The two men ordered coffee, and the feature editor asked for a chocolate-frosted doughnut as well. "What's up?" he shouted in Qwilleran's ear.
"About Dan Graham! That story he told!" Qwilleran shouted back. "I think it's a lie!"
"What story?"
"About Joy's hair getting caught in the wheel."
"Why would he lie?"
Qwilleran shook his head ominously. "I think something's happened to Joy. I don't think she ran away."
"But you saw a car — "
"Max Sorrel's! Fire at his restaurant!"
The waitress banged two coffees on the counter.
"This hunch of yours — " Riker yelled.
"Wretched thought!"
"Wretched what?"
"Wretched thought!"
"You don't mean. . ." The editor's face was pained.
"I don't know." Qwilleran touched his mustache nervously. "It's a possibility."
"But where's the body?"
"Maybe in the river!"
The two men stared into the depths of their coffee cups and let the deafening cacophony of the coffee shop assault their numb eardrums.
"Another thing!" Qwilleran shouted after a while. "Dan knows about my check! The seven-fifty!"
"How'd he find out?" Qwilleran shrugged.
"What are you going to do?"
"Keep asking questions!"
Riker nodded gravely.
"Don't tell Rosie!"
"What?"
"Don't tell Rosie! Not yet!"
"Right!"
"Upset her!"
"Right!"
Qwilleran survived the dog food luncheon and wrote a mildly witty piece about it for the feature page, comparing the simplicity of canine cuisine with the gustatory demands of catdom. Then he went home to feed Koko and Yum Yum, but first he stopped at a delicatessen. He hungrily eyed the onion rolls, chopped chicken livers, and pickled herring, but he steeled himself and bought only a chub for the cats. He had abandoned once and for all his experiment with canned cat food.
He had slipped a note under William's door that morning, inviting the houseboy to have dinner with him at a new restaurant called the Petrified Bagel, and now the young man met him in the Great Hall and accepted with glee.
"Let's leave about six-thirty," Qwilleran suggested. "Is that too early?"
"No, that's good," said William. "I have to go over to my mother's house after. You don't have a car, do you? We can take mine."
Qwilleran went upstairs, taking three of the stone steps at a time. Suddenly he was filled with an unwarranted exhilaration. The bewilderment was over; he had a job to do. Now that he felt certain his hunch was correct — now that he could proceed with his unofficial investigation — his spirit rose to the challenge. Instead of grief for Joy he felt a fierce loyalty to her memory. And it was the memory that he loved, he had to confess. It was Joy Wheatley, age nineteen, who had made his heart beat fast on Monday night — not Joy Graham. Two decades of separation made a difference, he now admitted, even though he had convinced himself for a few days that nothing had changed.
The cats caught his high-key mood and raced about the apartment — up on the bookcase, down to the floor, around the big chair, under the table, up on the captain's bunk — with Yum Yum in the lead and Koko following so close behind that they made a single blur of blond fur. Rounding a curve, she slowed for a fraction of a second, and Koko ran over her. Then she was chasing him.
Qwilleran dodged the hurtling bodies, removed his shoes, and stepped on the scale. He stepped off with a smile of satisfaction. It was a fine spring night. The ventilating panes in the big studio window were open, and the breeze was gentle. Somewhere in or around the building a man's voice could be heard, singing "Loch Lomond," and it gave Qwilleran a moment of nostalgia; it had been his father's favorite.
He met William in the Great Hall; the houseboy had dressed for the occasion in a wrinkled sports coat the color of gravy. A long black limousine of ancient vintage stood quietly rumbling at the front door.
"Looks like a hearse," Qwilleran remarked.
"Best I could get for fifty dollars," William apologized. "I've been warming her up, because she takes a little coaxing before she starts to roll. Open the door easy, or it'll come off."
"Must cost you a fortune in gas."
"I don't use her that much, but she comes in handy for dates. Would you like to drive? Then I can hold the passenger door on."
With Qwilleran behind the wheel, Black Beauty moved majestically down the drive with the authoritative rumbling of a car with a defective muffler. Several times when he glanced in the rearview mirror, he thought he was being followed, but it was only the tail of the limousine looming up in the distance.
The restaurant was in that part of the city known as Junktown, a declining neighborhood that a few enterprising preservationists were trying to restore. A former antique shop on Zwinger Street was now making a brave comeback as a restaurant, and the Petrified Bagel was furnished, appropriately, with junk. Old kitchen chairs and tables, no two alike, were painted in mismatched colors, and the burlap- covered walls were decorated with relics from the city dump, while the waiters appeared to be derelicts recruited from Junktown's bars and alleys.
"The food may not be the greatest," Qwilleran told William, "but it should make a colorful story for my column."
"Who cares, when it's free?" was the houseboy's attitude.
They took a table against the wall, beneath an arrangement of rusty plumbing fixtures, and hardly had they pulled up their chairs when their waiter was upon them.
"What wudjus like?" he asked. "Wudjus like a drink from the bar?" He wore a black suit, a few sizes too large, and a crooked bow tie, and if he had shaved, he had done so with a butter knife.
William said he'd like a beer, and Qwilleran ordered a lemon and seltzer.
"Wudjus say that again?"
"A beer for the gentleman," Qwilleran said, "and I'll have some soda water with a squeeze of lemon." To William he said, "I know this neighborhood. I used to live in the old Spencer mansion on this block — a historic house with a ghost."
"Honest? Did you ever see the ghost?"
"No, but some strange things happened, and it was hard to sort out the pranks of the disembodied lady from the pranks of my cats."
The waiter returned empty-handed. "Wudjus like sugar in that?"
"No, just lemon and soda water."
William said, "How are the cats doing with their typing lessons?"
"You'd never believe it, but Koko actually typed a word the other day. A rather elementary word, but. . ." Qwilleran looked up and caught the Irish twinkle in the houseboy's eye. "You dog!" Qwilleran said. "Is that what you were doing in my apartment Wednesday night? My spies saw you sneaking in."
William guffawed loudly. "I wondered how long it would be before you got the picture. I found some caviar in Mickey Maus's refrigerator and took it up to your cats. They liked it."
"Who wouldn't?"
The waiter brought the drinks. "Wudjus like something to go with it?"
Qwilleran shook his head. To William he said, "How did you hit it off with Koko and Yum Yum?"
"The little one ran away, but the big one came out, and we had a lengthy conversation. He talks even more than I do. I like cats. You can't boss them around."
"And you can't win, either. You may think you've put one over on them, but they always come out ahead."
"Wudjus like to see the menu?" The waiter was offering a grease-spotted folder covered in burlap.
"Later," said Qwilleran . . . "How's everything going at art school?"
William shrugged. "I'm going to quit. It's not my bag. My girl's an artist, and she wanted me to go there, but. . . I don't know. After I got out of the service I tried college, but it wasn't for me. You had to study! I'd sort of like to be a bartender. Or a waiter at a good place where you get king-size tips."