails hanging down. I noticed that Sir Grant’s wig was always slightly askew.

  James slipped into the bench where Mr. Graves was sitting, and I entered the witness box to give my testimony.

  Sir Grant led me through my meeting with Costain Cummings, my bringing the statues to the museum to be photographed and my nagging to get them back. Then I described going to the office and eventually finding the statues in Mr. Wentworth’s possession. I explained that the statues were now in the hands of my client in New York. Pictures of the statues were introduced. I identified them.

  “You recognized immediately that the statue on Mr. Wentworth’s desk was a reproduction?” asked Sir Grant.

  “No,” I replied, “James had already made that discovery and knocked the spurious statue onto the floor.”

  “Who is James?” interrupted the judge. “Can he give his own testimony?”

  “I hope so, my lord,” said Sir Grant, with the faintest hint of a twinkle. “He is here in the courtroom.” James had quietly moved to sit on the table in front of the lawyers, where he was clearly visible.

  The judge looked around the room. “Except for this witness, there is no one here who was not here when court convened this morning. Is he in the visitors’ gallery? Surely not if he is to give testimony.”

  “Your lordship, he is sitting on the table next to Mr. Grant.”

  “That cat!”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  The judge looked around. He raised his gavel to call for order but there was no noise.

  “You may proceed,” he said coldly.

  “So James made the discovery that the statue on the desk was a reproduction and knocked it onto the floor?”

  “Yes,” I said. “James found the originals in a crate on the floor beside the desk. Mr. Cummings and I took them out and verified the fact ourselves. Each of Roubiliac’s works, marble or terra-cotta, as far as we know, has a small, carefully hidden monogram on it. The reproductions, in addition to being a bit soft-looking, were without monogram. The originals have the monogram.”

  I then described the rest of our actions in taking the statues directly to Thwaites and sending them to the United States.

  “Did you discuss these events with James?”

  “Yes, I did at some length,” I answered. “James had been sitting in Mr. Wentworth’s office for some time before he summoned us. I wanted to find out what he had seen and heard.”

  The judge looked sternly at me. “Do I understand that you talk to this ca
t?” he asked.

  “Yes, your honor, I mean your lordship, I talk to him frequently.”

  James for his part waved a paw and nodded firmly. Sir Grant gave him a sharp shake of the head. James subsided. The judge watched the exchange and so did Mr. Wentworth.

  “Are the terra-cotta statues valuable?” the judge asked, still watching James.

  “Yes, they certainly are,” I answered.

  “Did you give the museum, or Costain Cummings himself, permission to reproduce the statues?” asked Sir Grant.

  “Certainly not,” was my answer.

  “That’s all, my lord,” said Sir Grant, and sat down.

  “You may cross-examine,” said the judge.

  Another barrister in gown and wig rose from the other end of the long table.

  “How many people know about these statues?” the barrister asked.

  “It’s hard to say. I have talked about my search to everyone I. know in the art world ever since I arrived in England nearly three months ago. The more people who knew what I was looking for, the better my chances of finding it. Once I found them, I told everyone about them. My client in New York was most interested in having them photographed and documented at the Huntingdown, but not reproduced.”

  “Your client’s collection is quite extensive, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he ever loaned any items to a museum or other place where the public might see them?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “So you might have sent the reproductions and kept the originals yourself without his being any the wiser, might you not?”