The Cat Who Turned On and Off

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  The Cat Who Turned On and Off

  Lilian Jackson Braun

  Lilian Jackson Braun

  The Cat Who Turned On and Off

  1

  In December the weather declared war. First it bombarded the city with ice storms, then strafed it with freezing winds.

  Now it was snowing belligerently. A blizzard whipped down Canard Street, past the Press Club, as if it had a particular grudge against newspapermen. With malicious accuracy the largest flakes zeroed in to make cold wet landings on the neck of the man who was hailing a taxi in front of the club.

  He turned up the collar of his tweed overcoat — awkwardly, with one hand — and tried to jam his porkpie hat closer to his ears. His left hand was plunged deep in his coat pocket and held stiffly there. Otherwise there was nothing remarkable about the man except the luxuriance of his moustache — and his sobriety. It was after midnight; it was nine days before Christmas; and the man coming out of the Press Club bar was sober.

  When a cab pulled to the curb, he eased himself carefully into the back seat, keeping his left hand in his pocket, and gave the driver the name of a third-rate hotel.

  "Medford Manor? Let's see, I can take Zwinger Street and the expressway," the cabbie said hopefully as he threw the flag on the meter, "or I can take Center Boulevard." "Zwinger," said the passenger. He usually took the Boulevard route, which was cheaper, but Zwinger was faster.

  "You a newspaperman?" the driver asked, turning and giving his fare a knowing grin.

  The passenger mumbled an affirmative. "I figured. I knew you couldn't be one of them publicity types that hang around the Press Club. I mean, I can tell by the way you dress. I don't mean newspapermen are slobs or anything like that, but they're — well — you know! I pick 'em up in front of the Press Club all the time. Not very big tippers, but good guys, and you never know you're gonna need a friend at the paper. Right?" He turned and flashed a conspiratorial grin at the back seat.

  "Watch it!" snapped the passenger as the cab veered toward a drunk staggering across Zwinger Street.

  "You with the Daily Fluxion or the Morning Rampage?" "Fluxion." The cab stopped for a red light, and the driver stared at his passenger. "I've seen your picture in the paper. The moustache, I mean. You get a by-line?" The man in the back seat nodded. They were in a blighted area now. Cheap lodgings and bars occupied old town houses that had once been the homes of the city's elite.

  "Lock your door," the driver advised. "You wouldn't believe the scum that drifts around this street after dark. Drunks, hopheads, cruisers, you-name-it. Used to be a ritzy neighborhood. Now they call it Junktown." "Junktown?" repeated the passenger with his first show of interest in the conversation.

  "You a newspaper guy and you never heard of Junktown?" "I'm a — I'm fairly new in the city." The passenger smoothed his moustache with his right hand.

  His left was still in his pocket when he got out of the cab on the other side of town. Entering the deserted lobby of the Medford Manor, he walked hurriedly past the registration desk, where the elderly clerk sat dozing at the switchboard. In the elevator he found an aged bellhop slumped on a stool, snoring softly. The man flicked a switch and pressed a lever, taking the car and its sleeping occupant to the sixth floor.

  Then he strode down the corridor to room 606. With his right hand he found a key in his trouser pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside the room. He closed the door gently before switching on the light. Then he stood and listened.

  He moved his head slowly from side to side, examining the room: the double bed, the armchair, the cluttered dresser, the closet door standing ajar.

  "All right, you guys," he said. "Come on out!" Slowly and cautiously he withdrew his left hand from his pocket.

  "I know you're here. Come on out!" There was a creaking of bedsprings and a grunt, followed by a sharp ripping sound and two soft thuds on the floor.

  Between the limp fringes of the cotton bedspread there appeared two heads.

  "You crazy nuts! You were inside the bedsprings again!" They squeezed out from under the bed-two Siamese cats. First there were two brown heads, one more wedge- shaped than the other; then two pale fawn bodies, one daintier than the other; then two brown silky tails, one with a kink in the tip.

  The man held out his left hand, exhibiting a soggy mass in a paper napkin. "See what I brought you? Turkey from the Press Club." Two black velvet noses sniffed the air, two sets of whiskers twitched, and both cats howled in unison.

  "Shhh! The old gal next door will have you arrested." The man started cutting up the turkey with a pocket knife, while they paced the room in ecstatic figure eights, waving their tails and howling a discordant duet.

  "Quiet!" They howled louder.

  "I don't know why I do this for you heathens. It's against the rules-sneaking takeouts from the Press Club buffet. Not to mention the mess! I've got a pocketful of gravy." They drowned out his voice with their clamor. "Will you guys shut up?" The telephone rang. "See? I told you so!" The man hurriedly placed a glass ashtray full of turkey on the floor and went to the telephone.

  "Mr. Qwilleran," said the quavering voice of the desk clerk, "sorry to call you again, but Mrs. Mason in 604 says your cats — " "Sorry. They were hungry. They're quiet now." "If — if — if you don't mind taking an inside room, 619 is vacant, and you could ask the day clerk tomorrow — " "It won't be necessary. We're moving out as soon as I find an apartment." "I hope you're not offended, Mr. Qwilleran. The manager — " "No offense, Mr. McIldoony. A hotel room is no place for cats. We'll be out before Christmas… I hope," he added softly, surveying the bleak room.

  He had lived in better places when he was young and successful and well-known and married. Much had happened since his days as a crime reporter in New York. Now, considering his backlog of debts and the wage scale on a Midwestern newspaper, the Medford Manor was the best he could afford. Qwilleran's only luxury was a pair of roommates whose expensive tastes he was inclined to indulge.

  The cats were quiet now. The larger one was gobbling turkey with head down and tail up, its tip waving in the slow rhythm of rapture. The little female, sitting a few inches apart, was respectfully waiting her turn.

  Qwilleran took off his coat and tie and crawled under the bed to thumbtack the torn ticking to the wooden frame of the box spring. There had been a small rip when he moved into the hotel two weeks ago, and it had steadily enlarged. He had composed a pseudoserious essay on the subject for the feature page of the Daily Fluxion.

  "Any small aperture is challenging to the feline sensibility," he had written. "For a cat it is a matter of honor to enlarge the opening and squeeze through." After repairing the spring, Qwilleran groped in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco and withdrew a handful of envelopes. The first, postmarked Connecticut, was still sealed and unread, but he knew what it contained — another graceless hint for money.

  The second — a note written in brown ink with feminine flourishes — he had read several times. Regretfully she was canceling their date for Christmas Eve. With tact so delicate that it was painful she was explaining that this other man — this engineer — it was all so sudden — Qwill would understand.

  Qwilleran twisted the note into a bowknot before dropping it in the wastebasket. He had half expected this news. She was young, and the Qwilleran moustache and temples were graying noticeably. It was a disappointment, nevertheless.

  Now he had no date for the Christmas Eve party at the Press Club — the only Christmas celebration he expected to have.

  The third communication was a memo from the managing editor, reminding staffers of the annual writing competition.

  Besides $3,000 in cash prizes there woul
d be twenty-five frozen turkeys for honorable mentions, donated by Cybernetic Poultry Farms, Inc.

  "Who will expect to be loved, cherished, and publicized by Fluxion writers till death do us part," said Qwilleran, aloud.

  "Yow," said Koko between licks, as he washed his face.

  The little female was now taking her turn at the turkey; Koko always left half the food for her-or a good 40 percent.

  Qwilleran stroked Koko's fur, soft as ermine, and marveled at its shading — from pale fawn to seal brown — one of nature's more spectacular successes. Then he lighted his pipe and slouched in the armchair with his feet on the bed.

  He could use one of those cash prizes. He could send a couple of hundred to Connecticut and then start buying furniture. If he had his own furniture, it would be easier to find lodgings that accepted pets.

  There was still time to write something prizeworthy and get it published before the December 31 deadline, and the feature editor was desperate for Christmas material. Arch Riker had called a meeting of the feature staff, saying, "Can't you guys come up with some ideas?" Without much hope he had searched the faces of the assembled staffers: the paunchy columnists, the cadaverous critics, Qwilleran on general assignment, and the specialist who handled travel, hobbies, aviation, real estate, and gardening. They had all stared back at the editor with the blank gaze of veterans who had reported on too many Yuletides.

  Qwilleran noticed Koko watching him closely. "To win a prize," he told the cat, "you've got to have a gimmick." "Yow," said Koko. He jumped to the bed and looked at the man with sympathetically blinking eyes. They were sapphire blue in bright light, but in the lamplit hotel room they were large circles of black onyx with flashes of diamond or ruby.

  "What I need is an idea that's spectacular but not cheap." Qwilleran was frowning and jabbing his moustache with his pipestem. He was thinking irritably about the Fluxion's Jack Jaunti, a young smart-aleck in the Sunday Department who had taken a job as Percival Duxbury's valet, incognito, in order to write an inside story on the richest man in town. The stunt had won no friends among the city's First Families, but it had increased circulation for two weeks, and the rumor was that Jaunti would walk off with first prize. Qwilleran resented juveniles who substituted nerve for ability.

  "Why, that guy can't even spell," he said to his attentive audience of one.

  Koko went on blinking. He looked sleepy. The female cat was on the prowl, searching for playthings. She rose on her hind legs to examine the contents of the wastebasket and hauled out a twist of paper about the size of a mouse. She brought it to Qwilleran in her teeth and dropped it — the letter written in brown ink — on his lap.

  "Thanks, but I've read it," he said. "Don't rub it in." He groped in the drawer of the nightstand, found a rubber mouse and tossed it across the room. She bounded after it, sniffed it, arched her back and returned to the wastebasket, this time extracting a crumpled paper handkerchief, which she presented to the man in the armchair.

  "Why do you fool around with junk?" he said. "You've got nice toys." Junk! Qwilleran experienced a prickling sensation in the roots of his moustache, and a warmth spread over his face.

  "Junktown!" he said to Koko. "Christmas in Junktown! I could write a heartbreaker." He came out of his slouch and slapped the arms of the chair. "And it might get me out of this damned rut!" His job in the Feature Department was considered a comfortable berth for a man over forty-five, but interviewing artists, interior decorators and Japanese flower arrangers was not Qwilleran's idea of newspapering. He longed to be writing about con men, jewel thieves, and dope peddlers.

  Christmas in Junktown! He had done Skid Row assignments in the past, and he knew how to proceed: quit shaving — pick up some ratty clothes — get to know the people in the dives and on the street-and then listen. The trick would be to make the series compassionate, relating the personal tragedies behind society's outcasts, plucking the heartstrings.

  "Koko," he said, "by Christmas Eve there won't be a dry eye in town!" Koko was watching Qwilleran's face and blinking. The cat spoke in a low voice, but with a sense of urgency.

  "What's on your mind?" Qwilleran asked. He knew the water dish was freshly filled. He knew the sandbox in the bathroom was clean.

  Koko stood up and walked across the bed. He rubbed the side of his jaw against the footboard, then looked at Qwilleran over his shoulder. He rubbed the other side of his jaw, and his fangs clicked against the metal finial of the bedpost.

  "You want something? What is it you want?" The cat gave a sleepy yowl and jumped to the top edge of the footboard, balancing like a tightrope walker. He walked its length and then, with forepaws against the wall, stretched his neck and scraped his jaw against the light switch. It clicked, and the light went out. Murmuring little noises of satisfaction, Koko made himself a nest on the bed and curled up for sleep.

  2

  "Christmas in Junktown!" Qwilleran said to the feature editor. "How does that grab you?" Arch Riker was sitting at his desk, browsing through the Friday morning mail and tossing most of it over his shoulder in the direction of a large wire bin.

  Qwilleran perched on the corner of the editor's desk and waited for his old friend's reaction, knowing there would be no visible clue. Riker's face had the composure of a seasoned deskman, registering no surprise, no enthusiasm, no rejection.

  "Junktown?" Riker murmured. "It might have possibilities. How would you approach it?" "Hang around Zwinger Street, mix with the characters there, get them to talk." The editor leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. "Okay, go ahead." "It's a hot subject, and I can give it a lot of heart." Heart was the current password at the Daily Fluxion. In frequent memos from the managing editor, staff writers were reminded to put heart into everything including the weather report.

  Riker nodded. "That'll make the boss happy. And it should get a lot of readership. My wife will like it. She's a junker." He said it calmly, and Qwilleran was shocked. "Rosie? You mean — " Riker was rocking contentedly in his swivel chair. "She got hooked a couple of years ago, and it's been keeping me poor ever since." Qwilleran stroked his moustache to hide his dismay. He had known Rosie years ago when he and Arch were cub reporters in Chicago. Gently he asked, "When-how did this happen, Arch?" "She went to Junktown with some gal friends one day and got involved. I'm beginning to get interested myself.

  Just paid twenty-eight dollars for an old tea canister in painted tin. Tin is what I go for — tin boxes, tin lanterns — " Qwilleran stammered, "What — what — what are you talking about?" "Junk. Antiques. What are you talking about?" "Hell, I'm talking about narcotics!" "I said we were junkers, not junkies!" Arch said. Junktown, for your information, is the place with all the antique shops." "The cabdriver said it was a hangout for hopheads." "Well, you know how cabdrivers are. Sure, it's a declining neighborhood, and the riffraff may come out after dark, but during the day it's full of respectable junkpickers like Rosie and her friends. Didn't your ex-wife ever take you junking?" "She dragged me to an antique show in New York once, but I hate antiques." "Too bad," said Arch. "Christmas in Junktown sounds like a good idea, but you'd have to stick to antiques. The boss would never go for the narcotics angle." "Why not? It would make a poignant Christmas story." Riker shook his head. "The advertisers would object. Readers spend less freely when their complacency is disturbed." Qwilleran snorted his disdain. "Why don't you go ahead, Qwill, and do a Christmas series on antiquing?" "I hate antiques, I told you." "You'll change your mind when you get to Junktown. You'll be hooked like the rest of us." "Want to bet?" Arch took out his wallet and extracted a small yellow card. "Here's a directory of the Junktown dealers. Let me have it back." Qwilleran glanced at some of the names: Ann's 'Tiques, Sorta Camp, The Three Weird Sisters, the Junque Trunque. His stomach rebelled. "Look, Arch, I wanted to write something for the contest-something with guts! What can I do with antiques? I'd be lucky if I tied for the twenty-fifth frozen turkey." "You might be surprised! Junktown is full of kooks, an
d there's an auction this afternoon." "I can't stand auctions." "This should be a good one. The dealer was killed a couple of months ago, and they're liquidating his entire stock." "Auctions are the world's biggest bore, if you want my opinion." "A lot of the dealers in Junktown are single girls-divorcees-widows. That's something you should appreciate.

  Look, you donkey, why do I have to give you a big selling on this boondoggle? It's an assignment. Get busy." Qwilleran gritted his teeth. "All right. Give me a taxi voucher. Round trip!" He took time to have his hair trimmed and his moustache pruned-his standard procedure before tackling a new beat, although he had intended to postpone this nicety until Christmas. Then he hailed a cab and rode out Zwinger Street, not without misgivings.

  Downtown it was a boulevard of new office buildings, medical clinics, and fashionable apartment houses. Then it ran through a snow-covered wasteland where a former slum had been cleared. Farther out there were several blocks of old buildings with boarded windows, awaiting demolition. Beyond that was Junktown.

  In daylight the street was even worse than it had appeared the night before. For the most part the rows of old town houses and Victorian mansions were neglected and forlorn. Some had been made into rooming houses, while others were disfigured with added storefronts. The gutters were choked with an alloy of trash and gray ice, and refuse cans stood frozen to the unshoveled sidewalks.

  "This neighborhood's an eyesore," the cabdriver remarked. "The city should tear it down." "Don't worry. They will!" Qwilleran said with optimism.

  As soon as he spotted antique shops, he stopped the cab and got out without enthusiasm. He surveyed the gloomy street. So this was Christmas in Junktown! Unlike other shopping areas in the city, Zwinger Street was devoid of holiday decorations. No festoons spanned the wide thoroughfare; no glittering angels trumpeted from the light poles.