Mary shrugged and looked appealingly guilty. “Banker’s child,” she explained.
“Was it folded?”
She nodded.
“How was it folded?”
“Lengthwise—and then in half.”
“Did Andy fold his money that way?”
“No. He used a billfold.”
Qwilleran turned his head suddenly. “Koko! Get away from that lamp!”
The cat had crept onto the table and was rubbing his jaw against the wick regulator of the lamp decorated with pink roses. At the same moment Qwilleran felt a flicker of awareness in the same old place, and he smoothed his moustache with the stem of his pipe.
“Mary,” he said, “who were the people who were coming to look at the light fixture?”
“I don’t know. Andy merely said a woman from the suburbs was bringing her husband to approve it before she bought it.”
Qwilleran leaned forward in his Morris chair. “Mary, if Andy was getting the chandelier down from the ceiling when he fell, it means that the customers had already okayed it! Andy was getting the thing down so they could take it with them! Don’t you see? If the accident was genuine, it means the suburban couple were in the store when it happened. Why didn’t they call the police? Who were they? Were they there at all? And if not, who was there?”
Mary looked guilty again. “I guess it’s all right to tell you—now . . . . When I went to Andy’s shop to apologize, I went twice. The first time I peeked in and saw him talking with someone, so I made a hasty retreat and tried against later.”
“Did you recognize the person?”
“Yes, but I was afraid to let anyone know I had seen anything.”
“What did you see, Mary?”
“I saw them arguing—Andy and C.C. And I was afraid C.C. might have seen me. You have no idea how relieved I was when I heard about his accident this morning. That’s a terrible thing to say, I know.”
“And you’ve been living in fear of that guy! Did he give you any reason to be?”
“Not actually, but . . . that’s when the mysterious phone calls started.”
“I knew it!” Qwilleran said. “I knew there was something fishy about that call the other night. How often—?”
“About once a week—always the same voice—obviously disguised. It sounded like a stage whisper—raspy—asthmatic.”
“What was said?”
“Always something stupid and melodramatic. Vague hints about Andy’s death. Vague predictions of danger. Now that C.C. is gone, I have a feeling the calls will stop.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Qwilleran said. “There was a third person in Andy’s shop that night—the owner of that twenty dollar bill. C.C. used a billfold and filed his currency flat. Someone else . . . I wonder how Ben Nicholas folds his money?”
“Qwill—”
“Would a woman ever fold a bill lengthwise?”
“Qwill,” she said earnestly, “you’re not serious about this, are you? I don’t want any official interest to be revived in Andy’s death.” She said it bluntly and confronted him squarely.
“Why do you say that?”
Her eyes wavered. “Suppose you continued to investigate . . . and suppose you found an answer that pointed to murder . . . you would report it, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And there would be a trial.”
Qwilleran nodded.
“And because I found the body, I would have to testify, wouldn’t I? And then my position would be exposed!” She slid out of the rocking chair and knelt on the floor at his side. “Qwill, that would be the end of everything I live for! The publicity—my father—you know what would happen!”
He put aside his pipe, and it fell on the floor. He studied her face.
“It’s the newspapers I’m afraid of!” she said. “You know how they are about names. Anything for a name! Leave matters the way they are,” she begged. “Andy’s gone. Nothing will bring him back. Don’t make any more inquiries. Qwill. Please!” She reached for his hands and stared at him with eyes wide and pleading. “Please do it for me.” She bent her head and rubbed her smooth cheek against the back of his hand, and Qwilleran quickly raised her face to his.
“Please, Qwill, tell me you’ll drop the whole matter.”
“Mary, I don’t . . .”
“Qwill, please promise.” Her lips were very close.
There was a breathless moment. Time stood still.
Then they heard: “Grrrowrrr . . . yeowww!”
Then a hissing: “Hhhhhhh!”
“Grrrowrrr! Owf!”
“KOKO!” shouted the man.
“Ak-ak-ak-ak-ak!”
“Yum Yum!”
“GRRRRR!”
“Koko, quit that!”
SIXTEEN
Qwilleran dreamed about Niagara Falls that night, and when the tumult of the cataract succeeded in waking him, he glanced about wildly in his darkened room. There was a roar of water—a rushing, raging torrent. Then, with a gasp and a choking groan, it stopped.
He sat up in his swan bed and listened. In a moment it started again, somewhat less deafening than in his dream—a gushing, swishing whirlpool, followed by a snort, a shuddering groan, a few final sobs, and silence.
Gradually the source of the noise penetrated his sleep-drugged mind. Plumbing! The aged plumbing of an old house! But why was it flushing in the night? Qwilleran swung his legs out of bed and staggered to the bathroom.
He switched on the light. There, balancing on the edge of the baroque bathtub, was Koko, with one paw on the porcelain lever of the old-fashioned toilet, watching the swirling water with an intent, near-sighted gaze. Yum Yum was sitting in the marble washbowl, blinking her eyes at the sudden brightness. Once more Koko stepped on the lever and stared in fascination as the water cascaded, churned, gurgled, and disappeared.
“You monkey!” Qwilleran said. “How did you discover that gadget?” He was unsure whether to be peeved at the interruption of his sleep or proud of the cat’s mechanical aptitude. He lugged Koko, squalling and writhing, from the bathroom and tossed him on the cushions of the Morris chair. “What were you trying to do? Resurrect Yum Yum’s mouse?”
Koko licked his rumpled fur as if it had been contaminated by something indescribably offensive.
Daylight in a menacing yellow-gray began to creep over the winter sky, devising new atrocities in the form of weather. While opening a can of minced clams for the cats, Qwilleran planned his day. For one thing, he wanted to find out how Ben Nicholas folded his money. He also wished he knew how that red feather had transferred from a tweed porkpie to a silk tophat. He had asked Koko about it, and Koko had merely squeezed one eye. As for the avalanche, Qwilleran had discussed it with Mary, and she had a glib explanation: “Well, you see, the attic in Ben’s building is used for sleeping rooms, and it’s heated.”
He had not exactly promised Mary that he would drop his unofficial investigation. He had been on the verge of promising when Koko created that commotion. Afterwards, Qwilleran had simply said, “Trust me, Mary. I won’t do anything to hurt you,” and she had become nicely emotional, and altogether it had been a gratifying evening. She had even accepted his Christmas Eve invitation. She said she would go to the Press Club as Mary Duxbury—not as Mary Duckworth, junk dealer—because the society writers would recognize her.
Qwilleran still faced a dilemma, however. To drop his investigation was to shirk his own idea of responsibility; to pursue it was to hurt Junktown, and this neglected stepchild of City Hall needed a champion, not another antagonist.
By the time the junk shops opened and Qwilleran started his rounds, the weather had devised another form of discomfort: a clammy cold that chilled the bones and hovered over Junktown like a musty dishrag.
He went first to Bit o’ Junk, but Ben’s shop was closed.
Then he tried the store that sold tech-tiques, and for the first time since Qwilleran had arrived in Junktown, the place was open. When h
e walked in, Hollis Prantz came loping from the stockroom in the rear, wearing something somber and carrying a paintbrush.
“Just varnishing some display cabinets,” he explained. “Getting ready for the big day tomorrow.”
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” Qwilleran said, as he perused the shop in mystification. He saw tubes from fifteen-year-old television sets, early hand-wired circuits, prehistoric radio parts, and old-fashioned generator cutouts from 1935 automobiles. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Do you expect to make a living from this stuff?”
“Nobody makes a living in this business,” said Prantz. “We all need another source of income.”
“Or extreme monastic tastes,” Qwilleran added.
“I happen to have a little rental property, and I’m semi-retired. I had a heart attack last year, and I’m taking it easy.”
“You’re young to have a thing like that happen.” Qwilleran guessed the dealer was in his early forties.
“You’re lucky if you get a warning early in life. It’s my theory that Cobb had a heart attack when he was tearing that building apart; that’s heavy work for a man of his age.”
“What kind of work did you do—before this?”
“I was in paint and wallpaper.” The dealer said it almost apologetically. “Not much excitement in the paint business, but I get a real charge out of this new shop of mine.”
“What gave you the idea for tech-tiques?”
“Wait till I get rid of this varnish brush.” In a second Prantz was back with an old straight-back office chair. “Here. Have a seat.”
Qwilleran studied the disassembled innards of a primitive typewriter. “You’ll have to talk fast to convince me this junk is going to catch on.”
The dealer smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you. People will collect anything today, because there aren’t enough good antiques to go around. They make lamps out of worm-eaten fence posts. They frame twenty-year-old burlesque posters. Why not preserve the fragments of the early automotive and electronics industry?” Prantz shifted to a confidential tone. “I’ve got a promotion I’m working on, based on a phenomenon of our times—the acceleration of obsolescence. My idea is to accelerate antiquity. The sooner an item goes out of style, the quicker it makes its comeback as a collector’s piece. It used to be a hundred years before discards made the grade as collectibles. Now it’s thirty. I intend to speed it up to twenty or even fifteen . . . . Don’t write this up,” the dealer added hastily. “It’s still in the thinking stage. Protect me, like a good fellow.”
Qwilleran shrank into his overcoat when he left Hollis Prantz. The dealer had changed a five for him—with dollar bills folded crosswise—but there was something about Prantz that did not ring true.
“Mr. Qwilleran! Mr. Qwilleran!”
Running footsteps came up behind him, and he turned to catch an armful of brown corduroy, opossum fur, notebooks, and flying blond hair.
Ivy, the youngest of the three sisters, was out of breath. “Just got off the bus,” she panted. “Had a life class this morning. Are you on your way to our shop?”
“No, I’m heading for Mrs. McGuffey’s.”
“Don’t go there! ‘Mrs. McGuffey is too damn stuffy!’ That’s what Cluthra says.”
“Business is business, Ivy. Are you all ready for Christmas?”
“Guess what! I’m getting an easel for Christmas! A real painter’s easel.”
“I’m glad I ran into you,” Qwilleran said. “I’d like to decorate my apartment for the holidays, but I don’t have your artistic touch. Besides, this tricky knee—”
“I’d love to help you. Do you want an old-fashioned Christmas tree or something swinging?”
“A tree would last about three minutes at my place. I have a couple of cats, and they’re airborne most of the time. But I thought I could get some ropes of greens at Lombardo’s—”
“I’ve got a staple gun at the shop. I can do it right now.”
When Ivy arrived at Qwilleran’s apartment, the cedar garlands—ten dollars’ worth—were heaped in the middle of the floor, being circled warily by Koko and Yum Yum. The latter left for parts unknown at the sight of the blond visitor, but Koko sat tall and watched her carefully as if she were not to be trusted.
Qwilleran offered Ivy a Coke before she started decorating, and she sat in the rocking chair made of twigs, her straight blond hair falling like a cape over her shoulders. As she talked, her little-girl mouth pouted and pursed and broke into winning smiles.
Qwilleran asked, “Where did you three sisters get such unusual names?”
“Don’t you know? They’re different kinds of art glass. My mother was madly Art Nouveau. I’d rather be called Kim or Leslie. When I’m eighteen I’m going to change my name and move to Paris to study art. I mean, when I get the money my mother left me—if my sisters haven’t used it all up,” she added with a frown. “They’re my legal guardians.”
“You seem to have a lot of fun together in that shop.”
Ivy hesitated. “Not really. They’re kind of mean to me. Cluthra won’t let me go steady . . . and Amberina is trying to suppress my talent. She wants me to study bookkeeping or nursing or something grim like that.”
“Who’s giving you the magnificent Christmas present?”
“What?”
“The easel.”
“Oh! Well . . . I’m getting that from Tom. He’s Amberina’s husband. He’s real neat. I think he’s secretly in love with me, but don’t say anything to anybody.”
“Of course not. I’m flattered,” said Qwilleran, “that you feel you can confide in me. What do you think about all the mishaps in Junktown? Are they as accidental as they appear?”
“Cluthra says the Dragon dropped that thing on her foot on purpose. Cluthra may decide to sue her for an enormous amount of money. Five thousand dollars!”
“An astronomical figure,” Qwilleran agreed. “But what about the two recent deaths in Junktown?”
“Poor C.C.! He was a creep, but I felt sorry for him. His wife wasn’t nice to him at all. Did you know she murdered her first husband? Of course, nobody could ever prove it.”
“And Andy. Did you know Andy?”
“He was dreamy. I was mad about Andy. Wasn’t that a horrible way to die?”
“Do you think he might have been murdered?”
Ivy’s eyes grew wide with delight at the possibility. “Maybe the Dragon—”
“But Mary Duckworth was in love with Andy. She wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
The girl thought about it for a few seconds. “She couldn’t be in love with him,” she announced. “She’s a witch! Cluthra says so! And everybody knows witches can’t fall in love.”
“I must say you have a colorful collection of characters in Junktown. What do you know about Russell Patch?”
“I used to like him before he bleached his hair. I kind of think he’s mixed up in some kind of racket, like—I don’t know . . .”
“Who’s his roommate?”
“Stan’s hairdresser at Skyline Towers. You know all those rich widows and kept women that live there? They tell Stan all their secrets and give him fabulous presents. He does Cluthra’s hair. She pretends it’s natural, but you should see how gray it is when it starts to grow out.”
“Sylvia Katzenhide lives in the same building, doesn’t she?”
The girl nodded and reflected. “Cluthra says she’d be a brilliant success at blackmail. Sylvia’s got something on everybody.”
“Including Ben Nicholas and Hollis Prantz?”
“I don’t know.” Ivy sipped her Coke while she toyed with the possibilities. “But I think Ben’s a dope addict. I haven’t decided about the other one. He may be some kind of pervert.”
Later, when the garlands were festooned on the fireplace wall and Ivy had departed with her staple gun, Qwilleran said to Koko: “Out of the mouths of babes come the damnedest fabrications!” Furthermore, the experiment had cost him ten dollars, and the decorations on
ly served to enshrine the bad-dispositioned old lady hanging over the fireplace. He determined to substitute the Mackintosh coat of arms as soon as he could get some assistance in hoisting it to the mantel.
Before going downtown to hand in his copy, he made two phone calls and wangled some invitations. He told Cluthra he wanted to see how antique dealers live, what they collect, how they furnish their apartments. He told Russell Patch he had a Siamese cat who was crazy about music. And he told Ben he wanted to have the firsthand experience of scrounging. He also asked him to change a five-dollar bill.
“Alas,” said Ben, “if we could change a fin, we would retire from this wretched business.”
At the Daily Fluxion that afternoon Qwilleran walked into the Feature Department with its even rows of modern metal desks that had always looked so orderly and serene, and suddenly he found the scene cold, sterile, monotonous, and without character.
Arch Riker said, “Did you see how we handled the auction story in today’s paper? The boss liked your copy.”
“The whole back page! That was more than I expected,” Qwilleran said, tossing some triple-spaced sheets on the desk. “Here’s the second installment, and I’ll have more tomorrow. This morning I interviewed a man who sells some absurd junk called tech-tiques.”
“Rosie told me about him. He’s new in Junktown.”
“He’s either out of his mind or pulling a hoax. In fact, I think Hollis Prantz is a fraud. He claims to have a weak heart, but you should have seen him running up stairs two at a time! I’m discovering all kinds of monkeyshines in Junktown.”
“Don’t get sidetracked,” Riker advised him. “Bear down on the writing.”
“But, Arch! I’ve unearthed some good clues in the Andy Glanz case! I also have my suspicions about Cobb’s death.”
“For Pete’s sake, Qwill, the police called them accidents. Let’s leave it that way.”
“That’s one reason I’m suspicious. Everyone in Junktown is busy explaining that the two deaths were accidents. They protest too much.”
“I can understand their position,” Riker told him. “If Junktown gets a reputation as a high-crime neighborhood, the junkers will stay away in droves . . . . Look here, I’ve got five pages to lay out. I can’t argue with you all day.”
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, Ate Danish Modern, Turned on and Off Page 14