The Cat Who Turned On and Off

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  "He said he was getting ready for the Block Party tomorrow, and yet he has very little merchandise to offer." "Varnishing on a day like this? It will never dry! If you varnish in damp weather, it remains sticky forever." "Are you sure?" "It's a fact. You may think it's dry, but whenever the humidity is high, the surface becomes tacky again." Qwilleran huffed into his moustache. "Strange mistake to make, isn't it?" "For someone who claims he's been in the paint business," Mary said, "it's an incredible mistake!" Later, the rain turned to a treacherous wet snow as fine as fog, and Qwilleran went to a cheap clothing store in the neighborhood to buy a red hunting cap with earflaps. He also borrowed the Cobb flashlight and crowbar in preparation for his scrounging debut.

  But first he had an invitation to drop in on Russell Patch at the cocktail hour to hear the twenty thousand dollar sound system. He went home and trussed Koko in the blue harness. The leash had unaccountably disappeared, but it was not necessary for a social call. The harness alone made Koko look trim and professional, and it afforded a good grip while Qwilleran was carrying the cat down the street. "This trip," he explained to his purring accomplice, "is not purely in the pursuit of culture. I want you to nose around and see if you can turn up anything significant." The carriage house was two doors away, and Qwilleran tucked Koko inside his overcoat to keep him dry. They entered through the refinishing shop, and their host led them up a narrow staircase to a dazzling apartment. The floor was a checkerboard of large black and white tiles, and a dozen white marble statues on white pedestals were silhouetted against the walls, some of which were painted dull black, some shiny red.

  Russell introduced his roommate, a sallow young man who was either shy or furtive and who wore on his finger a diamond of spectacular brilliance, and Qwilleran introduced Koko, who was now riding on his shoulder. Koko regarded the two strangers briefly and dismissed them at once by turning and staring in the opposite direction.

  The music that filled the room was the busy kind of fiddling and tootling that made Qwilleran nervous. It came at him from all directions." "Do you like baroque music?" Russ asked. "Or would you prefer another type?" "Koko prefers something more soothing," Qwilleran replied.

  "Stan, put on that Schubert sonata." The sound system occupied a bank of old kitchen cabinets transformed into an Italian Renaissance breakfront, and Koko immediately checked it out.

  "Stan, make us a drink," Russell ordered. "Say, that cat isn't vicious at all. I heard he was a wild one!" "If you also heard that I'm a private eye, it's a lie," said Qwilleran.

  "Glad of that. I'd hate to see anyone loafing around Junktown digging up dirt. We've worked hard to build a good image here." "I dug up an interesting fact, however. I learned your friend Andy was writing a novel about Junktown." "Oh, sure," said Russ. "I told him he was wasting his time. Unless you dish out a lot of sex, who buys novels?" "Maybe he did just that. Had you read the manuscript?" Russ laughed. "No, but I can guess what it was like. Andy was a prune, a real prune." "The funny thing is that the manuscript has disappeared." "He probably scrapped it. I told you how he was — a perfectionist." Qwilleran accepted the ginger ale he had requested and said to Stan, "Are you in the antique business?" "I'm a hairdresser," Stan said quietly.

  "A lucrative field, I hear." "I do all right." Russ volunteered, "If you want to know what really keeps him in Jaguars and diamonds, he plays the stock market." "Are you interested in the market?" Stan asked the newsman.

  "To tell the truth, I've never had anything to invest, so I've never made a study of it." "You don't have to know much," Stan said. "You can go in for no-load mutuals or do like me. I have a discretionary account, and my broker doubles my money every year." "You mean that?" Qwilleran lighted his pipe thoughtfully. He was making a computation. If he won one of the Fluxion's top prizes, he could run it up to… two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two thousand in five years. Perhaps, after all, he was wasting his time trying to make murders out of molehills.

  As for Koko, he had checked the place out and was now lounging near a heat register, ignoring the Schubert.

  "Say, I'd like to try something," Russ said. "I've got some electronic music that hits the high frequencies-white noise, computer music, synthesized sound, and all that. Let's see if the cat reacts. Animals can hear things beyond the human range." "Okay with me," Qwilleran said. The Schubert came to an end, and then the thirty-six speakers gave out a concert of whines and whinnies, blats and bleeps, flutterings and tweeterings that baffled the ear- drums. At the first squawk Koko pricked up his ears, and in a moment he was on his feet. He looked bewildered. He ran across the room, changed course and dashed back erratically.

  "He doesn't like it," Qwilleran protested.

  The music slid into a series of hollow whispers and echoes, with pulsing vibrations. Koko raced across the room and-threw himself against the wall.

  "You'd better turn it off!" "This is great! " Russ said. "Stan, did you ever see anything like this?" From the speakers came an unearthly screech. Koko rose in the air, faster than the eye could register, and landed on top of the stereo cabinets.

  "Turn it off!" Qwilleran shouted above the din. It was too late. Koko had swooped down again, landing on Russ Patch's head, digging in with his claws, until the bellow that came from the man's throat sent him flying through space.

  Russ touched his hand to his temple and found blood. "Serves you right," said Stan quietly, as he flipped the switch on the stereo.

  Moments later, when Qwilleran took Koko home, the cat was outwardly calm, but the man could feel his trembling.

  "Sorry, old boy," he said. "That was a dirty trick." He carried Koko back to his apartment and set him gently on the floor. Yum Yum came running to touch noses, but Koko ignored her. He had a long drink of water, then stood on his hind legs and clawed Qwilleran's trousers. The man picked him up and walked the floor with him until it was time to leave for his next appointment.

  Locking the cats in the apartment, he started for the stairway, but the long forlorn howl behind the closed door tore at his heart. As he went slowly down the stairs, the cries became louder and more piteous, and all Qwilleran's regrets about Koko's self-sufficiency vanished. The cat needed him. Inwardly elated, Qwilleran returned and gathered up his eager friend and took him to call on Cluthra.

  18

  With enticing interrogatives in her voice Cluthra had invited Qwilleran to come later (?) in the evening (?) when they could both relax (?). But he had pleaded another engagement and had played dumb to her innuendos.

  Now at the discreet hour of seven thirty he and Koko took a taxi to Skyline Towers and a swift elevator to the seventeenth floor. Koko did not object to elevators that ascended — only the kind that sank beneath him.

  Cluthra met them in a swirling cloud of pale green chiffon and ostrich feathers. "I didn't know you were bringing a friend," she said with her husky laugh.

  "Koko has had a bad experience this evening, and he didn't want me to leave him." Qwilleran told her about Russell's cruel experiment with electronic music.

  "Beware of young men dressed in white!" she said. "They've got something they're hiding." She ushered him into the cozy living room, which was done entirely in matching paisley — paisley fabric on the walls, paisley draperies, paisley slipcovers — all in warm tones of beige, brown and gold. The fabric gave the room the stifling hush of a closed coffin. Music was playing softly — something passionate, with violins. Cluthra's perfume was overpowering.

  Qwilleran looked around him at the polliwogs that characterize the paisley pattern and tried to estimate their number. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Half a million?

  "Will you have a drinkie?" Cluthra extended the invitation with a conspiratorial gleam in her green eyes. "Just a club soda. No liquor. Heavy on the ice." "Honey, I can do better than that for my favorite newspaper reporter," she said, and when the drink came, it was pink, sparkling, and heavily aromatic.

  Qwilleran sniffed it and frowned. "Homemade chokecherry syrup," she explai
ned. "Men like it because it's bitter." He took a cautious sip. The taste was not bad. Pleasant, in fact. "Did you make it?" "Lordy, no! One of my kooky customers. She's made a study of medicinal weeds, and she does this stuff with juniper, lovage, mullein, and I don't know what else. Mullein puts hair on your chest, lover," Cluthra added with a wink.

  Qwilleran had taken a seat in a stiff pull-up chair, with Koko huddled on his lap.

  "You've picked the only backbreaking chair in the place," she protested. She herself was now seductively arranged on the paisley sofa surrounded by paisley pillows, carefully concealing her walking cast with the folds of her chiffon gown. Yards of ostrich fluff framed her shoulders, cascaded down her hilly slopes and circled the hem.

  She patted the sofa cushions. "Why don't you sit over here and be comfy?" "With this cranky knee I'm better off on a straight chair," Qwilleran said, and it was more or less true.

  Cluthra regarded him with fond accusation. "You've been kidding us," she said. "You're not really a newspaper reporter. But we like you just the same." "If your kid sister has been spreading stories, forget it," he said. "I'm just an underpaid, overworked feature writer for the Fluxion, with a private curiosity about sudden deaths. Ivy has a wild imagination." "It's just a phase she's going through." "By the way, did you know Andy was writing a novel about Junktown?" "When Andy came over here," she said, relishing the memory, "we did very little talking about literature." "Do you know Hollis Prantz very well?" Cluthra rolled her eyes. "Preserve me from men who wear gray button-front sweaters!" Qwilleran gulped his iced drink. The apartment was warm, and Koko was like a fur lap robe. But as they talked, the cat relaxed and eventually slid to the floor, much to the man's relief. Soon Koko disappeared against the protective coloration of the beige and brown paisley. Qwilleran mopped his brow. He was beginning to suffocate. The temperature seemed to be in the nineties, and the polliwogs dazzled his eyes. He could look down at the plain beige carpet and see polliwogs; he could look up at the white ceiling and see polliwogs. He closed his eyes. "Do you feel all right, honey?" "Yes, I feel fine. My eyes are tired, that's all. And it's a trifle warm in here." "Would you like to lie down? You look kind of groggy. Come and lie down on the sofa." Qwilleran contemplated the inviting picture before him — the deep-cushioned sofa, the soft pillows. He also caught a glimpse of movement behind Cluthra's halo of red hair. Koko had risen silently and almost invisibly to the back of the sofa.

  "Take off your coat and lie down and make yourself comfy," his hostess was urging. "You don't have to mind your manners with Cousin Cluthra." She gave his moustache and shoulders an appreciative appraisal and batted her lashes.

  Qwilleran wished he had not come. He liked women who were more subtle. He hated paisley. His eyes had been I bothering him lately (maybe he needed glasses) and the allover pattern was making him dizzy. Or was it the drink?

  He wondered about that cherry syrup. Juniper, mullein, lovage. What the devil was lovage? Then without warning Cluthra sneezed. "Oh! Excuse me!" Qwilleran took the opportunity to change the subject. "They'll be burying old C. C. tomorrow," he said with an attempt at animation, although he had an overwhelming desire to close his eyes.

  "He was a real man," Cluthra said with narrowed eyes. "You don't find many of them any more, believe me!" She sneezed again. "Excuse me! I don't know what's the matter with me." Qwilleran could guess. Koko had his nose buried in her ostrich feathers. "Iris is taking it very hard," he said.

  Cluthra pulled a chiffon handkerchief from some hidden place and touched her eyes, which were reddening and beginning to stream. "Iris wod't have ady bore ghostly problebs with her glasses," she said. "C. C. used to get up id the dight to play tricks with theb." "That's what I call devotion," Qwilleran said. "Look here! Are you by any chance allergic to cat hair?" The visit ended abruptly, and it was with a great sense of escape that Qwilleran got out in the cold air and shook the polliwogs from his vision.

  Cluthra had called after him, "You bust visit be without your buddy dext tibe." He took Koko home and got into his scrounging clothes for his next appointment. But first he looked up a word in the dictionary. "Lovage — a domestic remedy." For what ailment or deficiency, the book did not say. Qwilleran also opened a can of shrimp and gave Koko a treat, and he spent a certain amount of time thinking about Cluthra's voice. Whiskey voice, they used to call it.

  At the appointed hour he found Ben waiting at the curb in a gray station wagon that was a masterpiece of rust, with a wire coat hanger serving as a radio antenna and with the curbside headlight, anchored by a single screw, staring glumly at the gutter. The driver was bundled up in a mackinaw, early aviator's helmet, and long striped muffler. The motor coughed a few times, the car shuddered and lurched away from the curb, sucking up blasts of icy cold and dampness through a gaping hole under the dashboard. Fortunately it was a short drive to the Garrick Theatre in the demolition area.

  It stood proudly among other abandoned buildings, looking like a relic of fifteenth century Venice.

  "Alas, poor Garrick! We knew it well," said Ben morosely. "The great and glorious names of the theatre once played here. Then… vaudeville. Then silent pictures. Then talkies. Then double features. Then Italian films. Then horror movies. Then nothing. And now — only Benjamin X. Nicholas, playing to a ghostly audience and applauded by pigeons." Qwilleran carried the crowbar. They both carried flashlights, and Ben directed the newsman in wrenching the boarding from the stage door. The boards came away easily, as if accustomed to cooperating, and the two men entered the dark, silent, empty building.

  Ben led the way down a narrow hall, past the door-keeper's cubicle, past the skeleton of an iron staircase, and onto the stage. The auditorium was a hollow shell, dangling with dead wires, coated with dust, and raw in patches where decorations had been pried from the sidewalls and the two tiers of boxes. Qwilleran beamed his light at the ceiling; all that remained of the Garrick's grandeur were the frescoes in the dome — floating images of Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra. If there was nothing left to scrounge, why had Ben brought him here? Soon Qwilleran guessed the answer.

  The old actor had taken center stage, and an eerie performance began.

  "Friends, Romans, countrymen — " Ben declaimed in passionate tones.

  "Friends, Romans — " came a distant reverberating voice.

  "Lend me your ears!" said Ben.

  "Countrymen — friends, Romans — lend me — countrymen — ears — lend me, " whispered the ghosts of old actors.

  "Alas," said Ben when he had spoken the speech and I Qwilleran had applauded with gloved thumps and a bravo or two. "Alas, we were born too late…. But let us to work! What does our heart desire? A bit of carving? A crumb of marble? Not much choice; the wretches have raped the place. But here!" He kicked a heating grille. "A bronze bauble for your pleasure!" The moldings crumbled, and the newsman easily pried the blackened grillwork loose. The dust rose. Both men coughed and choked. There was a whirring of wings in the darkness overhead, and Qwilleran thought of bats.

  "Let's get out of here," he said. "But stay! One more treasure!" said Ben, flashing his light around the tiers of boxes. All but one of them had been denuded of embellishment. The first box on the left still bore its sculptured crest supported by cherubs blowing trumpets and wearing garlands of flowers. "It would bring a pretty penny." "How much?" "A hundred dollars from any dealer. Two hundred from a smart collector. Three hundred from some bloody fool." "How would we get it off?" "Others have succeeded. Let us be bold!" Ben led the way to the mezzanine level and into the box. "You hold both lights," Qwilleran told him, "and I'll see what I can do with the crowbar." The newsman leaned over the railing and pried at the carving. The floor of the box creaked.

  "Lay on, Macduff!" cried Ben. "Shine the light over the railing," Qwilleran instructed. "I'm working in shadow." Then he paused with crowbar in midair. He had seen something in the dust on the floor. He turned to look at Ben and was blinded by the two flashlights. A shudder in his moustach
e made him plunge to the rear of the box. There was a wrenching of timbers and a crash and a cloud of choking dust rising from the floor below. Two beams of light danced crazily on the walls and ceiling.

  "What the hell happened?" gasped Qwilleran. "The railing let loose!" The railing was gone, and the sagging floor of the box sloped off into blackness.

  "The saints were with us!" cried Ben, choked with emotion or dust.

  "Give me a light and let's get out of here," said the newsman.

  They drove back to Junktown with the brass grille in the back seat, Qwilleran silent as he recalled his narrow escape and what he had seen in the dust.

  "Our performance lacked fire this evening," Ben apologized. An icicle glistened on the tip of his nose. "We were frozen to the bone. But come to the pub and witness a performance that will gladden your heart. Come join us in a brandy." The Lion's Tail had been a neighborhood bank in the 1920s-a miniature Roman temple, now desecrated by a neon sign and panels of glass blocks in the arched windows. Inside, it was lofty, undecorated, smoke-filled, and noisy. An assortment of patrons stood at the bar and filled half the tables-men in work clothes, and raggle-taggle members of Junktown's after-dark set.

  As Ben made his entrance, he was greeted by cheering, stamping of feet, and pounding of tables. He acknowledged the acclaim graciously and held up his hand for silence.