The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers Read online

  “I do indeed! The worse it got, the funnier it got…. Here comes our dinner. We’ll continue the reminiscences later.”

  Dinner was served. Chicken, of course, but the conversation never wandered far from the Grand Old Man who had lived to be almost a hundred. There was one question Qwilleran saved until after dessert: “What can you tell me about the Midnight Marchers?” He turned on the recorder.

  “When Homer was nineteen, he used to call on a young lady in the next town—riding there on his bicycle and spending the evening on the porch swing, drinking lemonade and talking. Every half hour, he recalled, her mother came out to the porch to see if they had enough lemonade. At eleven o’clock she suggested that he leave for home, since it was a long ride.

  “On one dark night, on the way home, he was mystified to see a long line of small lights weaving across the nearby hills!

  “What he did not know—and what it turned out to be—was the annual ritual of the Midnight Marchers. They were mourning the loss of thirty-eight miners in a mine disaster that orphaned an entire town.

  “Furthermore, it was caused by a greedy mine owner who had failed to take the precautions practiced by competitors….

  “Every year, the descendants of those orphans donned miners’ hats with tiny lights and trudged in silent file across the mine site. They have done it for three generations now, first the sons of orphans, then the grandsons of orphans, and now the great-grandsons. It always made Homer mad as a hatter! He said it was silly schoolboy stuff—putting on miners’ hats with lights and staging a spooky pageant. He said they should do something that would benefit the community—and do it in the name of the long-ago victims.”

  “How did people react?” Qwilleran asked.

  “Oh, he made enemies, who said he was disrespectful of the dead. But as the years went on, the Marchers sounded more and more like a secret society who got together and drank beer. And then Homer got a letter from Nathan Ledfield, that dear man! He said Homer was right. He asked for Homer’s help in changing the purpose of the Midnight Marchers without changing the name. Mr. Ledfield wanted the Midnight Marchers to benefit orphans. And it proved to be successful.

  “The beauty of it is,” said Rhoda, “that churches and other organizations got behind it, and the Midnight Marchers changed their purpose.”

  “Hmmm…this sounds vaguely familiar…”

  “Yes, other philanthropists have copied the Midnight Marchers—not only in Moose County, I believe.”

  Qwilleran said, “Homer must have been pleased to have his lifelong campaign succeed.”

  “Yes, but he never wanted any credit.”

  Strangely, Qwilleran’s mind went to Nathan Ledfield’s protégée, but it was getting late, and he saw Rhoda glance at her wristwatch. They returned to Ittibittiwassee Estates.

  SEVEN

  Expecting Polly home for Sunday brunch, Qwilleran biked downtown early for the Sunday New York Times, unloading such sections as Fashion & Style, Business, Sports, and Classifieds. Otherwise, it would not fit in the basket of his British Silverlight. There were always fellow citizens who were glad to get his leavings.

  By the time he returned to the barn, Koko was doing his contortions in the kitchen window, meaning there was a message on the machine.

  It would be Polly, he knew, announcing her arrival and making plans for the day…. Instead, when Qwilleran pressed the button, the voice was that of Wetherby Goode: “This is Joe. Polly called and asked me to give her cats their breakfast. She said to tell you she won’t be home till late afternoon.”

  Qwilleran fortified himself with a cup of coffee and dialed the weatherman. He said, “Appreciate the message, Joe. Did she mention what was happening in that jungle down there?”

  “Just what I was going to ask you, pal.”

  “She went to a dinner last night, leaving her cats on the automatic feeder and expecting to drive back this morning for the usual Sunday activities. No telling what changed her mind.”

  “Anything can happen south of the border.”

  “You should know, Joe.” (He was a native of Horseradish down there.) “Polly went to a birthday party for a friend who was library director of Lockmaster but left to manage the family bookstore.”

  “Sure, I know the store. Bestbooks. It’s been there forever. Why weren’t you invited?”

  “I was, but I declined. They play guessing games at their parties.”

  “I know what you mean….”

  “Stop in for a snort on your way to your broadcast tomorrow and I’ll fill you in—on who won.”

  During this conversation, the Siamese had sat side by side, quietly awaiting developments. He gave them a good brushing with the silver-backed hairbrush…then played a few rounds of the necktie game…then announced, “Read!” Koko leaped to the bookshelf and knocked down Portrait of a Lady. It had more gilt on the spine, he observed, than others that had come in the last purchase.

  The first chapter was interrupted by the phone—and the comfortable voice of Mildred Riker, inviting him to an afternoon repast with the Rikers. “But I can’t find Polly,” she said. “She wasn’t at church.”

  “She’s out of town,” Qwilleran explained.

  “Then you come, and I’ll invite someone from the neighborhood.”

  When he arrived an hour later, he was glad to see Hixie Rice, promotion director for the Something.

  “Where’s Polly?” she asked.

  “In Lockmaster—probably up to no good. Where’s Dwight?”

  “In the same place, probably for the same reason.”

  Drinks were served on the deck. They talked about the Old Hulk. The Scottish community was prepared to underwrite a new building. Volunteer carpenters, electricians, and painters were offering their services, proud to have their names on an honor roll in the lobby of the building.

  The meal was served indoors, as usual.

  Mildred said, “I envy Qwill’s screened gazebo. He can serve outdoors, and the cats can be out there without leashes.”

  After dessert (peach cobbler with crème fraîche and pecans) the two men entertained with their favorite topic: growing up in Chicago. Hixie had not heard the story before.

  Mildred said, “Tell about summer camp.”

  The oft-told tale went like this:

  QWILL: “My father died before I was born, and so Mr. Riker functioned as dad for both of us—taking us to the zoo and parades, giving advice, discussing our report cards, getting us out of scrapes.”

  ARCH: “One year he decided we should go to summer camp and learn something useful like doing the Australian crawl, rigging a sailboat, climbing a tree, whittling a wood whistle…”

  QWILL: “But there’s only one thing we remember. Every night we’d sit around a campfire, listen to stories, and sing camp songs loudly, but not well.”

  ARCH: “But the only thing that either of us remembers in detail is the campfire chant.”

  QWILL: “Not only do we remember every word, but it runs through the mind at the most inopportune times.”

  ARCH: “—Like, when facing a traffic judge.”

  QWILL: “—or getting married.”

  ARCH: “—Would you like a performance?”

  Hixie squealed, “Please do!”

  The two men sat up in their chairs, eyed each other for a cue, then launched into a loud, bouncy beat:

  “Away down yonder not so very far off

  A jaybird died of the whooping cough.

  He whooped so hard with the whooping cough

  That he whooped his head and his tail

  Right off!”

  There was a moment’s silence, during which Polly always said, “To quote Richard the Third, I am amazed.”

  Hixie squealed, “I love it! I wanta learn it!”

  “Want to hear the second verse?” they asked. “It’s the same as the first.”

  The party broke up at a sensible hour, and Qwilleran drove home to get up-to-date on Polly’s escapade. He would as
k her:

  How was the party?

  Were there sixty candles on the cake?

  Who was there?

  Were they dressed bookish or horsey?

  Did they really play guessing games?

  Who won?

  What were the prizes?

  What church do they attend?

  How was the preacher?

  He was a thorough interviewer, and she liked to be interviewed.

  When he arrived at the barn, the cat-in-the-window message assured Qwilleran that someone had checked in. It was the weatherman.

  “Polly’s home, but she’s beat! Call me, not her. She looked frazzled, Qwill, high on excitement, short on sleep. I told her to turn in and I’d notify you.”

  Qwilleran said, “She never drinks more than half a glass of sherry. She’s known Shirley for years!”

  “Yeah, but…something got her overexcited and maybe it interfered with her sleep. Too bad she had to drive home alone. We’ll keep in touch. Don’t worry.”

  That evening, around eleven o’clock, Qwilleran was reading in his lounge chair, and the cats were sprawled on his lap. Suddenly Koko was alerted! He looked at the desk phone. And it rang. It was Polly, reporting for their bedtime chat.

  “Qwill!” she cried. “I suppose you wonder what happened to me. I’ve never been so exhausted in my life! A cup of cocoa, a few hours’ sleep with my cuddly cats, and I revivified…. I hope you didn’t worry about me.”

  “We’ll go to dinner tomorrow night, and you can fill me in.”

  “I’ll have something exciting to tell you,” Polly said.

  “Give me a hint.”

  “No hints. If you guess what it is, it won’t be a surprise…. À bientôt!”

  “À bientôt.”

  EIGHT

  On his way to the radio station, Wetherby Goode often stopped at Qwilleran’s barn for a pick-me-up, and the newsman enjoyed his impromptu visits—not only to get the inside track on the weather but to share neighborly news, and the neighbors at the Willows were always making news. Joe had been genuinely concerned about Polly.

  When he arrived at the kitchen door and dropped on a stool at the bar, he was greeted by Koko and Yum Yum, who would not be surprised to receive a friendly cat snack from Jet Stream.

  Qwilleran poured and said, “Well, she survived!”

  “She’s a tough one! Never underestimate the power of a cup of cocoa!”

  The male cat jumped to the bar top, hearing his name.

  Qwilleran said, “I expect to hear the whole story when we have dinner tonight. The problem is: Monday is not a good night for dining out. The Mackintosh Inn is too formal, the Grist Mill too festive, the Boulder House too far.”

  “Why not get a picnic supper catered by Robin O’Dell, Qwill, and serve it in the gazebo? You don’t know how lucky you are to have premises that are screened.”

  Qwilleran said, “Once in a while you come up with a good idea…. Have another splash in your glass.”

  “And if there’s anything Polly doesn’t know about those horse people in Lockmaster, call on me. I can give you some ancient history about Bestbooks, Qwill. It’s been in the same family for a hundred years, you know. At one time they kept a bottle in the back room and had a men’s club back there. Lots of loud laughter and bawdy jokes. Parents put the whole store off-limits to kids. Women wouldn’t go in to buy a cookbook. They lost a lot of business to mail order and secondhand and the public library.”

  Qwilleran said, “The librarians of both Lockmaster and Pickax became great friends at that time. That’s why Polly was invited to Shirley’s birthday party yesterday.”

  Joe drained his glass and headed for the back door.

  “Before you go, Joe, one question. Does Jet Stream accept food from the automatic feeder?”

  “He’ll take anything he can get…. Why?”

  “When Koko hears the little bell ring and sees the little door open, he looks at the food in disbelief and then looks up at me and shakes his right paw—then sniffs the dish again and shakes his other paw before walking away.”

  There was time, before Polly came from the bookstore, to call Celia and order a picnic supper.

  Celia said, “Does she like cold soup? I have some lovely gazpacho. And I have individual quiches in the oven with bacon and tomato. For dessert, chilled Bartlett pears would be nice, with a bit of Stilton…. Pat can deliver it after five o’clock, and I’ll send a little goodie for the cats.”

  When Polly drove to the barn around six o’clock, Qwilleran said, “We’ll have an aperitif in the gazebo. Will you take the cats?”

  She knew right where to go for their “limousine,” a canvas tote bag in the broom closet, advertising the Pickax Public Library. Qwilleran carried a tray with sherry for her and Squunk water for himself. “I want to hear all about the Birthday Party of the Century.”

  “Well!” she said, promising a momentous report. “You wouldn’t have liked it, Qwill. The main dining room looked like a stable—tack hanging on the walls, waitresses in riding boots—everything but the horses! I thought the food was terrible! I ordered salmon; I don’t know what they did to it.”

  Parodying an old joke, Qwilleran said, “Apart from that, Mrs. Duncan, how did you like the party?”

  “There were forty guests at long institutional tables…forty frosted cupcakes, each with a tiny candle, and a matchbook…forty gift-wrapped birthday presents, including one that must have been a refrigerator and one that was obviously a bicycle!”

  “How did the guest of honor react?”

  “Shirley is always charming. She told her son she would like everything trucked to her home—where she could open the small ones with her shoes off and her cat on her lap. She said she would send everyone a thank-you note suitable for framing. That means an original cartoon.”

  “Shirley sounds like a clever woman. I’m sorry I never met her…. What about the guessing games? You haven’t mentioned them.”

  “They were boring: Why does the firefly flash his light? Who owns the Volvo company in Sweden? Who explored Idaho in the early nineteenth century?”

  They were both accustomed to Literary Club questions. Who wrote these lines: “She walks in beauty like the night…” “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day…” “Order is a lovely thing, on disarray it lays its wing.”

  “The best part of the evening was the music. A young man played fabulous piano! Pop and classical. A young woman turned pages for him. They say she’s also his chauffeur—or is it chauffeuse? He has some kind of disability and can’t drive. He’s also a piano tuner. He tuned Doris’s piano at the Old Manse four times a year, including regulating and voicing. Mostly he plays piano for hire.”

  When Polly stopped for breath he asked, “Is his name Frankie? I believe he’s rehearsal pianist for the production of Cats. All very interesting.”

  Later Qwilleran asked about Shirley’s ideas for a bookstore.

  “Bestbooks and Pirate’s Chest had entirely different problems. They had a hundred-year-old building with a boozy aroma in the rear and a questionable reputation—not to mention bad plumbing. With Shirley’s know-how and ideas and an unlimited budget, Bestbooks was born again. Her first move was to hire a bibliocat, a brother of Dundee, and customers’ frowns changed to smiles. Then, just as we have an actual pirate’s chest hanging on the wall, Shirley introduced a favorite work of art…. Are you familiar with the Rodin sculpture The Thinker?”

  Qwilleran had never seen it but knew its pose: male model, seated, with fist on chin and elbow on knee.

  “Shirley has never seen the original, either, but she has a photo enlarged and framed as a focal point of the store. Obviously it represents ‘Thinking, not drinking.’ And then a competition among customers named the official cat Thinker—a wonderful name for a feline.”

  He said, “I’m sorry I don’t know Shirley. What’s she like?”

  “She has a commanding figure and is very p
leasant. Just don’t call her Shirl, that’s all!”

  Qwilleran said, “There’s something on your mind, Polly. It’s been bothering you ever since Shirley’s party. Would you like to unload?”

  She looked relieved. “How to begin…At the end of the dinner, Shirley’s son, Donald, who has been functioning as president of Bestbooks, made a very touching speech about Shirley and how she gave up a library career three years ago to save a century-old bookstore that had been going downhill. In the last three years, Shirley’s personality and brainpower have tripled the annual income. For that reason the Bestbooks board of directors have voted Shirley a bonus: something she has always wanted—a trip to Paris. Shirley screamed—something she never does. Then Donald said that all expenses would be paid—for two! Shirley looked at me, and I screamed! Then we clutched each other and both cried.”

  Qwilleran was stunned into silence but recovered to say, “I’m very happy for you, Polly!”

  She said, “I only wish you were going with me.”

  “So do I, dear.”

  Polly said, “At least I won’t have to impose on neighbors and worry about Brutus and Catta. They can stay at Pet Plaza, and Judd Amhurst can manage the bookstore.”

  She added, “A Lockmaster travel agent will handle airline tickets, hotel reservations, and sightseeing.”

  Later that evening, and in the days that followed, Qwilleran speculated that they could have been traveling about the globe together. Why had they both allowed themselves to be trapped in the workaday world? Now there was no telling whom Polly would meet. There had been that professor in Canada, that antiques dealer in Williamsburg, those attorneys and architects at the K Fund in Chicago.

  And now there were all those Frenchmen! She liked men, and they were attracted to her agreeable manner, resulting from a lifetime career in a public library. Her musical voice might be interpreted as being seductive. She had a beautiful complexion—the result, she said, of eating broccoli and bananas. She dressed attractively—with individual touches of her own design. Altogether, Polly seemed too young for the silver in her hair. And when she entered a room wearing a Duncan plaid over the shoulder, pinned with a silver cairngorm…she stopped conversation.