The cats had behaved themselves, more or less; that was not always the case when Qwilleran had a woman visiting his living quarters. Koko was a self-appointed chaperon with his own ideas of social decorum.
"Good cat!" said Qwilleran, and in his mood of reckless indulgence he gave them their second dinner. He opened a can of lobster — the last of their Christmas present from the affluent Mary Duckworth. Koko went wild, racing around the apartment and singing in a falsetto interspersed with chesty growls.
"Do you think I did the right thing tonight?" Qwilleran asked him. "It leaves me right back where I was before. Broke!" And the man was so preoccupied with his own wonderment that he failed to notice Koko's sudden silence.
After their feast, the cats went to sleep in the big chair, and Qwilleran spent his first night in the new bed. Lying on his side and staring out of the studio window, he had a full view of the navy-blue sky and a string of lights marking the opposite bank of the river. For several hours sleep evaded him. This time it was not his past that kept him awake but his future.
He heard and identified all the sounds of a new habitat: the hum of traffic on River Road, a lonely boat whistle, a radio or stereo somewhere in the building, and eventually the crunch of tires on the crushed stone of the driveway. He guessed it would be Maus returning from his gourmet meeting, or Max Sorrel coming home from his restaurant, or Dan Graham in the old Renault, returning from some rendezvous. The garage door creaked, and soon there were footsteps tapping on the tiles of the Great Hall. Somewhere a door closed. After that there was the distant rumble of an approaching storm, and occasionally the sky flashed lavender.
Qwilleran had no idea at what hour he fell asleep — or how long he had slept when he was startled awake by a scream. Whether it was the real thing or a fragment of his dream, it was impossible to say. He had been dreaming intensely — a silly dream about mountain climbing. He was standing triumphantly on the summit of a snow-white mountain of mashed potatoes, gazing across a sea of brown gravy. Someone shouted a warning, and there was a scream, and he waked.
He raised his head and listened sharply. Silence. The scream, Qwilleran decided, had been part of the sound effects of his dream. He switched on the bed lamp to check the time, and that was when he noticed the cats. They had raised their heads and were I listening, too. Their ears were pointed forward. Both heads rotated slowly as they scanned the soundscape in every direction. The cats had heard something. It had not been a dream.
Still, the man told himself, it could have been squealing tires on River Road, or the garage door creaking again. Noises magnified themselves on the threshold of waking. At that moment he heard the sound of creaking hinges quite plainly, followed by the rumble of a car engine, and he jumped out of bed in time to see a light-colored convertible pulling away from the building. He glanced at his watch. It was three twenty-five.
The cats laid their ears back and their chins on their paws and settled down to sleep, and Qwilleran closed the ventilating panes in the big studio window as the first drops of rain splashed on the glass like enormous tears.
5
When Qwilleran awoke Wednesday morning, it took him a few seconds to get his bearings in the strange apartment. He looked at the sky through the studio window-a vast panorama of blue, broken only by a single soaring pigeon. He stared up at the beamed ceiling two stories overhead, noted the big plaid chair, remembered the white bearskin rug. Then the events of the previous day came rushing into his mind: his new home in a pottery. . . the nearness of Joy after all the years of separation. . . her marital trouble. . . the $750 loan. . . and the sound he had heard in the night. In daylight the recollection of it seemed considerably less alarming. He stretched and yawned, disturbing Yum Yum, who was huddled in his armpit, and then he heard a bell ring. Koko was standing on the desk with one paw on the typewriter.
"Coming right up!" Qwilleran said, hoisting him- self out of bed. He put on his red plaid bathrobe and went to the tiny kitchen to open a can of food for the cats. "I know you ordered beef Wellington," he told Koko, "but you'll have to settle for red salmon. This is two dollars a can. Bon appetit!"
The prospect of breakfast touched off a joyous scuffle. Yum Yum kicked Koko with her hind leg like a mule, and he gave her a push. They went into a clinch, pummeling each other until Koko played too rough. Then Yum Yum sprang back and started to circle, lashing her tail. Suddenly she pounced and grabbed him by the throat, but Koko got a hug-hold, and they rolled over and over, locked together. By secret signal both cats quit the fight at the same instant and licked each other's imaginary wounds.
When Qwilleran dressed and went downstairs, he followed the aroma of bacon and coffee into the kitchen. At the big round table Robert Maus was solemnly breakfasting on croissants and marmalade and French chocolate, while Hixie waited for Mrs. Marron to make French toast.
Qwilleran helped himself to orange juice. "Where's everybody this morning?"
"Max never gets up for breakfast," Hixie reported promptly, as she spooned sour cream into her coffee. "William's gone to an early class. Rosemary always has wheat germ in her apartment. Charlotte came early and had 'a bit to eat' big enough to choke a horse, and now she's gone to the Red Cross to roll bandages, or whatever she does there on Wednesday mornings."
"Miss Roop," Maus explained in his pedantic manner, "devotes a generous amount of time to . . . volunteer clerical work at the blood bank, for which she must be . . . admired."
"Do you suppose she's atoning for something wicked in her past?" Hixie asked.
The attorney turned to her in solemn disapproval. "You are, to all appearances, a nasty young lady. Furthermore I find the use of . . . sour cream in coffee an extremely. . . revolting habit."
"Hurry up with the toast, Marron baby," said Hixie. "I'm starving."
"Do the Grahams come down to breakfast?" Qwilleran asked.
"They haven't shown up this morning." She was heaping gooseberry jam on a crusty French roll. "I wish I had a job like theirs, so I could be my own boss and set my own hours."
"My dear young woman," Maus told her gravely, "you would be bankrupt within six months. You are entirely without. . . self-discipline." Then he turned to Qwilleran. "I trust you are sufficiently... comfortable in Number Six?"
As he spoke, Qwilleran noticed for the first time a slight discoloration around the attorney's left eye. "Everything's fine," the newsman said, after a barely perceptible pause, "but I heard something strange in the night. Did anyone else hear an outcry about three-thirty this morning? It sounded like a woman's scream."
There was no reply at the table. Hixie opened her eyes wide and shook her head. Maus calmly went on chewing with the kind of concentration he always gave to the process.
It was characteristic of members of the legal profession never to show surprise, Qwilleran reminded himself. "Maybe it was the garage door that I heard," he suggested.
Maus said, "Mrs. Marron, kindly ask William to . . . lubricate the garage doors when he returns."
"By the way," said the newsman, pouring himself a cup of the excellent coffee, "I'd like to write a column on your cooking philosophy, Mr. Maus, if you're agreeable." He waited patiently for the attorney's response.
After a while it came, accompanied by a gracious nod. "I cannot, at this time, see any. . . objection."
"Perhaps you could have dinner with me tonight at the Toledo Tombs — as the guest of the Daily Fluxion."
At the mention of the epicurean restaurant Maus brightened noticeably. "By all means! We shall have their. . . eels in green sauce. They also prepare a superb veal dish with tarragon and Japanese mushrooms. You must allow me to order."