I entered the lobby, and heard that familiar voice greeting me, and saw those long shapeless tweeds unfolding from a chair by the fireplace.
“Bertrand!” I cried out, and in a moment I had him by the hand.
I gaped at him in my astonishment. Was this the gentle, melancholy Witherspoon whom I had known? He still stooped; his gray locks were as sparse as they had ever been. But I saw instantly that the old Witherspoon had vanished—that here was a man of iron!
He seemed to read my mind. Leading me to a chair, he brushed a cat aside so that I might sit there. “Christopher,” he said, his high voice very firm, “I am still at my post. The time has come to fight—and fight we shall!”
At this, my heart filled with black despair for our lost cause. “How can we fight, Bertrand?” I exclaimed, pointing at the feline population of the room.
Witherspoon seated himself beside me. “Have courage, Christopher! These wretched creatures,” he gestured at the cats, “are not to blame. Even Morton, vile as he is, is but a tool. Our enemy is Smithby. We must destroy him by fair means or foul!”
His eyes almost flashed as he said it. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve planned the strategy of our campaign,” he hissed. “Shall I reveal it to you?”
“Do, by all means,” said I, leaning forward eagerly.
But Witherspoon had no chance to answer me. Even as I spoke, his glance shifted. Fists clenched, narrow brow frowning sheer hatred, he glared past me at the lobby’s entrance.
I had not noticed those who passed through to the dining room during our conversation. But now I looked about me—and beheld, coming across the floor, Smithby and Cynthia Smithby, with Beowulf You trailing in their wake. A long black cat was draped over Mrs. Smithby’s shoulders in startling contrast to the coiled golden hair above it. Another cat, a Siamese, was carrying on a pleasant tête-à-tête with Smithby, who bore it in his arms.
I heard Witherspoon gnash his teeth in my ear. “Look at her!” he muttered viciously. “She looks like a cross between a cream puff and a Valkyrie.”
The description, I must say, surprised me—later I learned that Witherspoon had heard it from a student. Still, it was not inaccurate. But for her heroic stature—dwarfing her husband by half a dozen inches—Cynthia Smithby would have suited Charles II to a T. She resembled Herrick’s Julia: a splendid figure rather too ample for the modern fashion, a small red mouth, a tiny rounded chin, a rolling eye.
She was the first to see me. Instantly, an elfin smile touched her lips, and she changed her course. Head high, she came toward me.
I drew myself erect, to await her with a stern and uncompromising countenance. I knew that Witherspoon was wrong. Here was our enemy! Here was the Lilith who had seduced a weakling from the stony path of sober scholarship! I knew at once that there must be no pretense, that I must make my attitude quite clear.
Flushed and radiant, up she came. “Dear Mr. Flewkes!” said she, her voice low and musical. “What a delightful surprise! I am most glad to find you once again among us.” She lowered her lashes in mock modesty. “And so is Emerson. Are you not, Emerson?”
Smithby blushed with embarrassment, fidgeted with a thin book he was carrying, and nodded with obvious pleasure.
“So much has happened since you went away,” she went on, “so much that is very wonderful. But then—” She laughed a pretty laugh. “You can catch up by attending Emerson’s seminars.”
I forced myself to look into her eyes. “Madam,” I declared coldly, “half my life has been devoted to the service of this institution and to the preservation of its austere ideals. I can only hang my head in shame when I observe the sad decay of what was once a great tradition. Neither by word nor deed will I condone this treachery!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a hurt look come over Smithby’s face; I saw Beowulf Yu gape stupidly. For an instant, too, Cynthia Smithby pouted like some sensitive child suddenly rebuked. Then, with a toss of her head, “Mr. Flewkes,” she said, “truly I am glad that you take this stand, for here—” she turned to Smithby, “here is the challenge that we need. Your genius, Emerson, will surmount this wall of classical conservatism. Our present project is certain to succeed. Then we will have proof positive and undeniable, and Mr. Flewkes will come to you with his apologies.”
“Oh, not to me—” There was a calf-like worship in Smithby’s eyes. “To you, Cynthia dear. The credit will be yours. The world will know that you have done it all!”
Beowulf giggled. “Then Flewkes will also make research in Cat.” He peered at me through his harlequins. “I can give help. Cat words have one nice syllable, like Cantonese.”
“Why, Beowulf—” Cynthia Smithby smiled archly. “You must devote your time to learning it yourself. You’ve failed every other course, you know. But let’s have luncheon. Come,” She took Smithby’s arm. “And now, dear Mr. Flewkes, we bid you—miaow.”
As the dining room door closed behind them, I slumped back heavily into my chair. “My God, Bertrand,” I muttered, “she—she mewed at me!”
“I believe,” he answered, “that she was saying good-bye to you in Cat.”
I wiped an icy perspiration from my forehead. “It is not Smithby who is the evil genius—it is she!”
“Nonsense!” snapped Witherspoon. “It’s simply that she wears no brassiere—and you are too impressionable.”
I flushed. “But—but what of her new project?”
“All froth and foolishness, believe me. Some silly toy her husband’s given her. How could it be more? She does not even have her Ph. D.”
This argument, of course, was quite unanswerable. I held my peace.
“He is the culprit,” continued Witherspoon. “Surely you saw that small book he was carrying? It is his latest work—Back Fence Ballads, Translated from the Original Cat. He sings them, Christopher, to all his students, accompanying himself upon the lute. I have been told that his caterwauling is magnificent. And there’s the extension course for lion tamers, conducted in the evenings. It has brought strange folk to Bogwood, I assure you.”
He broke off. He pointed an apocalyptic finger to the heavens. “Do you wonder,” he cried, “that I have taken desperate measures? Do you wonder that I have hired a private eye?”
“A—a private—eye?”
“Ah, to be sure,” said he. “I must explain. That is what he calls himself in the vernacular. He is a sleuth, Christopher. I brought him from New York, where hardened criminals flee at the mere mention of his name.”
I started to expostulate, but Witherspoon would brook no interruption. “I have arranged for you to meet him, to lunch with him. Not here, but secretly—at an establishment known, I believe, as Jakey’s Java Joint.”
“But, Bertrand,” I protested feebly, “how can this person aid us? How?”
Witherspoon uttered a fierce, triumphant laugh. “Be patient, Christopher! Soon you will know all!”
I remember little of that first guarded meeting. Hulking, unshaven fellows wolfing their food in grubby cubicles, lewd language and coarse jests, vile music from an automatic instrument—all these I can recall only vaguely. My first unfavorable impression of Luigi Hogan, though, is still distinct. Small and round and surprisingly hairy, he neither looked nor behaved like a detective.
Witherspoon and I had turned up our coat collars and pulled our hat brims down to avoid recognition, but Hogan’s sharp little eyes saw us immediately as we entered, and he greeted us with much pointless snickering. When he had pulled himself together, introductions were performed; and, in a moment, he and Witherspoon were plotting in undertones over thick cups of lukewarm coffee.
Hogan’s diction was atrocious; his underworld argot was almost incomprehensible to me; he talked and laughed with his mouth full of salami sandwich. Even if our encounter with Cynthia Smithby had left me in full possession of my faculties, I doubt whether I could have gleaned more than occasional fragments of the conversation. I noticed that Hogan addres
sed Witherspoon as “Chief.” I heard him say that he had been attending Smithby’s extension course for animal trainers. I even caught the very words in which he recounted Smithby’s advice to them: Y’gotta show ’em you ain’t afraid er nuttin’, see? Y’ gotta get right inner cages wit’ ’em, see? Y’ gotta talk t’ them goddam big feelions like you was brudders.
Witherspoon’s expression became positively bloodthirsty at this point. “Hogan,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth, “you go find us a circus or a zoo, see? With a good big vicious tiger, see? Heh heh! We’ll challenge Mr. Smithby to go and reason with him in his cage. He can’t refuse. Catch on?”
“I catch, Chief.” Hogan snickered loathsomely. “Th’ Press’ll eat it up.”
“Not just the Press,” murmured Witherspoon with a ghoulish leer. “No indeed!”
As for the rest of what they said—well, Witherspoon gave it to me in outline as we walked by obscure streets back to the campus. The idea of Smithby becoming an hors-d’oeuvre for a tiger was not their main plot. Hogan was to watch him constantly until he committed some dangerous indiscretion, preferably of an amorous nature. Then he was to secure photographs which we could use to disgrace Smithby, to procure his swift dismissal. As a last resort, he was to provide a person known as Marilynne, who had yet to meet failure in her career of breaking down male inhibitions.
Ordinarily, I would have been profoundly shocked by the utter ruthlessness of these methods. But now, aware only of Bogwood’s dire plight, I shared Witherspoon’s ferocity and felt no qualms. One thing alone perturbed me—Cynthia Smithby. True, she had no proper academic qualifications; the chance of her making any new discovery dangerous to us was remote indeed. Still, might not Smithby, after all, be nothing more than a red herring dragged by a shrewd, designing woman across our path?
Waiting for Hogan’s labors to bear fruit was no easy task. Vain doubts and fears tormented me incessantly—and all the while things went from bad to worse. Against our bitter protests, a course in Feline Culture was added to the awful list. The Press, keeping Cat constantly in the public eye, greeted with laudatory reviews the appearance of Smithby’s handbooks for zoo and circus personnel: Basic Lion, Basic Leopard, Basic Panther, and so on. And the columnists, meanwhile, harped on the rumored progress of Cynthia Smithby’s project, the nature of which she was still keeping secret. It was, they hinted, a way of teaching Cat so simple that any child could learn it in an hour. Might it not, they asked, eliminate the need for baby-sitters, for kindergarten teachers? Might it not change the social and economic structure of the world?
We had our moments of encouragement. There was the day when Hogan was able to announce that he had made arrangements with a menagerie which owned a tiger, elderly and quite untamable, who had put an end to the earthly career of at least one trainer. The challenge had been mailed to Smithby. The newspapers had been informed. And you can well imagine that Witherspoon and I fairly jumped for joy when we saw the headlines. “CAT PROF MAY TAME FIERCE JUNGLE LORD!” they shouted.
But Smithby weaseled out of it. Chatting with any normal tiger, he announced, was most enjoyable. This was a different matter. This tiger was clearly psychopathic. “He needs a feline psychiatrist,” said Smithby. “After all, even though I speak English, I would not try to reason with a human maniac armed to the teeth.” And the servile Press praised him for his “hard common sense!”
The weeks dragged by, and our furtive meetings at Jakey’s Java Joint brought more and more discouraging reports. Every small detail of Smithby’s life was known—and irreproachable. Perversely, he insisted in behaving as a model husband. Even Marilynne, when finally we brought her from New York, found him quite unassailable. Even Marilynne, in whose hennaed presence poor Witherspoon blushed like any schoolboy, exercised her talents all in vain. With each attempt, her remarks became increasingly sarcastic, until eventually she abandoned us—leaving behind a note in which she suggested that a catnip mouse might bring us better luck.
Oddly enough, the collapse of Witherspoon’s carefully contrived plans did not daunt him in the least; nor would he listen to my suggestion that henceforth we should fight Smithby on purely academic grounds. He insisted that we keep Hogan in our service; and, when I objected, he threatened to bring “goons” to settle Smithby’s hash.”
Even when we learned that Smithby had complained against us to the Board of Regents, even when we were summoned to appear before that august body, he did not share my quickened fears and my despondency. “Ah, Christopher,” he cried, shaking his fist, “on Friday we must go before the Board. That means we have three days! Believe me—something will turn up, and we will face the lot of them triumphantly. We will see Smithby crushed and broken yet. Cat will be nothing but an evil dream!”
How bitterly the jesting gods play cat-and-mouse with all that we hold dear! On Friday morning, drowned in despair, I was making my hopeless way toward the campus when, to my astonishment, a large red cab came to a screeching stop beside me, and its door flew open to eject an exultant Witherspoon, who seized me by the arm.
“Victory is ours!” he trumpeted, pulling me to the vehicle. “Hogan just telephoned! Smithby is in our trap!” Before I could utter a word, he bundled me into the back seat ahead of him, and slammed the door. “Yip Lee’s” he shouted to the driver, and we were off.
I got nothing further from him during that mad ride, for seemingly he knew no more. “I told you so, I told you so!” was the ecstatic cry with which he answered all my questions; and, when we reached our destination, a Chinese restaurant in the commercial district, I was as mystified as ever.
Leaving the cab and entering, we were greeted by a Celestial who spoke to Witherspoon by name. We were led upstairs to a small and private room. And there, upon its threshold, I saw a sight which took my breath away. In the center of the room stood a table and five chairs. Two of the chairs were empty. Two were occupied by Luigi Hogan and a well-dressed, middle-aged Chinese. On the fifth, covering his face in shame, sat Beowulf Yu.
As soon as he saw us, Hogan struck an attitude. “De whole t’ing’s washed up, guys!” he declared. “All dis stuff about Cat—it’s phony! Your Smit’by—he’s a fake!”
I heard Witherspoon gasp; I heard a muffled sob from Beowulf Yu. “This is incredible!” I cried. “Why, I myself have heard him speak to cats. I’ve heard them answer back. Deplorable it is, yes—but surely it must be more than a mere web of fraud? Explain yourself, man.”
Hogan began to quake with merriment. “It’s—it’s simple!” he giggled. “Shrimps!”
“Shrimps?” Witherspoon and I echoed the word with one voice.
But Hogan was too convulsed to answer. He jerked a thumb toward the Chinese gentleman beside him.
The Chinese smiled gravely. “That is correct,” he said, bowing. “I, you see, am Chester Yu. I am the uncle of this dull youth—” With some distaste, he indicated Beowulf. “This dull youth with the absurd glasses, who has repaid me for bringing him to this country by failing to master even the rudiments of English. I am also the proprietor of the Pilgrim Fathers Seafood Market—”
He paused courteously while we took the vacant chairs. “For some time,” he went on, “I had seen Professor Smithby come in regularly once a day, followed closely by Mr. Hogan. Furthermore, Professor Smithby always bought exactly ten cents worth of shrimps, refused to have them wrapped, and put them directly in his pocket. My curiosity was aroused—and, a day or so ago, I took the liberty of speaking to Mr. Hogan about it.”
Hogan smirked.
“He and I compared notes. When I learned who my strange customer was, my interest redoubled. We Chinese, you know, revere learning, and my disreputable nephew’s devotion to Cat had caused me much distress.” Chester Yu’s countenance assumed an expression of extreme severity. “Mr. Hogan and I came to the only possible conclusion. We tested our theory with Meow-Tse-Tung, my own pet cat; and the results were indisputable. He immediately became vocal at a whiff of shrimp. So this
morning we took Beowulf to task. Confronted by the evidence, he confessed all!”
Beowulf held his fingers to his ears, moaning softly.
“Yes,” declared his uncle, “this wretched boy admitted that he had uncovered Smithby’s secret, and turned it to his own dishonorable advantage. Smithby, you see, mewed at the cats—and the cats mewed for shrimp. There was no more to it than that.”
“Do you mean,” I exclaimed, “that all those people merely pretended to understand Cat?”
“Believing that Professor Smithby understood it perfectly, they feared to reveal what they regarded as their own stupidity.”
I shook my head. “Surely no group of intelligent men and women—”
“Come, come, Christopher,” protested Witherspoon, “I’ve seen the same sort of thing a dozen times in the Philosophy Department.”
And I was forced to admit that he was right.
Then Witherspoon pushed his chair back and rose. “We are grateful to you, gentlemen,” he asserted grimly, “for placing this monstrous swindler in our power. Now we can purge dear Bogwood of his presence, his mewing sycophants, and his nefarious works.” He showed his teeth. “It is eleven o’clock. In half an hour the Board of Regents meets—and you have earned the right to share our triumph, the triumph of true learning. Let us go! Let us grind vile Smithby in the dust!”
Without another word, he turned and strode toward the door; and we followed him, Chester Yu urging his weeping nephew forward with an ungentle hand. My heart was high indeed as we left the restaurant and entered Hogan’s car.
The Board of Regents was to meet, of course, in Cruett Hall, in the chamber dedicated by Ebenezer Bogwood to that purpose. It is a long room, paneled in ancient walnut, full of tradition’s gentle gloom. Upon its walls hang the stern portraits of those scholars who, through the generations, have filled our presidential chair—and, as our small procession strode down the hall toward it, there came to me the thought of how their noble spirits would rejoice when Witherspoon and I pricked the miasmic bubble which was Cat.
The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 24