The Cat Who Had 14 Tales

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  “At this point it’s hard to say,” the detective said, “but you may be able to help us. Have you noticed any strange incidents lately? Any unusual telephone calls?”

  “Yes,” said ONE. “Several times recently the phone has rung, and when we answered it, no one was there.”

  “That’s the usual method. They wait until they know you’re not at home.”

  ONE gazed into Phut Phat’s eyes. “Did the phone ring tonight while we were out, Phuffy?” she asked, shaking him lovingly. “If only Phut Phat could tell us what happened! He must have had a terrifying experience. Thank heaven he wasn’t harmed.”

  Phut Phat raised his paw to lick between his toes, still defiled with human blood.

  “If only Phuffy could tell us who was here!”

  Phut Phat paused with toes spread and pink tongue extended. He stared at ONE’s forehead.

  “Have you folks noticed any strangers in the neighborhood?” the lieutenant was asking. “Anyone who would arouse suspicion?”

  Phut Phat’s body tensed, and his blue eyes, brimming with knowledge, bored into that spot above ONE’s eyebrows.

  “I can’t think of anyone. Can you, John?”

  TWO shook his head.

  “Poor Phuffy,” said ONE. “See how he stares at me; he must be hungry. Does Phuffy want a little snack?”

  The cat squirmed.

  “About those bloodstains on the windowsill,” said the detective. “Would the cat attack anyone viciously enough to draw blood?”

  “Heavens, no!” said ONE. “He’s just a pampered little house pet. We found him hiding under the bed, scared stiff.”

  “And you’re sure you can’t remember any unusual incident lately? Has anyone come to the house who might have seen the silver or jewelry? Repairman? Window washer?”

  “I wish I could be more helpful,” said ONE, “but honestly, I can’t think of a single suspect.”

  Phut Phat gave up!

  Wriggling free, he jumped down from ONE’s lap and walked toward the door with head depressed and hind legs stiff with disgust. He knew who it was. He knew! The man with the shiny stick. But it was useless to try to communicate. The human mind was so tightly closed that nothing important would ever penetrate. And ONE was so busy with her own chatter that her mind . . .

  The jingle of keys caught Phut Phat’s attention. He turned and saw TWO swinging his key chain back and forth, back and forth, and saying nothing. TWO always did more thinking than talking. Perhaps Phut Phat had been trying to communicate with the wrong mind. Perhaps TWO was really Number One in the household and ONE was Number Two.

  Phut Phat froze in his position of concentration, sitting tall and compact with tail stiff. The key chain swung back and forth, and Phut Phat fastened his blue eyes on three wrinkles just underneath TWO’s hairline. He concentrated. The key chain swung back and forth, back and forth. Phut Phat kept concentrating.

  “Wait a minute,” said TWO, coming out of his puzzled silence. “I just thought of something. Helen, remember that party we gave a couple of weeks ago? There was one guest we couldn’t account for—a man with a silver cane.”

  “Why, yes! He was curious about the coop on the fire escape. Why didn’t I think of him? Lieutenant, he was terribly interested in our silver collection.”

  TWO said: “Does that suggest anything to you, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, it does.” The detective exchanged nods with his partner.

  “This man,” ONE volunteered, “had a very cultivated voice and a charming manner. He walked with a limp.”

  “We know him,” the detective said grimly. “The limp is phony. We know his method and what you tell us fits perfectly. But we didn’t know he was operating in this neighborhood again.”

  ONE said: “What mystifies me is the blood on the windowsill.”

  Phut Phat arched his body in a long, luxurious stretch and walked from the room, looking for a soft, dark, quiet place. Now he would sleep. He felt relaxed and satisfied. He had made vital contact with a human mind, and perhaps—after all—there was hope. Some day they might learn the system, learn to open their minds and receive. They had a long way to go before they realized their potential. But there was hope.

  Weekend of the Big Puddle

  Ghosts were no novelty to Percy. In England, his birthplace, they had them all the time. But British ghosts had always shown their good breeding; the uncouth pair that turned up at Percy’s summer residence in Michigan left him outraged and chagrined.

  Percy was a comfortable middle-aged bachelor with quiet tastes and fastidious habits, who distributed his contempt equally among small children, yipping dogs, and noisy adults. His own manners were impeccable, his reputation blameless. In fact, Percy would have been considered somewhat stuffy, had he been a man. Being a cat, he was admired for his good behavior.

  He was a portly silver tabby with a gray-and-black coat patterned as precisely as a butterfly’s wing. Something about his strong, fierce face gave an impression of integrity, rather like a benevolent man-eating tiger.

  Percy spent summer weekends at a rustic chalet in the north woods—on the shore of the exclusive Big Pine Lake. Here he dozed away the hours in the company of Cornelius and Margaret or stared unblinking at the placid lake.

  Cornelius was a comfortable middle-aged attorney with equally quiet tastes. He too was portly and had Percy’s look of integrity. On weekends Cornelius worked jigsaw puzzles, took untaxing strolls with his wife, or went through the motions of fishing. Margaret knitted sweaters or puttered lovingly in the push-button kitchen. When they entertained, their guests were calm, temperate, and middle-aged, with no great desire to exert themselves. Everything was quite civilized and dull—the way Percy liked it—until the weekend of the big puddle.

  Bill Diddleton and his wife had been invited to spend Saturday and Sunday at the chalet. The bar was stocked with the expensive brands that Cornelius took pride in serving, and the refrigerator contained Margaret’s specialties: shrimp bisque, veal in aspic, and blueberry buckle. Her chief delight was the feeding of guests; for Cornelius the greatest pleasure came when he tied on a chef’s apron and broiled the steaks that he ordered from Texas.

  “I wonder what Bill’s new wife will be like,” Margaret murmured over her knitting as they awaited the arrival of the Diddletons. “I hope she appreciates good food.”

  “A piece of this puzzle is missing,” said Cornelius, frowning at a jigsaw version of the Mona Lisa.

  “It’s under your left foot, dear. Do you think Percy will object to Bill? He’s rather a boisterous character.”

  At the sound of his name Percy raised his head. He noticed the ball of yarn unwinding, but it failed to tempt him. He never disturbed Margaret’s knitting or Cornelius’s jigsaw puzzles.

  The man beamed a brotherly smile at the silver tabby. “Percy, the gentleman you are about to meet is an excellent client of mine, and we shall all endeavor to tolerate his bombast for thirty-six hours.”

  Percy squeezed his eyes in casual consent, but when the Diddletons arrived, shouting and squealing and creating a general uproar, he retired to the balcony where he could observe from a discreet distance.

  The woman, small and nervous, spoke in a shrill voice, and Percy put her in the classification with small yipping dogs. Nevertheless, he stared in fascination at her jewelry, which flashed in the shafts of sunlight slanting into the chalet. The man was muscular, arrogant, and active, like some of the boxer dogs Percy had encountered. The silver tabby had strong opinions about that particular breed.

  Upon entering the chalet Bill Diddleton caught sight of a horizontal beam spanning the living room, and he jumped up and hand-walked the length of it. The irregularity of this conduct made Percy squirm uncomfortably.

  “Well, well!” said Cornelius in his best genial tone. “After that exhibition of athletic prowess I daresay you are ready for a drink, my boy. And what is Mrs. Diddleton’s pleasure, may I ask?”

  “Call me Deedee,” she s
aid.

  “Indeed! So I shall. Now, might I offer you a fine eighteen-year-old Scotch?”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Bill. “Just show me the bar and I’ll mix you a drink you’ll never forget. Got any tomato juice?”

  “Bill’s famous for this cute drink,” said his wife. “It’s tomato juice, ginger ale, Scotch, and . . .” Rolling her eyes upward to recollect the fourth ingredient, she shrieked. A disembodied head with staring eyes was wedged between the balusters of the balcony railing.

  “That’s only our Percy,” Margaret explained. “He’s not as menacing as he looks.”

  “A cat! I can’t stand cats!”

  Percy sensed that the weekend was beginning poorly, and he was right. For lunch Margaret had planned a lobster soufflé, to be followed by her special salad that she prepared at the table, basking in the flattering comments of guests. On this occasion Bill Diddleton insisted, however, on presiding at the salad bowl.

  “You sit down and take it easy, Meg honey,” he said, “and I’ll show you how the experts toss greens.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful the way Bill takes over?” Deedee said. “He’s a wonderful cook. He made one of his wonderful cakes for this weekend.”

  “I call it a Lucky Seven torte,” Bill said. “Seven layers, with seven different kinds of booze. It has to ripen twenty-four hours before we can eat it . . . . What’s the matter, Meg? Afraid of a few calories?”

  “Not at all,” said Margaret lightly. “It’s just that I had planned—”

  “Now let’s get this straight, honey. I don’t want you folks going to a lot of trouble. It was great of you to invite us up here, and we want to do some of the work.”

  “Bill is so good-hearted,” Deedee whispered to Margaret.

  “And that’s not all, folks. I’ve brought four fantastic steaks, and tonight I’ll show you how to grill good beef.”

  “Indeed! Well, well!” said Cornelius, abashed and searching for a change of subject. “By the way, do you people like old cemeteries? There’s an abandoned graveyard back in the woods that’s rich in history. The tombstones,” he explained, picking up speed, “bear the names of old lumberjacks. At one time this was the finest lumbering country in the Midwest. There were fifty sawmills in the vicinity, and fifty saloons.”

  Cornelius was launching his favorite subject, on which he had done considerable research. He told how—when the log drive came down the river in the spring—thousands of loggers, wearing beards and red sashes, stormed the sawdust towns, howling and squirting tobacco juice and drinking everything in sight. The steel calks on their boots, sharp as ice picks, splintered the wooden sidewalks. They punctured stomachs, too, when a fight started. Loggers killed in saloon brawls were either dumped in the lake or—if they had any wages left—given burial in the cemetery. Twelve dollars bought a tombstone, inscription included.

  “After the lumbering industry moved west,” Cornelius went on, “the sawdust towns were destroyed by fire, but the tombstones can still be seen, with epitaphs referring to smallpox and moosebirds. When a lumberjack was killed—or sluiced, as they used to say—he was said to be reincarnated as a moosebird. Smallpox was a term used to describe a man’s body when it had been punctured by steel calks.”

  Margaret said: “We have two favorite stones—with misspelled inscriptions. Morgan Black was ‘sloosed’ in 1861 and Pigtail Beebe ‘died with his corks on’ in that same year.”

  “Let’s go!” Bill shouted. “I’ve got to see that boneyard. I feel like an old moosebird myself.”

  “Is there any poison ivy?” Deedee asked, shrinking into her chair.

  “Absolutely none,” Margaret reassured her. “We visit the cemetery every weekend.”

  Percy was glad to see the party leave for their stroll. They returned all too soon, and it was apparent that the adventure had captured the imagination of Bill Diddleton.

  “It’s a filthy shame to let that cemetery go to pot,” he said. “It would be fun to clear out the weeds, straighten the tombstones, and build a rail fence around it. I’d like to spend a week up here and fix it up.” A significant silence ensued, but he was not discouraged. “Hey, do any of those boys ever walk? What I mean, do you ever see any ghosts around here?”

  His wife protested. “Bill! Don’t even suggest it!”

  “I’ll bet I could go into a trance and get a couple of spirits to pay us a visit tonight.” He winked at Cornelius. “How about if I have a try at Morgan Black and Pigtail Beebe?”

  They were sitting around the fireplace after dinner. Bill threw his head back, stiffened his body, rolled his eyes, and started to mumble. An unearthly silence descended on the chalet, except for the snapping of logs in the fireplace.

  Margaret shivered, and in a moment Deedee screeched: “Stop it! It’s too spooky! It makes me nervous.”

  Bill jumped up and stirred the fire. “Okay, how about a nightcap? We better hit the sack if we’re going fishing at five in the morning. Hey, Meg honey, I’m leaving the Lucky Seven on the bar to ripen overnight. The cat won’t get into it, will he?”

  “Of course not,” Margaret said, and Percy—who had been watching the proceedings with disdain—turned his head away with a shudder.

  After the others had retired he prowled around the chalet in the dark, stretching with a sense of relief. The fire had burned down to a dull glow. It was a peaceful moonless night with nothing beyond the chalet windows but black sky, black lake, and black pine trees.

  Percy settled down on the hearth rug and was moistly licking his fur in the warmth of the waning fire when a sound in the top of the pines made him pause with his tongue extended. It was like the moaning of the upper branches that gave warning of a storm, yet his whiskers told him this had nothing to do with weather. As he peered at the black windows a presence came through the glass. It came gently and soundlessly. A gust of chilled air reached Percy’s damp fur.

  The presence that had entered the chalet began to utter a low, painful lament, swirling all the while in a formless mass. Then, as Percy watched with interest, it took shape—a beefy human shape.

  Apparitions were nothing new to Percy. As a young cat in England he had once tried to rub his back against some ghostly ankles and had found nothing there. This one was larger and rougher than the silver tabby had ever seen. As it became more clearly defined he observed a figure with a beard and a fuzzy cap, a burly jacket, and breeches stuffed into heavy boots. Click-click-click went the boots on the polished wood floor.

  “Holy Mackinaw!” said a hollow, reverberating voice. “What kind of a shanty would this be?” The apparition looked in wonder at the luxurious hearth rug, the brass ornaments on the fieldstone chimney breast, the glass-topped coffee table with half-finished jigsaw puzzle.

  Percy settled down comfortably to watch, tucking his legs under his body for warmth. A musty dampness pervaded the room. Click-click-click again. He turned his head to see another figure materializing behind him. Though dressed in the same rough clothing, it was smaller than the first and beardless, and it had a rope of hair hanging down its back.

  “Pigtail Beebe!” roared the first apparition in a harsh voice without substance. It was a sound that only a cat could hear.

  “I’m haywire if it ain’t Morgan Black!” exclaimed the other in the same kind of thundering whisper. The two loggers stood staring at each other with legs braced wide apart and arms hanging loose. “I got a thirst fit to drain a swamp,” Pigtail complained.

  “Me, I got a head as big as an ox,” said Morgan, groaning and touching his temples.

  “Likely we was both oiled up when we got sluiced. How’d you get yours, you orie-eyed ol’ coot?”

  “A jumped-up brawl in the Red Keg Saloon.” Morgan sat down wearily on the pine woodbox, removing his head and resting it on his lap, the better to massage his temples.

  Pigtail said with a ghostly chuckle: “They got me on the Sawdust Flats. I’d had me a few drinks of Eagle Sweat and was on the way to Sadie L
ou’s to get m’teeth fixed, as the sayin’ goes, when along come this bandy-legged Blue Noser, and I give him a squirt o’ B&L Black right in the eye. ‘Fore I knowed it, seven o’ them Blue Nosers come at me. When they got through puttin’ their boots to m’hide, I had the best case o’ smallpox you ever did see . . . . Never did get to Sadie Lou’s.”

  “That was in ’61,” said Morgan’s head noiselessly. “Good drive on the river that spring.”

  “An’ I was a catty man on the logs. I could ride a soap bubble to shore, I could.”

  “Still braggin’.”

  Pigtail sat down cautiously in Cornelius’s deep-cushioned leather chair. “Holy Mackinaw! This shanty is sure-thing candyside!” The logger began to sing, in an eerie whine. “Oh, our logs was piled up mountain high, and our cots was on the snow . . . in that godforsaken countree-e-e of Michigan-eye-o!”

  “Pipe down,” said Morgan. “My head’s aimin’ to go off like dynamite.”

  “You think you’re bad off? I got a thirst that’d dry up the Tittabawassee River. I could chaw an ear off the tin-plated fool what called us back! Why couldn’t they leave us be?”

  Morgan carefully fitted his head back on his shoulders. “It’s nigh to daylight. We’ll be goin’ soon.”

  “No sense goin’ without leavin’ a sign,” said Pigtail. “I’m feelin’ stakey. Yahow!” he yelled in a ghostly facsimile of a logger’s howl as he upended the coffee table and pulled the needles out of Margaret’s knitting. Percy cringed in horror.

  Then the logger began to swagger around the room. Click-click-click went his calks, although they left no mark on the polished wood floor. “What’s this jigamaree?” he said, as he pushed the seven-layer torte off the bar. It landed on the floorboards with a sickening splash. “Yahow-w-w!” There was a distant echo as a rooster at one of the inland farms announced the break of day.

  “Pipe down, you furriner!” Morgan warned, getting up from the woodbox with clenched fists. “You aimin’ to split m’head open? If I could get holt o’ you, I’d—”