Once more Qwilleran opened the envelope of photographs he was going to deliver to Tait. He spread them on the desk: wide-angle pictures of beautiful rooms, medium shots of expensive furniture groupings, and close-ups of the jades.
There was a perfect shot of the rare white teapot as well as one of the bird perched on the back of a lion. There were the black writing! desk, ebony and black marble heavily ornamented with gilded bronze; the table supported by a sphinx; the white silk chairs that did not look comfortable.
Koko rubbed against Qwilleran's ankles. "What's on your mind?" the man said. "I made your breakfast. Go and finish it. You've hardly touched that food!" The cat arched his back, curved his tail into a question mark, and walked back and forth over the newsman's shoes.
"You're getting your playmate today," Qwilleran said. "A little cross-eyed lady cat. Maybe I should take you along.
Would you like to put on your harness and go for a ride?" Koko pranced in figure eights with long-legged grace.
"First I've got to punch another hole in your harness." The kitchen offered no tools for punching holes in leather straps: no awl, no icepick, no sixpenny nails, not even an old-fashioned can opener. Qwilleran managed the operation with the point of a nail file.
"There!" he said, as he went to look for Koko. "I defy you to slip out of it again!… Now, where the devil did you go?" There was a wet, slurping, scratching sound, and Qwilleran wheeled around. Koko was on the desk. He was licking a photograph.
"Hey!" yelled Qwilleran, and Koko jumped to the floor and bounded away like a rabbit.
The newsman examined the prints. Only one of them was damaged. "Bad cat!" he said. "You've blistered this beautiful photo." Koko sat under the coffee table, hunched in a small bundle.
It was the Biedermeier armoire he had licked with his sandpaper tongue. The surface of the photograph was still sticky. From one angle the damage was hardly noticeable. Only when the light hit the picture in a certain way could the dull and faintly blistered patch be noticed.
Qwilleran examined it closely and marveled at the detail in Bunsen's photo. The grain of the wood stood out clearly, and whatever lighting the photographer had used gave the furniture a three-dimensional quality. The chased metal around the tiny keyhole was in bold relief. A fine line of shadow accentuated the edge of the drawer across the bottom.
There was another thin dark line down the side panel of the armoire that Qwilleran had not noticed before. It sliced through the grain of the wood. It hardly made sense in the design or construction of the cabinet.
Qwilleran felt a prickling in his moustache, and stroked it hurriedly. Then he grabbed Koko and trussed him in his harness.
"Let's go," he said. "You've licked something that gives me ideas!" It was a long and expensive taxi ride to Muggy Swamp. Qwilleran listened to the click of the meter and wondered if he could put this trip on his expense account. The cat sat on the seat close to the man's thigh, but as soon as the taxi turned into the Tait driveway, Koko was alerted. He rose on his hind legs, placed his front paws on the window and scolded the landscape.
Qwilleran told the driver, "I want you to wait and take me back to town. I'll probably be a half hour." "Okay if I go to the railway station and get some breakfast?" the man asked. "I'll stop the meter." Qwilleran tucked the cat under his left arm, coiled the leash in his left hand, and rang the doorbell of the Spanish mansion. As he stood waiting, he detected a note of neglect about the premises. The grass was badly in need of cutting.
Curled yellow leaves, the first of the season to fall, were swirling around the courtyard. The windows were muddied.
When the door opened, it was a changed man who stood there. Tait, despite his high color, looked strained and tired. The old clothes and tennis shoes he wore were in absurd contrast to the black-and-white marble elegance of the foyer. Muddied footprints had dried on the white marble squares.
"Come in," said Tait. "I was just packing some things away." He made an apologetic gesture toward his garb.
"I brought Koko along," said Qwilleran coolly. "I thought he might help in finding the other cat." And he thought, Something's gone wrong, or he's scared or the police have been questioning him. Have they linked the murder of his decorator with the theft of his jades?
Tait said, "The other cat's here. It's locked up in the laundry room." Koko squirmed, and was transferred to Qwilleran's shoulder, where he could survey the scene. The cat's body was taut, and Qwilleran could feel a vibration like a low-voltage electric current.
He handed the envelope of photographs to Tait and accepted an offhand invitation into the living room. It had changed considerably. The white silk chairs were shrouded with dust covers. The draperies were drawn across the windows. And the jade cases were dark and empty.
One lamp was lighted in the shadowy room — a lamp on the writing desk, where Tait had apparently been working. A ledger lay open there, and his collection of utilitarian jades was scattered over the desk — the primitive scrapers, chisels, and ax heads.
Tait yanked a dust cover off a deskside chair and motioned Qwilleran to sit down, while he himself stood behind the desk and opened the envelope. The newsman glanced at the ledger upside down; it was a catalog of the jade collection, written in a precise, slanted hand.
While the jade collector studied the photographs, Qwilleran studied the man's face. This is not the look of grief, he thought; this is exhaustion. The man has not been sleeping well. His plan is not working out.
Tait shuffled through the photographs, crimping the corners of his mouth and breathing heavily.
"Pretty good photography, isn't it?" said Qwilleran.
"Yes," Tait murmured. "Surprising detail." "I didn't realize he had taken so many pictures." "We always take more than we know we can use." Qwilleran cast a side-glance at the armoire. There was no fine dark line down the side of the cabinet — at least, none that could be discerned from where he sat.
Tait said, "This desk photographed well." "It has a lot of contrast. Too bad there's no picture of the Biedermeier wardrobe." He watched Tait closely. "I don't know what happened. I was sure Bunsen had photographed the wardrobe." Tait maneuvered the corners of his mouth. "It's a fine piece. It belonged to my grandfather." Koko squirmed again and voiced a small protest, and the newsman stood up, strolled back and forth and patted the silky back. He said: "This is the first time this cat has gone visiting. I'm surprised he's so well behaved." He walked close to the armoire, and still he could see no fine dark line.
"Thank you for the pictures," Tait said. "I'll go and get the other cat." When the collector left the room, Qwilleran's curiosity came to a boil. He walked to the armoire and examined the side panel. There was indeed a crack running vertically from top to bottom, but it was virtually invisible. Qwilleran ran his finger along the line. It was easier to feel than to see. Only the camera with its uncanny vision had observed clearly the hairline joining.
Koko was struggling now, and Qwilleran placed him on the floor, keeping the leash in his hand. Experimentally he ran his free hand up and down the crevice. He thought, It must be a concealed compartment. It's got to be! But how does it open? There was no visible hardware of any kind.
He glanced toward the foyer, listened for approaching footsteps, then applied himself to the puzzle. Was it a touch latch?
Did they have touch latches in the old days? The cabinet was over a hundred years old.
He pressed the side panel and thought that it had a slight amount of give, as if it were less than solid. He pressed again, and it responded with a tiny cracking noise like the sound of old, dry wood. He pressed the panel hard along the edge of the crack — first at shoulder level, then higher, then lower. He reached up and pressed it at the top, and the side of the armoire slowly opened with a labored groan.