The Cat Who Went Underground Read online

  “Clem’s interested,” Nick said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  The voice on the phone had the chesty resonance of a man who has spent his life on a farm—and on a softball field. “Hello, Mr. Qwilleran. I hear you want a carpenter.”

  “Yes, I have several jobs in mind, but the most urgent is a set of steps down to the beach before my cabin slides down into the lake. Do you know the kind I mean?”

  “Sure, I helped Buddy Yarrow build those a couple of years ago for some people at the Dune Club. I know what lumber to order without any waste.”

  “When could you start?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “I couldn’t ask better than that. Do you know where to find me?”

  “It’s the drive with a K on a post. I’ve passed it a million times.”

  “See you tomorrow then.” Qwilleran tamped his moustache with satisfaction and returned to the Bambas’ table. “I’m indebted to you kids,” he said, and picked up their dinner check.

  When Qwilleran returned home, the Siamese greeted him with a look of hungry eagerness, and he scouted for a small treat that they might enjoy. Mildred’s tub of homemade cereal was still unopened. “This may look like catfood,” he explained, “but it’s breakfast cereal for humans.” (They normally objected to anything produced especially for cats.) They gobbled it up. Then he sprawled on the sofa with a news magazine, while Yum Yum snuggled on his lap and Koko perched on the sofaback, both waiting to hear him read aloud about the trade deficit and the latest hostile takeover.

  At midnight it was time to lock the doors and close the interior shutters. Daybreak came early in June, and unless the louvered shutters were closed, the pink light of sunrise illuminated the cabin and gave the cats the erroneous idea that it was time for breakfast.

  The lakeshore could be very dark and very quiet on a calm, moonless night, and Qwilleran slept soundly until two-thirty. At that hour a sound of some kind roused him from sleep. It was alarming enough to cause him to sit up and listen warily. Again he heard it: a deep, continuous, rumbling moan that rose louder and angrier and ended in a high-pitched shriek. Recognizing Koko’s Tarzan act, reserved for stray cats, Qwilleran shouted “Quiet!”

  He lay down again. Then he became aware of intermittent flashes of light. He swung out of bed and hurried into the living room. A greenish light so powerful that it filtered through the louvered shutters was coloring the white walls, white sofas, and even Koko’s pale fur with a ghastly tint. The cat was on the arm of the sofa, his back humped, his tail bushed, his ears back, his eyes staring at the front window.

  Qwilleran threw open the shutters and was blinded by a dazzling, pulsating light. He rushed to the front door, struggled with the lock, dashed out on the porch shouting “Hey, you out there!”

  But the light had disappeared, and there was not a sound, although a breeze sprang up and swished through the cherry trees. He groped his way back indoors, still blind from the intensity of the flashes.

  It was a joke, Qwilleran decided, as he regained his vision, and as Koko’s tail resumed its normal shape, and as Yum Yum came crawling out from under the sofa. It was that photographer from the Dune Club, he decided. He had been flashing his strobe lights to play a trick on a nonbeliever, and no doubt Mildred was the one who gave him the idea.

  FOUR

  The whining of an electric saw and the sharp blows of a hammer interrupted Qwilleran’s sleep on Tuesday morning. He looked at his bedside clock with one eye open; it was only six-thirty. He was a late riser by preference, but he realized that the carpenter was on the job and the beach steps were being built. He pulled on a warmup suit and went out to the top of the dune.

  There was a light blue pickup in the clearing—one of five thousand of that color in Moose County according to his private estimate. This one was distinguished by a cartoon on the cab door: a screeching, wing-flapping chicken. On the door handle hung a softball jacket: red with white lettering that spelled out COTTLE ROOSTERS. Lumber was stacked in the clearing, and a table-saw was set up. The carpenter himself was halfway down the sandbank working at top speed, driving home each nail with three economical strokes of the hammer. Bang bang bang.

  “Morning,” said Qwilleran sleepily when the hammering stopped.

  The young man looked up from his work. “Hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “Not at all,” said Qwilleran with amiable sarcasm. “I always get up at six o’clock and run a few miles before breakfast.”

  The humor was lost on the carpenter. “That’s good for you,” he said. “Oh, I forgot—I’m Clem Cottle.” He scrambled up the sandbank, holding out a calloused hand.

  He was one of five thousand big, healthy, young blond fellows in Moose County—again a private estimate. “Your face looks familiar,” Qwilleran said.

  “Sometimes I help out behind the bar at the Shipwreck.” Clem wasted no time on conversation, but returned to building the steps.

  “What kind of wood are you using?” The lumber had a greenish tint like the bilious light that had seeped into the cabin in the middle of the night.

  “It’s treated so it doesn’t have to be painted. Everybody’s using this now.” Bang bang bang.

  As one who could smash a finger with the first blow, Qwilleran watched the carpenter with admiration. Every nail went in straight, in the right place, with an economy of movement. “You’re a real pro! Where did you learn to do that?”

  “My dad taught me everything.” Bang bang bang. “I’m building a house for myself. I’m getting married in October.”

  “I was sorry to hear about the fire. That must have been a devastating experience.”

  Clem stopped hammering and looked up at Qwilleran. “I hope I never have to live through anything like that again,” he said grimly. “I woke up in the middle of the night and thought my room was on fire. The walls were red! The sky was red! The volunteers came out from Mooseville and some other towns, but it was too late.”

  “What will your father do now?”

  Clem shrugged. “Start all over again.”

  “Would you care for a cup of coffee or a soft drink?”

  “No, thanks. Too early for a break yet.” Bang bang bang.

  Qwilleran prepared coffee for himself and astounded the Siamese by serving their breakfast two hours ahead of schedule—a can of boned chicken topped with a spoonful of jellied consommé. Unable to believe their rare good fortune, they pranced in exultant circles, yikking and yowling.

  “You deserve this,” he told them. “You’ve had a disturbing vacation so far . . . leaks, plumbers, crazy lights in the night, and now that noisy carpenter!” He watched them devour their food. They seemed to enjoy an audience; there were times when Yum Yum refused to eat unless he stood by, and it gave him pleasure to observe them crouching over the plate with businesslike tails flat on the floor, ears and whiskers swept back, heads jerking and snapping as they maneuvered the food in their mouths. When he offered them a few nuggets of Mildred’s cereal for dessert, Koko rose on his hind legs in anticipation.

  Qwilleran was so intent on studying his companions that the telephone startled him. It was Mildred’s excited voice on the phone. “Qwill, have you heard the news?”

  “I haven’t turned on the radio,” he said. “What happened? Did a flying saucer splash down in front of the Northern Lights Hotel? Probably needed a few repairs at Glinko’s garage.”

  “You’re being funny this morning, Qwill! Well, listen to this: Roger called me a couple of minutes ago. Captain Phlogg was found dead in his shop!”

  “Poor fool finally drank himself to death. The chamber of commerce will be distraught. Who found the body?”

  “A Mooseville officer making the rounds at midnight. He saw a light inside the shop and the door open. The captain was slumped in his chair. But here’s the chief reason I’m calling,” she said. “His dog has been howling all night. Do you think I should go over and feed it?”

  “Do you want to lose an
arm? I suggest you call the sheriff. I wonder if the old guy has any relatives around here.”

  “Not according to Roger. I wonder what will happen.”

  “The state will bury him and search for heirs and assets. Do you think he had money stashed away? You never know about miserly eccentrics . . . Well, anyway, Mildred, you’d better call the sheriff about the dog. It’s good of you to be concerned.”

  Qwilleran hung up the receiver gently, thinking warm thoughts about his kind, considerate neighbor . . . and wondering why he had received no long letter from Polly Duncan.

  On the dune, where construction was nearing completion, he said to Clem, “Would you be interested in building an addition to this cabin?”

  Clem appraised the weathered logs. “You’d never match that old logwork.”

  “I’m aware of that, but I’d settle for board-and-batten with the proper stain.”

  “And the old foundation is fieldstone. The last stone mason died two years ago. You’d have to have concrete block under the new part.”

  “No objection.”

  “How would you connect the old and the new?”

  Qwilleran showed him the sketches, with the new wing right-angled to the cabin, and a door cut through into the back hall. Clem took them to his truck, figured costs, and presented an estimate in writing.

  He said, “You’re outside the village limits, so you won’t need a permit. I mean, you’re supposed to have one, but nobody ever does. So I could start digging for the footings tomorrow and pour them the next day. They’ll set over the weekend.”

  “I’ll give you a deposit.”

  “Forget it! I’ve got credit at the lumberyard. The Cottles have been here since 1872.”

  “One question,” Qwilleran said. “Do you know anything about carpenter ants? They’re getting into the porch posts.”

  “Just get a bug bomb and spray ’em good,” Clem advised.

  After the blue truck with the frantic chicken on the door had pulled away, Qwilleran recalled the transaction with satisfaction. The bill for the steps had been reasonable, and Clem had accepted a check with no hemming and hawing about cash. The young man was not only honest and skilled but remarkably industrious. He worked on his father’s farm, moonlighted at the Shipwreck Tavern, and was building himself a house. Now Qwilleran was inclined to discount the alarmist gossip about building problems. Lyle Compton had called the dune-dwellers a giddy bunch, and their chitchat about UFOs and horoscopes confirmed that opinion. It had been a mistake to believe their cocktail conversation about underground builders.

  On the whole he was feeling so elated about the latest turn of events that he agreed to act as a judge for the Fourth of July parade when someone called him from the county building in Pickax. It was a civic chore he ordinarily would have sidestepped, but the caller was a woman with a voice like Polly Duncan’s. She said that the countywide parade would be held in Mooseville and Mildred Hanstable had agreed to be a judge, with a third yet to be announced. She said that Qwilleran’s name on the panel of judges would add greatly to the prestige of the event. She added that she always read “Straight from the Qwill Pen” and it was the best thing in the paper. Grooming his moustache modestly, Qwilleran agreed to help judge the floats on the Fourth of July.

  For lunch he went into town to the Northern Lights Hotel, and as he walked through the lobby he recognized something out of the corner of his eye. It was the picture of a young man. The hotel had a quaint custom of announcing social news on a glorified bulletin board in the lobby. A gilt frame and some ribbons and artificial flowers were intended to glamorize the display. Qwilleran usually walked past quickly with averted eyes, but this time he stopped for a closer look. A photo of a young couple was displayed with a neatly printed card reading, “Mr. and Mrs. Warren Wimsey announce the engagement of their daughter, Maryellen, to Clem Cottle, son of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Cottle, all of Black Creek. An October wedding is planned.” Clem was stiffly posed in a collar and tie. The girl looked wholesome and intelligent and country-pretty.

  Wimsey! The name was familiar to Qwilleran. There were dozens of Wimseys, Goodwinters, Trevelyans, and Cuttlebrinks in the slim directory of Moose County telephone subscribers. Families had a tendency to stay in the area for generations, and the annual family reunions were attended by a hundred members of the clan, or even more. In the cities where Qwilleran had lived and worked, such family get-togethers were unheard of, and he thought, Ah! Another idea for the “Qwill Pen.”

  After lunch he walked to Huggins Hardware to buy insect spray as Clem had suggested. It was a brilliant summer day, and Main Street was teeming with tourists, always distinguishable from the locals by their clothing, speech, and attitude. The young vacationers were as boisterous and as naked as the law would allow. The middle-aged tourists from the city stared at the natives with amused superiority. Busloads of white-haired day-trippers followed tour guides in and out of the shipwreck museum and gazed obediently at a certain spot in the lake where, they were told, a shipful of gold bullion had sunk a hundred years ago and was still there! Qwilleran made another mental note for his column.

  The hardware merchant was taking advantage of the traffic by displaying minnow pails, beach balls, bicycles, and life preservers on the sidewalk.

  Qwilleran, in his present elevated mood, had a taste for adventure. “How much for a lightweight ten-speed, Cecil?” he asked.

  “Where do you plan to ride, Mr. Q? The traffic is murder on the highway this summer. You’d be better off to get a trail bike and stick to the dirt roads. Much safer!”

  “They look like the clunkers I pedaled when I was delivering newspapers.”

  “Just take one out and try it, Mr. Q. You won’t be disappointed. Head for the riverbank,” Cecil Huggins advised. “Go out Sandpit Road half a mile and then get off the asphalt onto Dumpy Road till it dead-ends at Hogback. If you cut across the fields to the river, there’s a dandy trail there. Be careful of mudslides. That’s where Buddy Yarrow slipped in.”

  The seat and handlebars were adjusted to Qwilleran’s six feet two, and he set out on Cecil’s proposed route. He had to admit that the bike negotiated the uneven terrain in exhilarating fashion. Leaping over ruts and roots and washouts, he felt like an intrepid twelve-year-old, and there were no trucks, no electric signs, no whiffs of carbon monoxide.

  Dumpy Road was a benighted colony of substandard housing, but it led to the bank of the Ittibittiwassee, which bubbled into eddying bays and babbled on the pebbles like Tennyson’s brook. To Qwilleran all was enchantment: the splash and gurgle of the rapids; the willows weeping over the water’s edge; the wildflowers, birds, and scurrying animals that he could not identify, never having bothered to learn about nature. He envied the country-smart locals who rescued bear cubs and built their own houses. They were descendents of the pioneers who had settled this north country, chopping down trees to build their log cabins and picking wild herbs to make their own medicines. Qwilleran wondered what they did about spider bites in the old days. Much of his biking was done standing up on the pedals.

  Around each bend there was another surprise: a deer having a drink; a solitary fisherman in waders; something sleek, brown and flat-tailed, swimming and diving. There was one discordant note: Ahead he could see a jumble of junk marring the natural beauty of the riverbank—a series of boxlike structures built of chickenwire and scrap lumber. He dismounted and wheeled his bike cautiously closer. They were ramshackle cages. In one of them an animal was sleeping, rolled up in a ball; it looked like a fox. In another enclosure some tiny creatures with striped backs were chasing each other and climbing over a wheel that rotated. An old bathtub sunk in the ground was filled with rainwater, and ducks waddled in and out of their pool.

  It was obviously Joanna’s zoo, and Qwilleran hoped she was not there. Her house—no better than a large box with windows, perched on concrete blocks—fronted on the dirt road called Hogback, and it was surrounded by plumbing fixtures. Broken or rusted sinks, t
oilets, oil tanks, and water heaters were dotted about the yard like tombstones in a plumbing graveyard. To add to the funereal effect there was a row of wooden crosses marking small graves.

  He was contemplating these crosses when a van careened down Hogback Road in a cloud of dust. It jerked to a stop, and Joanna jumped out.

  “I was biking on the riverbank and saw your interesting zoo,” he explained, unhappy to be caught prowling about her property.

  “Didja see my chipmunks?” she asked with more spirit than she usually mustered. “I built ’em an exercise wheel.”

  “What do you feed them?” he asked in a lame attempt to show intelligent interest.

  “Sunflower seeds and acorns. You should see ’em sit up and eat and wash their face. Wanna hold one? They like being stroked.”

  “No, thanks,” he said. “Anything that eats acorns probably has very sharp teeth. What happens to them in winter?”

  “I give ’em straw, and they sleep a lot.”

  “Those crosses—are they graves?”

  “That’s where I buried the bear cubs. The woodchuck, too. And some chipmunks.”

  Appraising the yardful of retired fixtures, he asked, “What made you decide to be a plumber, Joanna?”

  “My daddy showed me how to do all that kind of stuff, so I took a test and got my license.” She saw Qwilleran looking at her house. “Someday I’m gonna get somebody to build me a real house, when I get enough money. Wanna beer?”

  “No, thanks. I borrowed this bike, and if I don’t return it soon, the sheriff will come gunning for me. What’s the quickest way back to Mooseville?”

  She pointed down Hogback Road, and he rode off through the dirt ruts at top speed, gripping the handlebars, concentrating on his balance, certain that she was watching, hoping he would not take an embarrassing header.

  The following days were eventful for both Qwilleran and the Siamese. Clem Cottle and his younger brother staked out the new east wing and went to work with shovels, digging like madmen, then building wooden forms. The next morning the cement mixer truck rumbled into the clearing, and the two young men ran back and forth trundling wheelbarrows filled with wet concrete. Yum Yum hid under the sofa, and even brave Koko retired discreetly under a bunk in the guestroom, slinking out to peek once in a while.