"Do I look like an ogre?" Mary wanted to know.
"Koko can sense Hepplewhite," Qwilleran said. "He knows you've got a big dog. Cats are psychic." He threw his overcoat on the daybed and placed his hat on the desk, and when he did so, he saw a small dark object lying near his typewriter. He approached it gingerly. It looked like the decomposed remains of a small bird.
"What's this?" he said. "What the devil is this?" Mary examined the small brown fragment. "Why, it's a piece of hair jewelry! A brooch!" He combed his moustache with his fingertips. "Some uncanny things have been happening on these premises.
Yesterday some benevolent spirit left me a dollar bill!" He examined the birdlike form woven of twisted brown strands.
"You mean this is real hair?" "Human hair. It's memorial jewelry. They used to make necklaces, bracelets, all sorts of things from the hair of someone who had died." "Who would want to keep such stuff?" "Iris has an extensive collection. She even wears it occasionally." Qwilleran dropped the brooch with distaste. "Sit down," he said, "and let me tell you what I discovered about the Ellsworth house in the Fluxion clip file." He offered her a gilded chair, flipping the red cushion to the side that was not furred with cat hair. "Did you know that Ellsworth was a former mayor?" "Yes, I've heard about him." "He died at the age of ninety-two, having achieved a reputation for eccentricity. He was a compulsive collector — never threw anything away. He had a twenty-year accumulation of old newspapers, string, and vinegar bottles. And he was supposed to be worth quite a sum of money, but a large chunk of his holdings was never found…. Does that suggest anything to you?" Mary shook her head.
"Suppose someone was looking for buried treasure in the old house last night… and suppose C.C. arrived with his crowbar, looking for black walnut paneling… and suppose they thought he was after the strongbox?" "Don't you think that's rather far-fetched?" "Maybe he accidentally found the loot when he ripped open the paneling… and maybe another scrounger came along and pushed him downstairs. I admit it's far-fetched, but it's a possibility." The girl looked at Qwilleran with sudden curiosity. "Is it true what my father says about you? That you've solved two murder cases since joining the Fluxion?" "Well, I was instrumental — that is, I didn't do it alone. I had help." He touched his moustache tentatively and threw a glance in Koko's direction. Koko was watching, and he was all ears.
"Do you really think that Cobb might have been murdered?" "Murder shouldn't be ruled out too quickly — although the police accepted it as an accident. A man with Cobb's personality must have had enemies." "His churlishness was a pose — for business reasons. Everyone knew that. Many junkers think prices go up if a dealer is friendly, and if his shop is clean." "Whether it was an act or not, I don't suppose anyone hated him enough to kill him. Competition for the Ellsworth treasure would make a better motive." Mary stood up and looked out the back window for a while. "I don't know whether this will have any bearing on the case," she said finally, "but… when C.C. went scrounging late at night, he didn't always go to a condemned building." "You think he was playing around?" "I know he was." "Anybody we know?" Mary hesitated and then said, "One of The Three Weird Sisters." Qwilleran gave a dry chuckle. "I can guess which one." "She's a nymphomaniac," said Mary with her cool porcelain look.
"Did Iris suspect?" "I don't think so. She's near-sighted in more ways than one." "How did you know this was going on?" "Mrs. Katzenhide lives in the same apartment building. Several times she saw Cobb paying late evening calls, and you know very well he was not there to discuss the hallmarks on English silver." Qwilleran studied Mary's face. Her eyes were sparkling, and her personality had a new buoyancy.
"What's happened to you, Mary?" he asked. "You've changed." She smiled joyously. "I feel as if I've been living under a cloud, and the sun has just broken through!" "Can you tell me about it?" 'Not now. Later. I'd better go back to Iris. She'll wake and think she's deserted." After she had left, QwiIleran took another look at the hair brooch — and a good hard look at the cats. The male was graciously allowing the female to wash his ears.
"Okay, Koko, the game's up," he said. "Where are you getting this loot?" Koko sat very tall and squeezed his eyes innocently.
"You feline Fagin! I'll bet you find the stuff, and you make Yum Yum steal it. Where's your secret cache?" Koko unfolded his rear half and with dignity walked from the room. QwiIleran followed him — into the bathroom.
"You're finding them under the tub?" "Yow," said Koko with a noncommittal inflection.
QwiIleran started to go down on all fours, but a twinge in his bad knee discouraged the effort. "I'll bet no one's cleaned under that monster for fifty years," he told the cat, who was now sitting in his sandbox with a soulful look in his eyes and paying no attention to anyone.
Shortly after, when QwiIleran returned to the Ellsworth house to pick up the Cobb car, he did some treasure hunting of his own. He looked for footprints and tire tracks in the snow and telltale marks in the dust of the stripped rooms.
White plaster dust had settled everywhere. Large objects had been dragged through it, leaving dark trails, and footprints had piled on footprints, but here and there a mark could be distinguished. Qwilleran noticed the patterned treads of boots, the imprint of a claw hammer, some regularly spaced dots (made by crutches?), and even the pawprints of a large animal, and a series of feathery arabesques in the dust, perhaps caused by the switching of a tail. Evidently every dealer in Junktown had been through the Ellsworth house at one time or another; recent prints were lightly filmed over and the older ones were almost covered.
Qwilleran dug Cobb's flashlight out of a pile of rubble and retrieved his crowbar. Then he went upstairs.
Everything on the stair treads had been obliterated, but on the landing there was evidence of three kinds of footwear, and although it was impossible to guess whether all three had been there at the same time, they were sharp enough to be recent. The newsman copied the tread marks on the folded sheet of newsprint that was always in his pocket. One print was a network of diamond shapes, another was a series of closely spaced dots, and the third was crossbarred. His own galoshes left a pattern of small circles.
The tire tracks in the yard contributed nothing to Qwilleran's investigation. There was no telling how many junkers had been in and out of the driveway. Tire tracks had crisscrossed and frozen and melted and frozen again, and snow had frosted the unreadable hieroglyphics.
Qwilleran backed the tan station wagon out of its hiding place in the backyard, and as he pulled away, he noticed that the vehicle left a rectangle of gray in the field of white snow. He also noticed another such rectangle nearby. Two cars had parked there on the dirty ice Sunday night, after which a light snow had fallen. Qwilleran jumped out of the wagon, thanked fate and Mary Duckworth for the tape line in his pocket, and measured the length and breadth of the second rectangle. It was shorter than the imprint left by the Cobb wagon, and it was not quite square at one corner, the snow having drifted in from the northwest.
Qwilleran's findings did not amount to much, he had to admit. Even if the owner of the second car were known, there was no proof that he had engineered Cobb's fatal fall. Nevertheless, the mere routine of investigation was exhilarating to Qwilleran, and he drove from the scene with a feeling of accomplishment. On second impulse he drove back into the Ellsworth yard, entered the house, and salvaged two items for the Cobb Junkery: a marble mantel and a chandelier of blackened brass.