The boss rose and consulted his watch. "Well, that's the story. Congratulations, Qwill!"
On the way back to the feature department Riker said, "Can't you defer that diet a few weeks? This bright idea of Percy's will blow over like all the rest of them. We're only doing it because we found out the Morning Rampage is starting a gourmet column in two weeks. Meanwhile, you can live like a king — entertain a different date every night — and it won't cost you a cent. That should appeal to your thrifty nature. You're Scotch, aren't you?"
"Scottish," Qwilleran grumbled. "Scotch comes in bottles."
He went first to the barber and then to the photo lab to have his picture taken and to complain to Odd Bunsen about the new assignment.
"If you need company, I'm available," the photographer volunteered, "I'll eat, and you can take notes." He seated Qwilleran on a stool in a backbreaking position and tilted his head at an unnatural angle.
"Riker says you should make me look like a bon vivant," Qwilleran said with a frown.
Bunsen squinted through the viewfinder of the portrait camera. "With that upside-down mustache you'll never look like anything but a hound dog with a bellyache. Let's have a little smile."
Qwilleran twitched a muscle in one cheek.
"Why don't you start by eating at the Toledo Tombs? That's the most expensive joint. Then you can do all the roadhouses." Bunsen stopped to twist Qwilleran's shoulders to the left and his chin to the right. "And you ought to write a column on the Heavenly Hash Houses and tell people how rotten they are."
"Who's running the gourmet column? You or me?"
"Okay, now. A little smile."
The muscle twitched again.
"You moved! We'll have to try another . . . Say, wait till your crazy cats hear about the new assignment! Think about all the doggie bags you can take home to those brats."
"I never thought of that," Qwilleran murmured. His face brightened, and Bunsen snapped the picture.
The Fluxion's new gourmet reporter had every intention of starting his tour of duty at the exclusive Toledo Tombs — although not with Odd Bunsen. He telephoned Mary Duckworth, the most glamorous name in his address book.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm leaving for theCaribbean, and I've already declined an invitation to attend a Gourmet Club dinner tonight. Would you like to go in my place? You could write a column on it."
"Where's the dinner?"
"At Maus Haus. Do you know the place?"
"Mouse House?" Qwilleran repeated. "Not a very appetizing name for a restaurant."
"It's not a restaurant," Mary Duckworth explained. "It's the home of Robert Maus, the attorney M-a-u-s, but he uses the German pronunciation. He's a superb cook — the kind who locks up his French knives every night, and whips up a sauce with thirty-seven ingredients from memory, and grows his own parsley. They say he can tell the right wing from the left wing of the chicken by its taste."
"Where is . . . Maus Haus?"
"OnRiver Road. It's a weird building that's connected with a famous suicide mystery. Maybe you can solve it. Wouldn't that be a scoop for the Daily Fluxion?"
"When did the incident happen?"
"Oh, before I was born."
Qwilleran huffed into his mustache. "Not exactly hot news."
"Don't discuss it at the dinner table," Mary warned. "Robert is thoroughly weary of the subject. I'll phone and tell him you'll be there."
Qwilleran went home early that afternoon to change into his good suit and to feed the cats, first stopping at the grocery to buy them some fresh meat. With their catly perception they knew he was coming even before he climbed the stairs. Waiting for him, they looked like two loaves of homemade bread. They sat facing the door — two bundles of pale toasty fur with brown legs tucked out of sight. But the brown ears were alert, and two pairs of blue eyes questioned the man who walked into the apartment.
"Greetings," he said. "I'm early tonight. And wait till you kids see what I've brought you!"
The two cats rose as one. "Yow!" said Koko in a chesty baritone. "Mmmm!" said Yum Yum in a soprano squeal of rapture.
She leaped on the unabridged dictionary and started scratching its tattered cover for joy, while Koko sailed onto the desk in a demonstration of effortless levitation and stepped on the tabulator key of the typewriter, making the carriage jump.
Qwilleran stroked each cat in turn, massaging Koko's silky back with a heavy hand and caressing Yum Yum's paler fur with tenderness. "How's the little sweetheart?" He spoke to Yum Yum with an unabashed gentleness that his cronies at the Press Club would not have believed and that no woman in his life had ever heard.
"Chicken livers tonight," he told the cats, and Koko expressed his approval by resetting the left-hand margin on the typewriter. His mechanical ability was a newfound talent. He could operate wall switches and open doors, but most of all he was fascinated by the typewriter with its abundance of levers, knobs, and keys.
Qwilleran had mentioned this development to the veterinarian, who had said, "Animals go through phases of interest, like children. How old are the cats?"
"I have no idea. They were both full-grown when I adopted them."
"Koko is probably three or four. Very healthy. And he seems highly intelligent."
At this comment Qwilleran had smoothed his mustache discreetly and refrained from mentioning Koko's outstanding faculty. The truth was that the precocious Siamese seemed to possess uncanny skills of detection. Qwilleran had recently uncovered a crime that baffled the police, and only his close friends knew that Koko was largely responsible for solving the case.
Qwilleran chopped chicken livers for the cats, warmed them in a little broth, and arranged the delicacy on a plate the way they liked it, with juices puddling in the center and bite-size morsels of meat around the rim.
"Lucky beggars!" he said. They could eat all they wanted without gaining an oUnce. Under their sleek fawn-colored fur they were lean and muscular. Al- though they moved with grace and feather-light tread, there was strength in their hind legs that carried them to the top of the refrigerator in a single effortless leap.
Qwilleran watched them for a while and then turned his attention to his new assignment, sitting down at the typewriter to make a list of restaurants. He always left a fresh sheet of paper in position around the platen, ready for action — a writer's trick that made it easier to get started — and as he glanced at this paper, his fingers halted over the keys. He put on his new glasses and had a closer look. There was a single letter typed at the top of the page.
"By golly, I knew you'd learn to operate this machine sooner or later," he said over his shoulder, and there was a gargled response from the kitchen, as Koko simultaneously swallowed a bit of liver and made an offhand comment.
It was a capital T. The keyboard was locked in upper case. Koko had apparently stepped on the shift lock with his left paw and on the letter key with his right.
Qwilleran added, "oledo Tombs" to Koko's T and then listed the Golden Lamb Chop, the Medium Rare Room at the Stilton Hotel, and several roadhouses, ethnic restaurants, and underground bistros.
Then he dressed for dinner, shedding the tweed sports coat, the red plaid tie, the gray button-down shirt, and the dust-colored slacks that constituted his uniform at the Daily Fluxion. In doing so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror, and what he saw he did not like. His face was fleshed out; his upper arms were flabby; where he should have been concave, he was convex.
Hopefully but not confidently he stepped on the antique scale in the bathroom. It was a rusty contraption with weights and a balance arm, and the arm went up with a sharp clunk. He held his breath and moved the weight along the arm, hesitantly adding a quarter-pound, a half-pound, then one, two, three pounds before the scale was in balance. Three pounds! He had eaten nothing but grapefruit for breakfast and cottage cheese for lunch and he was three pounds heavier than he had been that morning.