The Cat Who Turned On and Off

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  Shortly after, when QwiIleran returned to the Ellsworth house to pick up the Cobb car, he did some treasure hunting of his own. He looked for footprints and tire tracks in the snow and telltale marks in the dust of the stripped rooms.

  White plaster dust had settled everywhere. Large objects had been dragged through it, leaving dark trails, and footprints had piled on footprints, but here and there a mark could be distinguished. Qwilleran noticed the patterned treads of boots, the imprint of a claw hammer, some regularly spaced dots (made by crutches?), and even the pawprints of a large animal, and a series of feathery arabesques in the dust, perhaps caused by the switching of a tail. Evidently every dealer in Junktown had been through the Ellsworth house at one time or another; recent prints were lightly filmed over and the older ones were almost covered.

  Qwilleran dug Cobb's flashlight out of a pile of rubble and retrieved his crowbar. Then he went upstairs.

  Everything on the stair treads had been obliterated, but on the landing there was evidence of three kinds of footwear, and although it was impossible to guess whether all three had been there at the same time, they were sharp enough to be recent. The newsman copied the tread marks on the folded sheet of newsprint that was always in his pocket. One print was a network of diamond shapes, another was a series of closely spaced dots, and the third was crossbarred. His own galoshes left a pattern of small circles.

  The tire tracks in the yard contributed nothing to Qwilleran's investigation. There was no telling how many junkers had been in and out of the driveway. Tire tracks had crisscrossed and frozen and melted and frozen again, and snow had frosted the unreadable hieroglyphics.

  Qwilleran backed the tan station wagon out of its hiding place in the backyard, and as he pulled away, he noticed that the vehicle left a rectangle of gray in the field of white snow. He also noticed another such rectangle nearby. Two cars had parked there on the dirty ice Sunday night, after which a light snow had fallen. Qwilleran jumped out of the wagon, thanked fate and Mary Duckworth for the tape line in his pocket, and measured the length and breadth of the second rectangle. It was shorter than the imprint left by the Cobb wagon, and it was not quite square at one corner, the snow having drifted in from the northwest.

  Qwilleran's findings did not amount to much, he had to admit. Even if the owner of the second car were known, there was no proof that he had engineered Cobb's fatal fall. Nevertheless, the mere routine of investigation was exhilarating to Qwilleran, and he drove from the scene with a feeling of accomplishment. On second impulse he drove back into the Ellsworth yard, entered the house, and salvaged two items for the Cobb Junkery: a marble mantel and a chandelier of blackened brass.

  Later he drove Mrs. Cobb to the airport.

  "I don't have anything black to wear," she said wearily. "C. C. always liked me to wear bright colors. Pink especially." She huddled on the car seat in her cheap coat with imitation fur lining, her pink crocheted church-going hat, and her two pairs of glasses hanging from ribbons." "You can't pick up something in Cleveland," Qwilleran Isaid, "if you think it's necessary. Who's going to meet you there?" "My brother-in-law-and Dennis, if he gets in from St, Louis." "Is that your son?" "Yes." "What's he doing in St. Louis?" "He finished school last June and just started his first job." "Does he like antiques?" "Oh, dear, no! He's an architect!" Keep her talking, Qwilleran thought. "How old is he?" "Twenty-two." "Single?" "Engaged. She's a nice girl. I wanted to give them some antique silver for Christmas, but Dennis doesn't approve of anything old…. Oh, dear! I forgot the presents for the mailman and the milkman. There are two envelopes behind the clock in the kitchen — with a card and a little money in them. Will you see that they get them — in case I don't come home right away? I wrapped up a little Christmas treat for" Koko and Yum Yum, too. It's in the top drawer of the Empire chest. And tell Ben that I'll make his bourbon cake when I get back from the — from Cleveland." "How do you make bourbon cake?" Keep her talking.

  "With eggs and flour and walnuts and raisins and a cup of bourbon." "Nothing could beat that coconut cake you made yesterday." "Coconut was C. C.'s favorite," she said, and then she, fell silent, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing beyond the windshield.

  14

  When Qwilleran returned from the airport in the Cobb station wagon, he saw a fifth of a ton of Fluxion photographer squeezing into a Volkswagen at the curb.

  "Tiny!" he hailed him. "Did you get everything?" "I went to five places," Tiny said. "Shot six rolls." "I've got another idea. Do you have a wide angle lens? How about shooting a picture of my apartment? To show how people live in Junktown." The staircase groaned when the photographer followed Qwilleran upstairs, and Yum Yum gave one look at the outsize stranger decked with strange apparatus and promptly took flight. Koko observed the proceedings with aplomb.

  Tiny cast a bilious glance around the room. "How can you live with these crazy anachronisms?" "They grow on you," Qwilleran said smugly.

  "Is that a bed? Looks like a funeral barge on the Nile. And who's your embalmed friend over the fireplace? You know, these junk dealers are a bunch of graverobbers. One guy wanted me to photograph a dead cat, and those three dames with all that rusty tin were swooning over some burial jewelry from an Inca tomb." "You're not tuned in," Qwilleran said with the casual air of authority that comes easily to a newsman after three days on a new beat. "Antiques have character — a sense of history. See this bookrack? You wonder where it's been — who owned it — what books it's held-who polished the brass. An English butler? A Massachusetts poet? An Ohio schoolteacher?" "You're a bunch of necrophiles," said Tiny. "My God! Even the cat!" He stared at Yum Yum, trudging into the room with a small dead mouse.

  "Drop that dirty thing!" Qwilleran shouted, stamping his foot.

  She dropped it and streaked out of sight. He scooped up the gray morsel on a sheet of paper, rushed it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.

  After Tiny had left, Qwilleran sat at his typewriter, aware of an uncommon silence in the house. The cats were snoozing, the Cobb radio was quiet, Ben was about his business elsewhere, and The Junkery was closed. When the doorbell rang, it startled him.

  There was a man waiting on the stoop — an ordinary — looking man in an ordinary-looking gray car coat.

  "Sorry to bother you," he said. "I'm Hollis Prantz. I have a shop down the street. Just heard the bad news about brother Cobb." Qwilleran nodded with the appropriate amount of gloom.

  "Rotten time of year to have it happen," said Prantz. "I hear Mrs. Cobb has left town." "She went to Cleveland for the funeral." "Well, tell you why I came. Cobb was saving some old radios for me, and I could probably unload them in my shop during the shindig tomorrow. Mrs. Cobb would appreciate it, I'm sure. Every little bit helps at a time like this." Qwilleran waved toward The Junkery. "Want to go in and have a look?" "Oh, they wouldn't be in their shop. Cobb had put them aside in his apartment, he said." The newsman took time to pat his moustache before saying, "Okay, go on upstairs," and he added, "I'll help you look." "Don't trouble yourself. I'll find them." The dealer bounded up the stairs, two at a time.

  "No trouble," Qwilleran insisted, following as quickly as he could and trying to catch a glimpse of the man's boot soles. He stayed close behind as Prantz opened a coat closet, the window seat, the armoire.

  "Look, friend, I hate to take up your time. I know you must be busy. You're writing that series for the paper, they tell me." "No problem," said Qwilleran. "Glad to stretch my legs." He watched the dealer's eyes as they roved around the apartment and returned repeatedly to the desk — the apothecary desk with its tall bank of miniature drawers. Crowded on top of the lofty superstructure were some pewter candlesticks, the stuffed owl, a tin box, a handful of envelopes, and the Cobbs' overworked radio.

  "What I'm interested in," said Prantz, "is equipment from the early days — crystal sets and old beehive radios. Not so easy to come by…. Well, sorry to trouble you." "I'll be in to see your shop," Qwilleran said, ushering him out of the
apartment.

  "Sure! It's a little unusual, and you might get a bang out of it." The newsman looked at the dealer's footwear. "Say, did you buy those boots around here? I need a pair like that." "No, these are old," said Prantz. "I don't even remember where I bought them, but they're just ordinary boots." "Do the soles have a good grip?" "Good enough, although the treads are beginning to wear slick." The dealer left without offering Qwilleran a view of his soles, and the newsman telephoned Mary Duckworth at once. "What do you know about Hollis Prantz?" he asked.

  "Not much. He's new on the street. He sells tech-tiques, whatever they may be." "I noticed his shop the first day I was here. Looks like a TV repair shop." "He has some preposterous theories." "About what?" "About 'artificially accelerated antiquity. Frankly, I haven't decided whether he's a prophetic genius or a psychopath." "Has he been friendly with the Cobbs?" "He tries to be friendly with everyone. Really too friendly. Why are you interested?" "Prantz was just over here. Invited me to see his shop," the newsman said. "By the way, have you ever been to the Ellsworth house?" "No, I haven't, but I know which one it is. The Italianate sandstone on Fifteenth Street." "When you go scrounging, do you ever take Hepplewhite?" "Scrounging! I never go scrounging! I handle nothing but eighteenth century English." After his conversation with Mary, Qwilleran looked for Koko. "Come on, old boy," he said to the room at large. "I've got an assignment for you." There was no response from Koko, but Yum Yum was staring at the third shelf of the book cupboard, and that meant he was snuggling behind the biographies. That's where Qwilleran had first met Koko — on a shelf between the lives of Van Gogh and Leonardo da Vinci.

  He pulled the cat out and showed him a tangle of blue leather straps and white cord. "Do you know what this is?" Koko had not worn the harness since the day in early autumn when he had saved Qwilleran's life. On that occasion he had performed some sleight-of-paw with the four yards of nylon cord that served as a leash. Now he allowed the halter to be slipped over his head and the belt to be buckled under his soft white underside. His body pulsed with a rasping purr of anticipation.

  "We'll leave Yum Yum here to mind the house," Qwilleran told him, "and we'll go and play bloodhound." As soon as the apartment door was opened, Koko bounded like a rabbit toward the furniture stacked at the front end of the hall, and before Qwilleran could haul in the cord, the cat had squeezed between the spindles of a chair, scuttled under a chest of drawers, circled the leg of a spinning wheel, and effectively tangled the leash, leaving himself free to sniff the finial hidden in the jumble.

  "You think you're smart, don't you?" Qwilleran said, as he worked to free the cord and extricate the cat. Some minutes later, he lugged the protesting Koko, squirming and squawking, to the door of the Cobb apartment. "I have news for you. This is where we're going to explore." Koko sniffed the corner of the worn Oriental rug before setting foot on it.

  Then, to Qwilleran's delight, he walked directly to the apothecary desk, stopping only to scratch his back on a copper coalhod filled with magazines. At the desk Koko hopped to the chair seat and then to the writing surface, where he moved his nose from right to left across an envelope that had come in the mail.

  "Find anything interesting?" Qwilleran inquired, but it was only a telephone bill.

  Next Koko reared on his haunches and regarded the bank of small drawers — twenty-four of them with white porcelain knobs — and selected one on which to rub his jaw. His white fangs clicked on the white ceramic, and Qwilleran gingerly opened the drawer he indicated. It contained a set of false teeth made of wood. Guiltily the newsman opened other drawers and found battered silver spoons, primitive eyeglasses, tarnished jewelry, and a few bracelets made of hair.

  Most of the drawers were empty.

  While Qwilleran was thus occupied, a feather floated past his nose. Koko had stealthily risen to the top of the drawer deck and was nuzzling the stuffed owl.

  "I might have known!" Qwilleran said in disgust. "Get down! Get away from that bird!" Koko sailed to the floor and stalked haughtily from the apartment, leading the newsman behind him on a slack leash.

  "I'm disappointed in you," the man told him. "You used to be good at this sort of thing. Let's try the attic." The attic room had been romantically remodeled to resemble a barn, the walls paneled with silvery weathered planks and hung with milking stools, oil lanterns, and old farm implements. A papier-m?ch‚ steer, relic of a nineteenth century butcher shop, glared out of a comer stall, and a white leghorn brooded on a nest of straw, In the center of the room, chairs were arranged in a circle, and Qwilleran was fascinated by their decrepitude, He noted an ice cream parlor chair of wire construction, badly bent; a Windsor with two spindles missing; a porch rocker with one arm, and other seating pieces in various stages of collapse. While he was viewing these derelicts, Koko was stalking the white feathered biddy on her nest.

  The man yanked the leash. "I don't know what's happened to you," he said. "Pigeons — owls — hens! I think I'm feeding you too much poultry. Come on. Let's go." Koko rushed downstairs and clamored to get into his apartment, where Yum Yum was calling him with high, pitched mews.

  "Oh, no, you don't! We have one more investigation to make, And this time try to be objective." In Ben's apartment furniture was herded together with- out plan, and every surface was piled high with items of little worth. Ben's long knitted muffler was draped incongruously over the chandelier, dangling its soiled tassels, and his many hats — including the silk topper and the Santa Claus cap — were to be seen on tables, hatracks, chair seats and lamp chimneys.

  Qwilleran found the apartment layout similar to his own, with the addition of a large bay window in the front. With one ear tuned to the sound of a downstairs door opening, he stepped cautiously into each room, finding dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and a ring in the bathtub, as he had expected, In the dressing room, jammed to the ceiling with bundles and boxes, he looked for boots, but Ben, wherever he was, had them on his feet.

  "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.

  15

  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.