Only when the telephone rang, a moment later, did Koko pay attention. Lately he had shown signs of jealousy toward the phone. Whenever Qwilleran talked into the instrument, Koko un- tied his shoelaces or bit the telephone cord.
Some- times he jumped on the desk and tried to nudge the receiver away from Qwilleran's ear.
The telephone rang, and the newsman said to the mouthpiece, "Hello?… Yes! What's the good news?" Immediately Koko jumped to the desk top and started making himself a pest. Qwilleran pushed him away.
"Great! How soon can we take pictures?" Koko was pacing back and forth on the desk, looking for further mischief.
Somehow he got his leg tangled in the cord, and howled in indignation.
"Sorry, I can't hear you," said Qwilleran. "The cat's raising the roof…. No, I'm not beating him. Hold the line." He extricated Koko and chased him away, then wrote down the address that David Lyke gave him. "See you Monday morning in Muggy Swamp," Qwilleran said. "And thanks. This is a big help." The telephone rang once more that evening, and the friendly voice of Fran Unger came on the wire. "Well, hello!
You're home!" "Yes," said Qwilleran. "I'm home." He was keeping an eye on Koko, who had leaped up on the desk.
"I thought you had a big date tonight." "Got home earlier than I expected." "I'm at the Press Club," said the sugary voice. "Why don't you come over? We're all here, drinking up a storm." "Scram!" said Qwilleran to Koko, who was trying to dial the phone with his nose.
"What did you say?" "I was talking to the cat." Qwilleran gave Koko a push, but the cat slanted his eyes and stood his ground, looking determined as he devised his next move.
"By the way," the wheedling voice was saying, "when are you going to invite me up to meet Koko?" "YOW!" said Koko, aiming his deafening howl directly into Qwilleran's right ear.
"Shut up!" said Qwilleran.
"What?" "Oh, hell!" he said, as Koko pushed an ashtray full of pipe ashes to the floor.
"Well!" Fran Unger's voice became suddenly tart. "Your hospitality overwhelms me!" "Listen, Fran," said Qwilleran. "I've got a mess on my hands right now." He was going to explain, but there was a click in his ear. "Hello?" he said.
A dead silence was his answer, and then a dial tone. The connection had been cut. Koko was standing with one foot planted firmly on the plunger button.
3
When Qwilleran reported to the Photo Lab on Monday morning to pick up a man for the Muggy Swamp assignment, he found Odd Bunsen slamming gear into a camera case and voicing noisy objections. Bunsen was the Daily Fluxion's specialist in train wrecks and five-alarm fires, and he had just been assigned on a permanent basis to Gracious Abodes.
"It's an old man's job," he complained to Qwilleran. "I'm not ready to come down off the flagpoles yet." Bunsen, who had recently climbed a skyscraper's flagpole to get a close-up of the Fourth of July fireworks, had an exuberance of qualities and defects that amused Qwilleran. He was the most oaring of the photographers, had the loudest voice, and smoked the longest and most objectionable cigars. At the Press Club he was the hungriest and the thirstiest.
He was raising the largest family, and his wallet was always the flattest.
"If I wasn't broke, I'd quit," he told Qwilleran as they walked to the parking lot. "For your private information, I hope this stupid magazine is a fat flop." With difficulty and mild curses he packed the camera case, tripod, lights and light stands in his small foreign two-seater.
Qwilleran, jackknifing himself into the cramped space that remained, tried to cheer up the photographer. He said, "When are you going to trade in this sardine can on a real car?" "This is the only kind that runs on lighter fluid," said Bunsen. "I get ten miles to the squirt." "You photographers are too cheap to buy gas." "When you've got six kids and mortgage payments and orthodontist bills…" "Why don't you cut out those expensive cigars?" Qwilleran suggested. "They must cost you at least three cents apiece." They turned into Downriver Road, and the photographer said, "Who lined up this Muggy Swamp assignment for you? Fran Unger?" Qwilleran's moustache bristled. "I line up my own assignments." "The way Fran's been talking at the Press Club, I thought she was calling the plays." Qwilleran grunted.
"She does a lot of talking after a couple of martinis," said Bunsen. "Saturday night she was hinting that you don't like girls. You must have done something that really burned her up." "It was my cat! Fran called me at home, and Koko disconnected the phone." "That cat's going to get you into trouble," the photographer predicted.
They merged into the expressway traffic and drove in speed and silence until they reached the Muggy Swamp exit.
Bunsen said, "Funny they never gave the place a decent name." "You don't understand upper-class psychology," said Qwilleran. "You probably live in one of those cute subdivisions." "I live in Happy View Woods. Four bedrooms and a big mortgage." "That's what I mean. The G. Verning Taits wouldn't be caught dead in a place called Happy View." The winding roads of Muggy Swamp offered glimpses of French chateaux and English manor houses, each secluded in its grove of ancient trees. The Tait house was an ornate Spanish stucco with an iron gate opening into a courtyard and a massive nail-studded door flanked by iron lanterns.
David Lyke greeted the newsmen at the door, — ushering them into a foyer paved with black and white marble squares and sparkling with crystal. A bronze sphinx balanced a white marble slab on which stood a seventeen-branch candelabrum.
"Crazy!" said Bunsen.
"I suppose you want some help with your equipment," Lyke said. He signaled to a houseboy, who gave the young white-haired decorator a worshipful look with soft black eyes. "Paolo, pitch in and help these splendid people from the newspaper, and maybe they'll take your picture to send home to Mexico." Eagerly the houseboy helped Bunsen carry in the heavy camera case and the collection of lights and tripods.
"Are we going to meet the Taits?" Qwilleran asked.
The decorator lowered his voice. "The old boy's holed up somewhere, clipping coupons and nursing his bad back.
He won't come out till we yell Jade! He's an odd duck." "How about his wife?" "She seldom makes an appearance, for which we can all be thankful." "Did you have much trouble getting their permission?" "No, he was surprisingly agreeable," said Lyke. "Are you ready for the tour?" He threw open double doors and led the news- men into a living room done in brilliant green with white silk sofas and chairs. A writing desk was in ebony ornamented with gilt, and there was a French telephone on a gilded pedestal.
Against the far wall stood a large wardrobe in beautifully grained wood.
"The Biedermeier wardrobe," said Lyke, raising an eyebrow, "was in the family, and we were forced to use it. The walls and carpet are Parsley Green. You can call the chairs Mushroom. The house itself is Spanish, circa 1925, and we had to square off the arches, rip up tile floors, and re-plaster extensively." As the decorator moved about the room, straightening lampshades and smoothing the folds of the elaborately swagged draperies, Qwilleran stared at the splendor around him and saw dollar signs.
"If the Taits live quietly," he whispered, "why all this?" Lyke winked. "I'm a good salesman. What he wanted was a setting that would live up to his fabulous collection of jade. It's worth three quarters of a million. That's not for publication, of course." The most unusual feature in the living room was a series of niches in the walls, fronted with plate glass and framed with classic moldings. On their glass shelves were arranged scores of delicately carved objects in black and translucent white, artfully lighted to create an aura of mystery. Odd Bunsen whispered, "Is that the jade? Looks like soap, if you ask me." Qwilleran said, "I expected it to be green." "The green jade is in the dining room," said Lyke.