After Old Red, scented with expensive perfume, had transported him to Fourteen, which was really Thirteen, he greeted the Siamese in a daze, saying, "You wouldn't believe what I've just seen!" "Yow!" said Koko, rising on his hind legs. "Sorry. No samples tonight. How's the temperature? A little better? I apologize for the sauna. How would you guys like a read?" Shedding his street clothes gratefully and getting into his pajama bottoms, Qwilleran intended to read another chapter of Kinglake's Eothen. It may have been his imagination, but the Siamese seemed to enjoy the references to camels, goats, and beasts of burden. Their ears always twitched and their whiskers curled. It was uncanny. So the three of them filed into the library, Koko leading the way with tail erect as a flagpole, followed by Yum Yum slinking sinuously, one dainty foot in front of the other, exactly like that girl in the lobby, Qwilleran thought. He brought up the rear, wearing the bottoms of the Valentine-red pajamas that Polly had given him the previous February.
The library was the most livable room in the apartment, made friendly with shelves of art books and walls of paintings. The furniture was contemporary teakwood and chrome created by big-name designers whose names Qwilleran had forgotten. He dropped into an inviting chair and turned to chapter ten, while Yum Yum turned around three times on his lap and settled down with chin on paw. Koko had just assumed his posture of eager listener when a slight noise elsewhere catapulted both cats out of the library and into the foyer. Qwilleran followed and found Koko scratching at something under the door. An envelope had been pushed halfway underneath.
There was no name on it, but it contained a sheet of heavy notepaper embossed with a W, and the following message had been written with an unsteady hand: "Welcome to the Casablanca. Come down and have a drink with me - any time." It was signed by Isabelle Wilburton of apartment 10-F, the one who wanted to sell her baby grand piano.
Qwilleran growled into his moustache and tossed the note into the wastebasket, being careful not to crumple it.
Crumpled paper was like catnip to Yum Yum, and she would retrieve it in three seconds. All his life it had been his compulsive habit to crumple paper before discarding it, but those days were gone forever. Amazing, he thought, how one adjusts to living with cats. A few years before, if anyone had suggested such a thing, he would have called that person a blasted fool.
Back in the library he turned once more to chapter ten, but a slight quiver on his upper lip caused him to put the book down. He passed a hand over his moustache as if to calm the disturbing sensation. "Let's sit quietly and think for a while," he said to the waiting listeners. "We've been here for forty-eight hours and I'm getting some vibrations." The fact that someone had been murdered on the premises did not bother Qwilleran; it was Koko's interest in the incident that alerted him. That cat knew everything! First he found the bloodstain under a heavy piece of furniture, and then he found the gold bracelet buried in the upholstery of a sofa. Koko had an instinct for sinister truths hidden beneath the surface.
Qwilleran himself, after reading the newspaper I accounts, questioned the motive of the "nice, quiet, young man" who brutally knifed his benefactor, his "best friend," to whom he had given a gold bracelet inscribed with an intimate code.
Ross may have blamed the gallery because his paintings failed to sell, but that was a weak excuse for murder. It was Todd who gave the Fluxion that frail scrap of information, Todd with his nervous habit of nose-pinching. What did that signify?
The news that Di Bessinger had been named heir to the Casablanca also raised suspicions in Qwilleran's mind.
Many powerful interests op- posed her. It was definitely to their advantage to have her out of the picture. Even her own partner disagreed with her on the preservation of the old building and was now planning to move the gallery to the Gateway Alcazar. But none of this explained the role of Ross Rasmus as the hit man.
"What's your opinion, Koko?" Qwilleran asked.
The cat was not listening. He was craning his neck and staring toward the foyer. A moment later there was a frantic banging on the front door. Qwilleran hurried to the scene and yanked the door open, catching a wild-eyed woman with fists raised, ready to pound the door panels again. She screamed, "The building's on fire!"
8
JUST AS THE woman from 14-B screamed "Fire!" Qwilleran smelled smoke and heard the sirens.
"Don't take the elevator!" she cried as she dashed for the stairwell in a terrycloth robe.
He jammed the cats unceremoniously into their carrier, grabbed his pajama top, and started down the stairs, assuming that the boilers had over- heated in their battle with the bitter east wind. Other tenants joined the downward trek at every floor, most of them grumbling and whining.
"Why are we doing this? The building's fireproof," one protested.
"My husband's watching football on TV, and he won't budge," said a woman. "1 say: Let him burn!" "Smells like burning chicken to me," said another.
"Did they ring the firebell? I didn't hear it. My neighbor banged on my door. They're supposed to ring the firebell." "Betcha ten bucks the Countess ain't walkin' down." By the time the disgruntled refugees reached the main floor, the lobby was filled with a hubbub of voices raised in alarm or indignation, while Mrs. Tuttle tried to calm them. They were a motley assemblage in various states of undress: women with hair curlers and no makeup; hairy-legged men in nightshirts; old tenants without their dentures; bald tenants without their hairpieces. Qwilleran was conspicuous in his red pajamas. A few persons were clutching treasured possessions or squawling cats, and the Siamese in their carrier yowled and shrieked in the spirit of the occasion. Among the refugees was a man in a washed-out seersucker robe that might have been purloined from a hospital. He had thinning hair, a pale face, and a white patch where his right ear should be; Qwilleran recognized his fellow diner from the hibachi table.
Fortunately for the underclad residents, the lobby was on the warm side of the building. Those from the cold side were threatening to bring their mattresses and sleep on the lobby floor. Mrs. Tuttle was doing a heroic job of controlling the crowd.
Then an elevator door opened, and firemen in black rubber coats and boots, carrying red- handled axes, stepped out. "Go back to bed, folks," they said, grinning. "Only a chicken burning." The tenants would have been happier if it had been a real fire.
"What! I walked down six flights for a chicken?" "I knew it was a chicken. I know burning chicken when I smell it." "Somebody put it in the oven to thaw and went out to the bar and forgot it." "Whoever done it, they should kick 'em out." "They're gonna kick us all out pretty soon." The crowd began to disperse, some boarding the elevators and some heading for the stairwells, while others hung around the lobby, welcoming the opportunity for social fellowship.
The Siamese, following their rude experience among angry tenants and complaining cats, were understandably upset. Qwilleran, too, was restless and perhaps slightly lonesome, although he would not have admitted it. He considered it too late to call Polly but took a chance on phoning Arch Riker. "How's everything in Pickax?" he asked his old friend.
"I wondered when you were going to report in," said the editor. "Everything's just the way you left it - no snow yet." "Any world-shaking news?" "We had some excitement today. One of the conservation officers spotted a bald eagle near Wildcat Junction." "What did you do? Put out an extra?" "I'll blue-pencil that cynical remark. You talk like city folks." "Have you seen Polly?" "Yes - at a library meeting tonight. She showed slides of her trip to England. She told me she'd heard from you." "What's happening at the paper?" "Hixie sold a full-page ad to Iris Cobb's son: He's going into business up here." "Watch her! He's happily married," Qwilleran said.