In a fit of outrage Tucker became completely tongue-tied. Harry waited patiently till he’d spluttered himself into mere indigation. “For the rest of the time I was down there he called me ‘Tucker baby,’ too!”
“Insult to injury,” murmured the cat. “But what about Huppy?”
“Oh, he came sliding down, too—and knocked me flat on my back, he did. That made Lulu Pigeon—she was up in a tree, enjoying my discomfiture—laugh even louder. ‘Oo! oo! oo!’—you know how that kookoo bird laughs.”
“Get on with the story!” said Harry Cat, whose patience, about now, was running out.
“All right, all right. So Huppy knocks me down, I get up, and—oh, Harry, he’s grown! He’s huge! In less than a week he’s almost twice his size. No wonder, with what he’s been eating. So after I get up, the first thing I notice, besides his size, is this stain on the whiskers around his mouth. I say, ‘Huppy, what is that stain around your mouth?’ He licks at it and says, ‘Oh, that’s just blood.’”
“Blood!”
“Exactly what I meant to say myself—‘Blood!’—but before I could scream my anguish out, Huppy says, ‘Come on, Tucker baby.’ He too, by the way, is now calling me ‘Tucker baby’!—‘come on, Tucker baby! Take a slide yourself!’ And before I knew what was happening, he had grabbed the back of my neck in his teeth, dragged me up to the top of this mountainous drift, sat me down, pushed me off. And Harry, I have to admit—hic! hic! hic!” Tucker squeaked his raspy little laugh. “It’s quite a lot of fun! I had four slides and nearly wore off all my fur you-know-where. You should try it yourself some—”
“I’m going to clobber you!”
“O-kay! So I had four slides and then I said, ‘Huppy, enough of this childishness. What blood?’ ‘From the butcher shop!’ he happily announced, and launched himself down the slope again. You see, Harrykins, we needn’t have wasted our worry on Huppy. While we were down here in this drainpipe freezing our noses off, little Huppy was off carousing with Max and the other mutts. And I, Tucker Mouse, am here to tell you, Harry Cat, that Max knows this city even better than you do! They spent the blizzard in the toasty-warm cellar of an office building on Madison Avenue. Because Max knows all the buildings with sleepy night watchmen who sometimes leave the door unlocked or with watchmen frightened of snarling dogs—”
“Huppy snarls?”
“He’s learning fast!” said Tucker. “He gave me a very convincing snarl, to show. Just give him a couple weeks more, he’ll have added growling, barking, howling, all kinds of lovely doggy things to his repertory.”
“I don’t like that.” Harry shook his head.
“You’ll like what comes next even less. Just listen. The storm being over, Max leads the pack to the Upper East Side, where, on Lexington Avenue now, is located an especially expensive butcher shop—with a conveniently broken back window! Friend Max is also an expert on broken windows, broken doors, broken anything, where a dog can get in. And if nothing is broken, they’ve even got a big part-Saint Bernard named Louie—very small in the brains, however—whose specialty is rearing up on his hind legs and pressing down on door handles. At Max’s direction, of course. So anyway, for two whole days the dogs gorged themselves on top round ground, lamb chops, and prime rib roasts.” Tucker licked his lips at the thought of it all. “Which, despite how delicious the meat may have been, and despite that the place where they put the treasure was their own bulging bellies—is what you’d call stealing.”
“You’ve been known to pilfer from the lunch stand yourself.”
Tucker glared at the cat. “And since when did you turn down—”
“Oh, forget it.” Harry flicked his tail around his forelegs impatiently. “Is that all?”
“That is not all. All came at the end of my visit to dogsville. I managed to drag Huppy off to one side and talk to him privately. And I told him we’d found a place for him.”
“Did you tell him where?” Harry interrupted.
“I don’t know where yet. That was up to you. Why?”
“You’ll see. Go on.”
“So I told him we’d probably found him a home, and he said that what with the tasty raw meat he’d been eating and what with the fun of sliding down snowdrifts, he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to split from the gang! His very words: ‘split from the gang.’”
“All right. I get it.”
“So that is my story,” concluded Tucker. “We’ve got to hurry! Now what is yours?”
“Sit down,” said the cat. “You’re in for a shock.”
SIX
Miss Catherine
“He lives way uptown,” began Harry, “on the West Side, in the Sixties. It wasn’t too hard to follow him. I rode between the cars on the subway, away from the human beings, but where I could see him when he got off. The first problem came when we got to the apartment house.”
“In a slum?” guessed Tucker.
“Just the opposite. A nice street—big old buildings—and Mr. Smedley’s apartment house is the best on the block.”
“No pets?” Tucker guessed again.
Harry shook his head. “A man went in ahead of Mr. Smedley with an Afghan hound on a leash.”
“And they’re big!” the mouse chortled gleefully. “Even bigger than Huppy’ll probably get. So what was the problem?”
“The problem was me. Afghans on leashes, yes—stray alley cats, no. The doorman shooed me away.”
“The snob!”
“I sat across the street and watched Mr. Smedley go into the lobby, then into the elevator—the doors closed—he was gone. And somewhere, I thought, inside that building there might be a home for Huppy. But it was at least twenty stories tall. So what was I to do?”
“Claw the doorman, and while he’s running away you read Mr. Smedley’s apartment number on the mailboxes, then find the emergency staircase and—”
“I promise not to ask any more rhetorical questions, if you promise to shut up,” said Harry.
“Okay,” sulked Tucker, who still liked his plan. “What did you do?”
“I decided the place for an alley cat was an alley. So I sneaked through the one beside the building, and in back of it I found what I was looking for: a fire escape.”
“That’s the boy!” burst in Tucker enthusiastically. “That Max may think he knows the ins and outs of the city, but he can’t beat Harry Cat! Go, man!”
“I went,” said Harry. “First onto the top of a trash can, then, with a big jump, all the way up to the very last rung of the ladder at the bottom of the fire escape. And a long trip began. I didn’t mind the fire escape—they’re great for cats—but where was Mr. Smedley? And how was I going to get in? The escape was on the hall of each floor, and the window into the hall was not only shut but locked.”
“Well? Well?”
“I was counting on luck,” the cat continued. “Cats do have luck.”
“A little should rub off on me,” Tucker muttered.
“And when I’m out prowling on an adventure like this I have found I can count on at least one good-sized chunk of luck. And I got it! On the seventeenth floor. I crept up all those metal stairs, and then I heard it—piano playing! That wasn’t the luck, though. Anybody could have heard the piano playing. The luck was, the window into the hall was broken. One pane of glass was completely out. In I jumped and listened my way to Apartment G. That’s where the sound was coming from. ’Course, there might have been other human beings with pianos in that apartment house—but this had to be Mr. Smedley! I recognized the piece he was playing. It was one of those things Chester Cricket played when he gave his concerts over at the newsstand. And it sounded like Mr. Smedley, too. Kind of finicky and nervous, but nice. So the next problem was how to get in.”
“More luck?”
“No. Only frustration. I sat in that hall for an hour, just wondering what to do. I’d about decided to start miaowing pitifully and pretend I had a broken leg—then he’d open the door to see what all the racket was—bu
t it didn’t come to that. The piano playing stopped, and I heard him say, ‘Ah, lovely! Such a charming piece!’”
“That’s great!” laughed Tucker. “The guy talks to himself. He must really be lonely.”
“Just hold your horses,” warned Harry Cat. “‘Lovely, lovely,’ he said. I heard him walk from one room to another, the sound of dishes rattling—he was in the kitchen, making supper. The refrigerator door opened. ‘Oh, drat!’ he said. ‘No milk. Well, we have to have milk.’ Now a rustling sound, right inside the door—he was putting on his overcoat. And I knew in an instant what to do. I flattened myself against the floor, squinched up against the wall, and as soon as that apartment door opened, I was in like a flash—before he could even look down.”
“Whoopee!” shouted Tucker. “Alone in Mr. Smedley’s apartment! A perfect chance to case the joint. As Max would say. What’s it like?”
“Beautiful—in a kind of old-fashioned way. He’d left the light on in the hall, and with that, plus my cat’s eyes, I got a good look at everything. I could tell right away that Mr. Smedley must come from a long line of somebodies or other. Almost every stick of furniture in the place is antique. And good antiques, too! I’ve prowled through enough antique shops in the city to recognize quality when I see it. Except in Mr. Smedley’s apartment there may be too many of them.”
“But how many rooms?” interrupted Tucker.
“Well—” Harry counted on his paws. “The kitchen, the dining room, living room, the music room, Mr. Smedley’s bedroom—he has a big brass bedstead—the guest bedroom, those rooms at the back—at least eight or nine, I guess.”
“Eight or nine!” Tucker rubbed his claws together in glee. “That means Huppy can have one all to himself. We could maybe even set up a little summer place for ourselves.”
“The most interesting one is the music room. There’s a big piano there, a grand, and a second, littler one. I guess for teaching he sometimes plays along with his students. And the walls are lined with bookshelves full of books of music and opera librettos—and records. The one new thing in the whole apartment is a beautiful hi-fi set, with four speakers. But even there—”
“What even there?” Tucker heard the change come in Harry’s voice, as the cat stopped to think.
“I mean, even with the hi-fi set there’s a feeling of oldness. I don’t mean oldness—I like old things—but mustiness. And a sicklish sweetness in the air. It’s especially strong in the living room. Not dust or dirt—everything’s all clean—but you know that the sofa has not been moved for years. And the glass candlesticks on the mantelpiece—they have got to be in exactly the spot where Mr. Smedley’s mother left them.”
“Fresh air!” diagnosed Tucker Mouse. “That’s all Mr. Smedley needs. And fresh life.” He poked his friend in the ribs. “That’s something that we can provide—eh, Harry?”
“Fresh life,” mused Harry. “I was thinking something like that myself as I looked all around that crowded living room. Then I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“A voice.” Harry paused—not to tease, but reliving the eerie memory.
* * *
“Harry—if you wouldn’t drive me crazy, please. Talk!”
“A voice.” Harry shook himself into the present. “From somewhere above me. It said, ‘Well, sir—and now that you’ve seen everything, might I ask what it is that you mean to steal?’”
“A ghost!” exclaimed Tucker. “The apartment is haunted!”
“It’s haunted, all right. But not by the kind of ghost you think. I looked up, where the voice was coming from. Against one wall there’s this secretary. That’s a big old elaborate desk with a bookcase built on top of it, and glass doors to the bookcase. The top shelf of this particular secretary was full of china animals. There were birds, a monkey, a china collie—and a life-size china Siamese cat. Which was not made of china! In the dim light filtering in from the hall I saw the cat’s eyes slowly close and open.”
“Oh, my gosh—”
“Oh, my gosh is right, Mousiekins. Mr. Smedley already has a pet—and her name is Miss Catherine. It was her that he was talking to, not himself. And it also was from her—I found out when she jumped down beside me—that that weak sweet smell in the air came from. Mr. Smedley puts a drop of perfume on her every now and then.”
“Per-fume!” gasped Tucker.
“To the desk, to the floor, right beside me she jumped. And repeated, ‘Well?’ in an outraged voice. ‘If there’s nothing to satisfy a thief here, there’s some silver in the dining room!’”
“Harry—I wouldn’t want to interrupt—but you didn’t happen to take maybe a spoon—”
“I did not take a spoon!” Harry angrily said. “Or anything else. Since my mind, right then, wasn’t on your collection!”
“Too bad. But okay.”
“I assured her that I was not a thief, and so naturally she demanded what I was doing there, in that case. And I told her.”
“The truth?”
“The whole truth. And don’t make it sound like a red-hot iron. Sooner or later it would have to come out. I told her everything about Huppy—finding him, losing him, finding him again, his growing so fast—the works, ending up with Mr. Smedley being our only hope.”
“You told her about me, too?” said Tucker. “What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Hmm!’ and sniffed.”
“Well, I say, ‘Hmm!’ and sniff right back!”
“When I got to the part about Huppy living up there, she looked at me as if I was crazy. ‘What?’ she said, aghast. ‘A dog? Residing here? With me and Horatio? It simply won’t do!’ She was going to go on, but just then Horatio himself got back with the milk. Miss Catherine said that if I wished ‘to pursue this nonsense,’ I should hide in the music room while they had dinner. Mr. Smedley always goes to bed early. And when he had gone to bed, and she and I were pursuing the nonsense, I found out that she is thirteen years old.”
“That’s old for a cat, isn’t it?” asked Tucker.
“Pretty old,” admitted Harry, “but she’s got grit. After all, I could really have been a burglar and beaten her up.” He paused. “On the other paw, I think she might have won a cat fight at that. Anyway, she’s thirteen, she belonged to Mr. Smedley’s mother, she likes her drop of perfume now and then—but she also likes to go out for an outing, even on winter afternoons. That’s rare, because Siamese cats hate the cold. He takes her to Riverside Park. All that I found out after dinner. During dinner I found out something much more important. Mr. Smedley is not in charge of his own apartment. Miss Catherine Cat is! She’s got the guy wrapped around one ear. You should have heard him. ‘Would Miss Catherine like—’”
“Wait a minute,” said Tucker. “She refers to him as Horatio and he calls her Miss Catherine?”
“That’s the kind of cat she is,” said Harry. “But sometimes, in a gush of love, he also calls her Puss-puss.”
“Puss-puss!”
“‘Does Puss-puss crave more lovely cube steak? Does Puss-puss thirst for a bit more milk?’”
“Yich!” Tucker Mouse grimaced disgust. “Sick-making! That’s one guy who really needs a dog.”
“Sick-making or not, them’s the facts.”
“Enough of facts! When does Huppy move up?”
“Are you crazy!” shouted Harry. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? She will not hear of it! I wheedled her all last night, and I wheedled her all today while Mr. Smedley and some very untalented little boys banged away at those pianos—and all I got was permission to come back again and talk. Pursue the nonsense! An hour ago she showed me the back door to ‘my apartment.’ The door didn’t close completely, and the two of us managed to pry it open. ‘The servants’ entrance,’ she explained. ‘In future please use this. I believe in the basement you’ll find a window ajar. Good day.’”
“That’s how she says goodbye?”
“That’s how she doesn’t say goodbye.”
Tucker
sat a minute silently, except for some growling—which sounded, in his case, more like a squeak beneath the breath. “Well—I’m not sure I want Huppy living there anyway.”
“You have any better ideas?”
Tucker didn’t. “This is great!” he said. “This is really great. On the one paw we have Max, with his pack of four-legged gangsters, and on the other, two old maids—Horatio Smedley and Catherine Cat.”
“Miss Catherine,” Harry sweetly corrected him.
SEVEN
Pursuing the Nonsense
A few weeks later Tucker Mouse was fuming, furious, and fit to be tied—a not unusual state for him these days. He was alone—he was almost always alone now—sitting in the deserted drainpipe, trying to patch up a paper flower with a bit of Scotch tape. Both flower and tape had been salvaged that very afternoon from the treasure trove that an overflowing trash basket can be.
“It’s humiliating,” the mouse mumbled. (Among other strange practices like mending paper flowers, he had taken to talking to himself. Nowadays, it seemed to him, there was nobody else to talk to.) “Degrading!—that’s what it is.” The Scotch tape got stuck to the fur on his chest. “The worst time in my life.” He yanked off the tape. Some fur came with it.
The worst time in Tucker Mouse’s life began the day after Harry had made the acquaintance of Miss Catherine. He slept late the next morning, and when he woke up, after having a bite to eat—from Tucker’s carefully hoarded food—he decided that he would visit her, take her up right away on her invitation. “Strike while the iron’s hot,” he said.
“So go strike,” said Tucker.
But on the way out Harry saw something new. “What’s that?”
“That,” the mouse proclaimed proudly, “is a piece of carefully rolled-up pink ribbon. Rescued this morning from the Loft’s Candy Shop. A salesgirl was wrapping up a box as a gift, and—”
“I’m taking it,” Harry announced.
“You’re what?”
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