Ninette and the cat both nodded. Jonathon, that is an excellent suggestion. She could contrast our lovely weather with that of Moscow in the winter. Ninette, above all, you must make much of how happy you are, what a fine place Blackpool is, and how much you love the audiences here.
“That will be of no difficulty,” Ninette replied. “It is all true.” She looked about her at the men who had become such supporters and friends in such a short time, and unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears. “One could not ask for better friends than you. I feel as if I have fallen into a fairy tale!”
“Yes, well, fairy tales have ogres,” Nigel grumbled. “We haven’t conquered ours yet. We don’t even know who it is!”
All the more reason not to allow this to distract us. Think of it as a diversion and not any sort of serious difficulty.
“They must have more evidence than just those photographs,” Jonathon pointed out.
They may. But they do not have me. The cat looked uncommonly smug. I will say no more.
Jonathon gave him a measuring look. “You are altogether too sly, Master Thomas,” he said severely.
I am a cat, was the self-satisfied reply.
“I do not know why I ever listened to you,” Wolf groaned from under Arthur’s coat.
Because I am cleverer than you, the cat replied. All three of the co-conspirators were in a pub opposite the building housing the flat of the fellow who had written the first article. They had discovered, by the simple expedient of buying a few drinks at the pub for his thirsty colleagues, that the man never kept anything he considered to be important at his desk in the newspaper offices. He was not well liked there; he never shared sources, and never put anyone else on to a good story, even if he never intended to follow it up himself. That meant that anything he had gotten from Nina in the way of files and proof would be in his flat.
They were waiting until he left for the evening. They had ensured that he would be gone long, and not in very good condition when he returned, simply by ensconcing Jonathon there in one of his many disguises, and with heavy pockets. By simple expedient of seeming to be a fellow who had won a great deal of money and standing rounds for the entire pub, Jonathon should keep him there, and drinking, for a good long time, without ever raising the man’s suspicions by being singled out.
“There he is,” muttered Arthur, as the fellow in question sauntered out into the fine spring evening, looking oddly both satisfied and irritated. But from all accounts he was a disagreeable man; perhaps this irritation was his natural state.
They watched as he strode down the street, heading right in the direction of his favorite watering-hole. They waited a good long time, just to make sure he wasn’t coming back, that he hadn’t forgotten anything, that he hadn’t changed his mind. As the dusk turned to darkness and the lamplighters came around—this part of the city hadn’t been electrified yet—Arthur and the cat took advantage of the shadows to slip across the street and into the narrow passage between the two houses-turned-flats. Wolf freed himself from Arthur’s coat and flew up to the third story to land on a ledge.
“He left it open, right enough,” Wolf said softly, and flew back down. “Give me the string,” he ordered Arthur in a peremptory tone. Wordlessly Arthur handed the bird a bit of fishing line. Wolf flew up to the ledge, disappeared inside, then emerged again as the string ran out from the coil Arthur held. When the bird was perched again on his shoulder, he took the string back.
“It’s around the leg of the desk,” Wolf said as soon as his beak was clear. “That ought to be enough to hold one small cat.”
It’s salmon line, it ought to hold two of me, Thomas replied. He waited while Arthur fastened the straps of a harness around him and Wolf flew up to the ledge a third time, vanishing inside. With the harness fastened to the fishing line, and gloves on Arthur’s hands to prevent it cutting into his fingers, the musician hauled the cat jerkily up the side of the building with all four legs dangling limply. They had all thought about having Thomas try and help, but then thought better of it. Only when the cat actually reached the ledge itself did he hook claws up onto it and haul himself up.
The line was easily bitten through by Wolf’s sharp beak. After a moment, the line came falling down and Arthur coiled it up and put it in his pocket. Then he waited.
He could hear, very faintly, sounds from up above. Thomas and Wolf had determined, via trials in Nigel’s office, that there was very little short of a safe that a cat and a parrot could not get into. What was more, they had decided that they would rifle the entire flat to make it look as if someone had been searching for valuables. Those were probably the sounds he was hearing.
After a very long time, or so it seemed in the darkened passageway, Arthur heard a whistle. And immediately afterwards, a piece of paper, startlingly white in the shadows, came drifting down from above.
Now he was very busy indeed, as a veritable shower of papers came down. They had determined that they were not going to steal only the information about Nina. They were going to take everything that looked to be of any importance. That way the man would not be aware that it was the ballerina’s papers that they were after. Arthur had brought a briefcase with him, and by the time the last of the papers was gathered up, it was stuffed quite full indeed.
Finally, after some more sounds of implied mayhem from above, including the tearing of cloth, came what he had been waiting for. Ready for me? came the question into his mind.
“As ready as I am likely to be,” he whispered back. “Mind your claws!” And he braced himself.
With an impact that made him stagger, the cat landed on his shoulder. He ended up against the wall, breath driven a little out of him.
It isn’t me that minds the claws, it is you, the cat replied, with the sense that he was laughing. I think that is the most fun I have ever had since I was a boy and stealing apples.
“He’s a hoodlum, that one,” Wolf said severely, flying down to land on Arthur’s other shoulder. “It will be most of a day before that fellow can clean up enough to figure out just what is missing.”
“What did you two do?” Arthur asked, easing his way out of the passageway, carefully making sure there was no one in the street to see him when he did so.
“We tilted over and knocked to the floor every book and ornament we could move. We spilled his inkwell. I knocked over the pitcher of water at his washstand. We pulled the covers off the bed. We scattered all the papers that were not in the files, and overturned a chair or two. I uncovered all the food that I could in the pantry and the mice are already at it. But that was not enough for Thomas, oh no. Thomas slashed every pillow and cushion in the flat, tore open the featherbed and the eiderdown, and then shook what he could lift like a terrier with a rat,” Wolf said. “And as if that was not enough, he asked me to flap as hard as I could.” The parrot could not smirk, but he barked a sound like a laugh. “It looks like a snowstorm struck in there. The man might find a way to clean it all up in a day or two, but it will take a small army of maids to do it.”
It took Nigel some patient work to sort Nina’s papers out of the rest, but when he was finished, he had a very tidy stack. All of them sat contemplating it.