"You've been a busy boy. No wonder you haven't finished that profile on Halapay."
"And one more question: Who stole the dagger at the t museum? And why are they being so cagey about it?"
"Do you have any more yarns?" asked Arch. "Or can I go home to my wife and kiddies?"
"Go home. You're a lousy audience. Here comes a couple of guys who'll be interested."
Odd Bunsen and Lodge Kendall were walking through the bar single file.
"Hey, Jim," said Odd, "did you write that piece about the missing dagger at the museum?"
"Yeah."
"They've found it. I went up and got some shots of it.
The Picture Desk thought people would like to see what the thing looked like - after all the hullabaloo you stirred up."
"Where'd they find it?"
"In the safe in the Education Department. One of the instructors was writing a piece on Florentine art for some magazine, and he took the dagger out of the case to examine. Then he went off to a convention somewhere and parked it in the safe."
"Oh," said Qwilleran. His moustache drooped.
"Well, that solves one of your problems," Arch told him. He turned to the police reporter. "Anything new in the Lambreth case?"
"A major clue just fizzled out," said Kendall. "The police found a valuable painting that Lambreth's wife said was missing."
"Where'd they find it?" Qwilleran demanded.
"In the stock room of the gallery, filed under G."
"Oh," said Qwilleran.
Arch slapped him on the back. "As a detective, Jim, you're a great art writer. Why don't you bear down on the Halapay profile and leave crime to the police? I'm going home."
Arch left the Press Club, and Odd Bunsen and Lodge Kendall drifted away, and Qwilleran sat alone, peering unhappily into his tomato juice.
Bruno, wiping the bar, said with his wise smile, "You want another Bloody Mary without vodka, lime, Worcestershire, or Tabasco?"
"No," snapped Qwilleran.
The bartender lingered. He tidied up the bar. He gave Qwilleran another paper napkin. Finally he said, "Would you like to see a couple of my presidential portraits?"
Qwilleran glowered at him.
"I've finished Van Buren," said Bruno, "and I've got him and John Quincy Adams here under the bar."
"Not tonight. I'm not in the mood."
"I don't know anybody else who makes collage portraits out of whiskey labels," Bruno persisted.
"Look, I don't care if you make mosaic portraits out of used olive pits! I don't want to look at them tonight!"
"You're beginning to sound like Mountclemens," said Bruno.
"I've changed my mind about that drink," said Qwilleran. "I'll take one. Make it a Scotch - straight."
Bruno shrugged and began filling the order in slow motion.
"And snap it up," said Qwilleran.
Over the loudspeaker came a muffled voice that he did not hear.
"Mr. Qwilleran," said Bruno. "I think they're paging you."
Qwilleran listened, wiped his moustache, and in bad humor went to the telephone.
A soft voice said, "Mr. Qwilleran, I hope I'm not intruding, but I wonder if you have any plans for dinner tonight?"
"No, I haven't, he said shifting gears.
"Would you come out and have dinner with me at the house? I'm feeling blue, and it would help if I could talk with someone who is understanding. I promise not to dwell on my troubles. We'll talk about pleasant things."
"I'll grab a cab and be right there."
On the way out of the Press Club, Qwilleran threw Bruno a dollar. "Drink the Scotch yourself," he said.
When Qwilleran returned home from Zoe's house sometime after midnight, he was in a congenial mood. The night was bitter cold, and yet he felt warm. He gave a quarter to a frozen-looking panhandler shuffling down Blenheim Place, and he whistled a tune as he unlocked the outer door of No. 26.
Even before he inserted the second key in the inner door, he could hear a wail from Koko in the hall.
"Ha! Fair-weather friend," he said to the cat. "You snubbed me yesterday. Don't expect a game of Sparrow tonight, old fellow."
Koko was sitting on the bottom step in a tall posture. No prancing. No ankle-rubbing. He was strictly business. He spoke again urgently.
Qwilleran looked at his watch. The cat should have been asleep at this hour, curled on the refrigerator cushion in Mountclemens' apartment. But there he was, wide awake and speaking in long, loud terms. It was not the complaining whine he used when dinner was slightly delayed, nor the scolding tone he assumed when dinner was unforgivably late. It was a cry of desperation.
"Quiet, Koko! You'll wake up the house," Qwilleran said in a hushed voice.
Koko lowered his volume but persisted in the urgency of his message. He stalked back and forth on taut legs, rubbing against the newel-post.
"What's the matter, Koko? What are you trying to say?" The cat's sleek side ground against the newel-post as if to gouge out chunks of fur. Qwilleran reached down and stroked the arched back; the silky fur had become strangely coarse and bristling. At the touch of the hand, Koko bounded up five or six stairs, then lowered his head and twisted his neck until he could rub the back of his ears against the front edge of a tread.
"Are you locked out, Koko? Let's go up and see." Immediately the cat scampered to the top of the flight, with the man following.
"The door's open, Koko," Qwilleran whispered. "Go in. Go to sleep."
The cat squeezed through the narrow opening, and Qwilleran was halfway downstairs again when the wailing resumed. Koko had come out and was rubbing his head violently against the doorjamb.
"You can't keep that up all night! Come on home with me. I'll find you a snack." Qwilleran grabbed the cat under the middle and carried him to his own apartment, where he tossed him lightly on the sofa, but Koko was gone again in a white blur of speed, flying up the stairs and wailing desperately from the top.
At that point Qwilleran's moustache quivered without explanation. What was this all about? Without another word, he followed the cat upstairs. First he knocked on the open door. When there was no answer, he went in. The living room was dark.
As he pressed the switch, all the hidden spotlights flicked their tiny beams on paintings and objects of art. Koko was quiet now, watching Qwilleran's feet as they walked through the living room, into the dining alcove, then out again. The heavily draped and carpeted rooms had a stifling hush. When the feet stopped moving, Koko rushed off down the long hall to the dark kitchen. The feet followed. Bedroom and bathroom doors stood open. Qwilleran turned on the kitchen light.
"What is it, you devil?" The cat was rubbing against the back door that led to the fire escape.
"If you just want to go for a walk, I'll wring your neck. Is that what you want?"
Koko rose on his hind feet and pawed at the doorknob. "Well, I'm not taking you out. Where's your room, mate? Let him take you out.... Besides, it's too cold for cats out there."
Qwilleran switched off the kitchen light and started back down the long hallway, only to have Koko come racing after him with a chesty growl. The cat threw himself at the man's legs.
Qwilleran's moustache sent him another message. He returned to the kitchen, turned on the light, and took the flashlight from the broom closet. He reached for the night latch on the back door and found it unlocked. Strange, he thought.
Opening the door, he met a blast of wintry air, crackling cold. There was a wall switch just inside the door, and he flicked it with a finger, but the exterior light made only a sick puddle of yellow on the upper landing. Qwilleran thumbed the flashlight, and its powerful beam leaped about the scene below. It explored the three brick walls. It studied the closed gate. It crept over the brick paving until it pounced on the sprawled body - the long, dark, spidery body of George Bonifield Mountclemens.
Qwilleran made his way cautiously down the icy treads of the wooden staircase. He flashed the center beam of the flashlight on the side of the face. Mountclemens was lying cheek to the pavement, his body hunched. No doubt about it; he was dead.
The alley was deserted. The night was quiet. There was a fragrance of lime peel. And within the patio the only movement was a pale shadow just beyond the flashlight's range. It moved in circles. It was the cat, behaving oddly, performing some private ritual. With back arched and tail stiff and ears laid back, Kao K'o Kung walked around and around and around.
Qwilleran grabbed the cat in one arm and got up the wooden staircase as fast as the icy treads would permit. At the telephone his finger hesitated over the dial, but he called the police first and after that the night city editor of the Daily Fluxion. Then he sat down to wait, composing his own wry versions of appropriate headlines for tomorrow's paper.
First to arrive at Blenheim Place were two officers in a patrol car.
Qwilleran told them, "You can't reach the patio from the front of the house. You have to go upstairs through his apartment and down the fire escape, or else go around the block and come in the alley gate. It may be locked."
"Who lives in the downstairs rear?" they asked.
"No one. It's used for storage."
The officers tried the door of the rear apartment and found it locked. They went upstairs and down the fire escape.
Qwilleran told them, "At first I thought he'd fallen down the steps. They're treacherous. But he's lying too far from the bottom."
"Looks like a body wound," they said. "Looks like it might have been a knife."
Upstairs the cat arched his back and made long legs and stepped lightly in a pattern of ever-narrowing circles.
-13-
The day after the murder of Mountclemens, there was only one topic of conversation at the Daily Fluxion. One by one they stopped at Qwilleran's desk: the members of the City Room, the Women's Department, Editorial, the Photo Lab, and the Sports Department. The head librarian, the foreman of the Composing Room, and the elevator starter paid unexpected visits.
Qwilleran's telephone rang incessantly. Women readers cried in his ear. Several anonymous callers said they were glad; Mountclemens had it coming to him. Some urged the newspaper to offer a reward for the killer. Six galleries telephoned to inquire who would review their March exhibitions, now that the critic was out of the picture. A crank called with a phony-sounding tip on the murder and was referred to the Homicide Bureau. A twelve-year-old girl applied for the job of art critic.
One call was from Sandy Halapay's maid, canceling the lunch date scheduled with Qwilleran there was no explanation. So at noon he went to the Press Club with Arch Riker, Odd Bunsen, and Lodge Kendall.
They took a table for four, and Qwilleran went over the incident in detail, starting with Koko's unusual behavior. Mountclemens had been knifed in the stomach. The weapon had not been found. There was no sign of a tussle. The gate to the alley was locked.
"The body's being sent to Milwaukee," Qwilleran told his audience. "Mountclemens mentioned that he had a sister there, and the police found her address. They also impounded the tape reels he had been working on."
Arch said, "They've been looking at back files of his reviews, but I don't know what they hope to find. Just because he insulted half the artists in town, that doesn't make them all suspects, does it? Or maybe it does!"
"Every scrap of information helps," said Lodge. "A lot of people hated Mountclemens. Not only artists but dealers, museum people, teachers, collectors - and at least one bartender that I know," said Qwilleran. "Even Odd wanted to bust a camera over his head."
Arch said, "The switchboard has been jumping. Everybody wants to know who did it. Sometimes I think our readers are all morons."
"Mountclemens wasn't wearing his artificial hand when he was killed," said Odd. "I wonder why."
"That reminds me," said Qwilleran. "I got quite a jolt this morning. Went upstairs to Mountclemens' apartment to get the cat's meat, and there on the top shelf of the refrigerator was that plastic hand! I jumped a foot!"
"What does the cat think about all the uproar?"
"He's edgy. I'm keeping him in my apartment, and he jumps, at the slightest sound. After the police had gone last night and everything quieted down, I put a blanket on the sofa and tried to make him bed down, but he just walked the floor. I think he prowled all night."
"I'd like to know what that cat knows."
Qwilleran said, "I'd like to know what Mountclemens was doing in the patio on a cold winter night - in his velvet house jacket. That's what he was wearing - and a glove on his good hand. Yet he had taken his topcoat with him. There was a British tweed lying on the bricks in a comer of the patio. They assume it was his - right size, New York label, and a shoulder cape! Who else would wear a cape?"