The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, Ate Danish Modern, Turned on and Off

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  After four hundred pages of jumping E’s, Qwilleran’s eyelids were heavy and his eyeballs were aching. He leaned his head back in the Morris chair and closed his eyes. Quimper teapots! He had never heard of a Quimper teapot, but there were many things he had not heard of before coming to Junktown: Sussex pigs . . . piggins, noggins and firkins . . . horse brasses.

  Horse brasses! Qwilleran’s moustache danced, and he reproved it with his knuckles. No one buys horse brasses any more, Mary had said. And yet—twice during his short stay in Junktown, he had heard a request for this useless brass ornament.

  The first inquiry had been at the Bit o’ Junk shop, and Ben had been inclined to dismiss the customer curtly. Yesterday the same inquiry was made at The Junkery. The two buildings were adjacent, and similar in design.

  Qwilleran combed his moustache to subdue his excitement and devised a plan for the next morning. The twenty-fourth of December was going to be a busy day: the big party in the evening, another appointment with the managing editor in the afternoon, lunch with Arch Riker at the Press Club, and in the morning—a tactical maneuver that might fill in another blank in the Junktown puzzle.

  The next day Qwilleran was waked before dawn by flashing lights. Koko was standing on the bed, rubbing his teeth with satisfaction on the wall switch and turning the lamps on and off.

  The man got up, opened a can of corned beef for the cats, shaved and dressed. As soon as he thought the Dispatch Desk was open, he telephoned and asked them to send a messenger at eleven thirty—no later and no earlier.

  “Send me the skinniest and shabbiest one you’ve got,” he told the dispatch clerk. “Preferably one with a bad cold or an acute sinus infection.”

  While waiting for the accomplice to arrive, Qwilleran moved his paper and pencils, clips and gluepot into the apothecary desk. In one of the drawers he found Iris Cobb’s tape recorder and returned it to her.

  “I don’t want it,” she said with a sickly attempt at a smile. “I don’t even want to look at it. Maybe you can use it in your work.”

  The youth who arrived from the Dispatch Office was unkempt, undernourished and red-eyed. Most of the Fluxion messengers fitted such a description, but this one was superlative.

  “Yikes!” the boy said when he saw the newsman’s apartment. “Do you pay rent for this pad, or does the Flux pay you to live here?”

  “Don’t editorialize,” Qwilleran said, reaching for his wallet. “Just do what I say. Here’s ten bucks. Go next door—”

  “Lookit them crazy cats! Do they bite?”

  “Only Fluxion messengers . . . . Now listen carefully. Go to the antique shop called Bit o’ Junk and ask if the man has any horse brasses.”

  “Horse what?”

  “The man who runs the place is crazy, so don’t be surprised at anything he does or says. And don’t let him know that you know me—or that you work for the Flux. Just ask if he has any horse brasses and show him your money. Then bring me whatever he gives you.”

  “Horse brasses! You gotta be kiddin’.”

  “Don’t go straight there. Hang around on the corner a few minutes before you approach the Bit o’ Junk . . . . And try not to look too intelligent!” Qwilleran called after the departing messenger, as an unnecessary afterthought.

  Then he paced the floor in suspense. When a cat jumped on the desk and presented an arched back at a convenient level for stroking, the man stroked it absently.

  In fifteen minutes the messenger returned. He said, “Ten bucks for this thing? You gotta be nuts!”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Qwilleran meekly, as he examined the brass medallion the boy handed him.

  It was a setback, but the fluttering sensation in his moustache told Qwilleran that he was on the right track, and he refused to be discouraged.

  At noon he met Arch Riker at the Press Club and presented him with the tobacco tin, gift-wrapped in a page from an 1864 Harper’s Weekly.

  “It’s great!” the feature editor said. “But you shouldn’t have spent so much, Qwill. Hell, I didn’t buy you anything, but I’ll pop for lunch.”

  In the afternoon Qwilleran spent a satisfactory hour with the managing editor, and then joined the Women’s Department for pink lemonade and Christmas cookies, and later turned up at an impromptu celebration in the Photo Lab, where he was the only sober guest, and eventually went home.

  He had three hours before his date with Mary. He went to the ashpit and once more read the chapter in Andy’s novel that dealt with the dope pusher.

  At five o’clock he dashed out and picked up the better of his two suits from Junktown’s dry cleaning establishment that specialized in quick service. There was a red tag on his garment.

  “You musta left something in the pocket,” the clerk said, and she rummaged through a drawer until she found an envelope with his name on it.

  When Qwilleran noted the contents, he said, “Thanks! Thanks very much! Have a Christmas drink on me,” and he left a dollar tip.

  “It was the tape measure. Mary’s silver tape measure and a piece of folded paper.

  Fingering the smooth silver case, he returned to his apartment and looked out his back window. The early winter dusk was doing its best to make the junk in the backyard look more bedraggled than ever. The two station wagons were there, backed in from the alley—one gray and one tan.

  Access to the backyard was apparently through the Cobb shop, and Qwilleran preferred to avoid Iris, so he went out the front door, around the corner and in through the alley. After a glance at the back windows of nearby houses, he measured the gray wagon. It was exactly as he had guessed; the dimensions tallied with the notations on the scrap of paper.

  And as he walked around the decrepit vehicle he noted something else that checked; Ben’s wagon had a left front fender missing.

  Qwilleran knew exactly what he wanted to do now. After buying a pint of the best brandy at Lombardo’s, he ran up the steps to the Bit o’ Junk shop. The front door was open, but Ben’s store was locked up and dark.

  He stopped at The Junkery. “Happen to know where Ben is?” he asked Iris. “I’d like to extend the hospitality of the season.”

  “He must be at Children’s Hospital,” Iris said. “He goes there every Christmas to play Santa.”

  Upstairs the cats were waiting. Both were sitting tall in the middle of the floor, with the attentive attitude that meant, “We have a message to communicate.” They were staring. Yum Yum was staring into middle distance with her crossed eyes, but she was staring hard. Koko stared at a certain point in the center of Qwilleran’s forehead, and he was staring so intently that his body swayed with an inner tension.

  This was not the dinner message, Qwilleran knew. This was something more important. “What is it?” he asked the cats. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  Koko turned his head. He looked at a small shiny object on the floor near the bookcase.

  “What’s that?” Qwilleran gasped, although he needed no answer. He knew what it was.

  He picked up the scrap of silvery paper and took it to the desk. He turned on the lamp. At first glance the foil looked like a gum wrapper that had been stepped on, but he knew better. It was a neat rectangle, as wide as a pencil, and as thin as a razorblade.

  As he started to open the packet, Koko jumped to the desk to watch. With dainty brown feet the cat stepped over pencils, paper clips, ashtray, tobacco pouch, and tape measure, and then he stepped precisely on the green button of Iris’s portable tape recorder.

  “Hawnnk . . . ssss . . . hawnnk . . . ssss . . .”

  Qwilleran hit the red button of the machine and silenced the unpleasant noise. As he did so, he became aware of heavy footsteps in the hall.

  Santa Claus was lumbering up the stairs, pulling on the handrail for assistance.

  “Come in and toast the season,” Qwilleran invited. “I’ve got a good bottle of brandy.”

  “Worthy gentleman, I’ll do that!” Ben said.

  He shuffled
into Qwilleran’s quarters in his big black boots cuffed with imitation fur. His eyes were glazed, his breath was strong; he had not come directly from Children’s Hospital.

  “Ho ho ho!” he said in hearty greeting when he spied the two cats.

  Yum Yum flew to the top of the book cupboard, but Koko stood his ground and glared at the visitor.

  “Merr-r-r-y Christmas!” boomed the Santa Claus voice.

  Koko’s backbone bristled. He arched his back and bushed his tail. With ears laid back and fangs bared, he hissed. Then Koko jumped to the desk and continued to watch the proceedings—with disapproval in the angle of his ears and the tilt of his whiskers. From his perch he could survey the Morris chair, where Qwilleran sat drinking coffee, and the rocker, where Santa Claus was sipping brandy. He also had a good view of the tea table, which held a plate of smoked oysters.

  At length Qwilleran said, “Let’s drink to our old friend Cobb, wherever he is!”

  Ben waved his glass. “To the perfidious wretch!”

  “You mean you weren’t an admirer of our late landlord?”

  “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” said the old actor.

  “I’d like to know what happened that night at the Ellsworth house. Did Cobb have a heart attack, or did he slip on the stairs? The snow could have caked on his boots, you now. It was snowing that night, wasn’t it?”

  There was no confirmation from Ben, whose rouged nose was deep in his brandy glass.

  “I mean, sometime after midnight,” Qwilleran persisted. “Do you remember? Wasn’t it snowing? Were you out that night?”

  “Oh, it snowed and it blowed . . . it blew and it snew,” said Ben with appropriate grimaces and gestures.

  “I went to the Ellsworth house the next day, and there was a bare patch under Cobb’s car, indicating that it was snowing while he was stripping the house. The funny thing is: another car had been there at the same time. It left its outline on the ice, and from the shape of the impression, I would guess the second car had a fender missing.” Qwilleran paused and watched Ben’s face.

  “Mischief, thou are afoot!” said Ben, looking mysterious.

  Qwilleran tried other approaches to no avail. The old actor was a better actor than he. The newsman kept an eye on his watch; he had to shave and dress before calling for Mary.

  He made one more attempt. “I wonder if it’s true,” he said, “that Ellsworth had some dough hidden—”

  He was interrupted by a noise from the desk. “Hawnnk . . . ssss . . . hawnnk . . .”

  “Koko! Scram!” he yelled, and the cat jumped to the floor and up on the mantel, almost in a single swoop. “If it’s true that the old house had some hidden treasure,” Qwilleran continued, “perhaps Cobb got his hands on it—”

  The tape recorder went on: “Hawnnk . . . sssss . . . ppphlat!”

  “And perhaps someone came along and gave him a shove.” Qwilleran was lounging casually in his chair but watching Ben sharply, and he thought he detected a wavering eye—a glance that was not in the actor’s script. “Someone might have shoved him down the stairs and grabbed the loot . . .”

  “Hawnnk . . . ppphlat!” said the recorder. Then “Grrrummph! Whazzat? Whatcha doin’?” There followed the murmur of blank tape. then: “Wool over my eyes, you old fool . . . . Know what you’re up to . . . . Think you can get away with anything . . . . Over my dead body!”

  It was Cobb’s recorded voice, and Qwilleran sat up straight.

  The tape said, “Those creeps comin’ in here . . . . Horse brasses, my eye! . . . Know where you get your deliveries . . . . You! Scroungin’ at the Garrick! That’s a laugh!”

  Ben dropped his glass of brandy and heaved himself out of the rocker.

  “No!” yelled Qwilleran, erupting from the Morris chair and leaping toward the desk. “I’ve got to hear this!”

  The tape said, “Me marchin’ on the picket line, a lousy three bucks an hour, and you get ten for a deck . . .”

  The newsman stared at the machine with incredulity and triumph.

  The tape said, “Not any more, you don’t . . . . You’re gonna cut me in, Ben Baby . . . .”

  There was a flash of red in the room. Qwilleran saw it from the corner of his eye. It moved toward the fireplace, and the newsman spun around in time to see Ben reaching for the poker. Then a big black Santa Claus boot kicked out, and the tea table went flying across the room.

  Qwilleran reached for the desk chair, without taking his eyes from the red suit. He grabbed the chair roughly by its back, but all he got was a handful of spindles; the back came off in his hand.

  For an instant the two men were face to face—Ben bracing himself on the hearth and brandishing the poker, Qwilleran holding a few useless dowels. And then—the iron thing shot forward. It skidded off the mantel, catching Ben in the neck. As the poker flew through the air, Qwilleran ducked, skidded on an oyster, and went down on his right knee with a thud.

  The scene of action froze in a tableau: Santa Claus on the floor, flattened by the Mackintosh coat of arms; Qwilleran on his knees; Koko bending over a smoked oyster.

  After the police had taken Ben away, and while Iris and Dennis were helping to straighten up the room, the telephone rang, and Qwilleran walked slowly and painfully to the desk.

  “What’s the matter, Qwill?” asked Mary’s anxious voice. “I just heard the siren and saw them taking Ben away in the police car. “What’s wrong?”

  Qwilleran moaned. “Everything! Including my knee.”

  “You’ve hurt it again?”

  “It’s the other knee. I’m immobilized. I don’t know what to do about the party.”

  “We can have the party at your place, but what about Ben?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here.”

  She came wearing blue chiffon and bearing Christmas gifts. “What on earth has happened to Ben—and your knee?” she demanded.

  “We caught a murderer here tonight,” Qwilleran said. “With the aid of your tape measure I placed Ben at the scene of Cobb’s accident.”

  “I can’t believe it! Did he admit he killed C.C. ?”

  “Not in so many words. He merely gave his landlord Godspeed with an auspicious push.”

  “Was it true about buried treasure at the Ellsworth house?”

  “No, it was a case of blackmail. Ben was pushing heroin, Mary. He met his supplier at the abandoned theatre and bagged the stuff in five-grain decks.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “The cats brought me a deck from Ben’s apartment, and Andy’s novel gave me another tip. The junkies would identify themselves in Ben’s shop by asking for horse brasses.”

  “That was a clever arrangement.”

  “But the addicts sometimes wandered into the wrong shop, and Cobb apparently caught on. And here’s the incredible part of the story: When Cobb was demanding a cut of Ben’s profits, the complete conversation was recorded on tape! I think Koko flipped the switch on Iris’s tape recorder when Cobb was trying to make his deal with Ben.”

  “What a fantastic coincidence!”

  “Fantastic, yes! But if you knew Koko, you wouldn’t be too sure it was coincidental. It must have happened Sunday morning when Iris was at church and I was at the drugstore.”

  “Koko, you’re a hero!” Mary said to the cat, who was now taking his lordly ease on the daybed. “And you’re going to have a reward. Pressed duck!” She turned to Qwilleran. “I took the liberty of ordering dinner. It’s being sent over from the Toledo Restaurant. I hope you like oysters Rockefeller and pressed duck and Chateaubriand and French Strawberries.”

  “But no more rich food for the cats,” he said. “They’ve eaten a whole can of smoked oysters, and I’m afraid they’ll be sick.” He looked at Koko with speculation and added, “There’s one thing we’ll never know. How did the Mackintosh coat of arms happen to slide off the mantel at the strategic moment? Just as Ben raised the poker to beat my brains out, that chunk of iron delivered a karate chop.”
/>   He gazed at Koko with conjecture and admiration, and the cat rolled over and licked the pale fur on his stomach.

  The telephone rang. “Probably our police reporter,” Qwilleran said. “I asked him to call me when the police had more details.”

  He went limping to the desk.

  “Yes, Lodge. Any developments? . . . That’s what I guessed . . . . How did he find out? . . . He had his finger on everything, that boy! . . . Yes, I’ve met the guy . . . . No, I won’t mention it.”

  When the newsman hung up, he refrained from telling Mary that the Narcotics Squad had been watching Junktown for three months and that Hollis Prantz was an undercover agent. Nor did he tell her immediately about Ben’s complete confession.

  Dinner arrived from the city’s most expensive restaurant—in chafing dishes and under silver covers and on beds of crushed ice—and Mary presented her Christmas gifts: a case of canned lobster for the cats and a pair of Scottish brass candlesticks for Qwilleran.

  “I have a surprise for you, too,” he told her, “but first you must hear some painful truths. Andy’s death was not accidental. He was Ben’s first victim.”

  “But why? Why?”

  “Ben was afraid Andy would turn him in. Both Andy and Cobb had learned about Ben’s sideline. Our actor friend was in danger of losing the thing he valued most in the world—an audience—even though he had to buy their applause. On the night of October sixteenth, after he saw Cobb leave Andy’s shop, he slipped in and staged the so-called accident.”

  “And did he kill that poor man in the alley?”

  “No. Ben declined to take bows for that one. The police were right that time. One out of three.”

  Mary caught her breath. “But what will happen now? There will be a trial! I’ll have to testify!”

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “Everything’s arranged so that you can come out of hiding. For the last two days I’ve been meeting with Fluxion executives and the mayor’s aides and your father. I’ve proposed an idea—”