Sylvia Katzenhide reviewed the plans for the Block Party on Wednesday. "The city is going to rope off four blocks," she said, "and decorate the utility poles with plastic angels. They've run out of Christmas angels, but they have some nice lavender ones left over from last Easter. Carol singers will be supplied by the Sanitation Department Glee Club." Qwilleran said, "Could we keep The Junkery open during the party? I hate to see Mrs. Cobb lose that extra business. I'd be willing to mind the store for a couple of hours myself." Cluthra squeezed his arm and said, "You're a honey! We'll help, too — my sisters and I. We'll take turns." Then someone suggested sending flowers to the Cobb funeral, and just as they were taking up a collection, they were stunned by a blast of noise from the floor below. It was a torrent of popular music — raucous, bouncy, loud. They listened in open-mouthed astonishment for a few seconds, then all talked at once.
"What's that?" "A radio?" "Who's down there?" "Nobody!" "Where's it coming from?" "Somebody's downstairs!" "Who could it be?" "How could they get in?" "The front door's locked, isn't it?" Qwilleran was the first one on his feet. "Let's go down and see." He grabbed a wooden sledge hammer that was hanging on the wall and started down the narrow stairs, left foot first on each step. The only other men at the meeting followed — Russ on his crutches and Ben lumbering after them with a pitchfork in his hand.
The noise was coming from the Cobb apartment. The door stood open. The apartment was in darkness.
Qwilleran reached in, groped for a wall switch and flooded the room with light. "Who's there?" he shouted in a voice of authority.
There was no answer. The music poured out of the small radio on the apothecary desk.
The three men searched the apartment, Ben bringing up a delayed rear.
"No one here," Qwilleran announced.
"Maybe it has an automatic timer," Russ said.
"The thing doesn't have a timer," Qwilleran said as he turned off the offensive little radio. He frowned at the writing surface of the desk. Papers were scattered. A pencil cup was knocked over. From the floor he picked up a telephone bill and an address book — and a gray feather.
As the men emerged from the Cobb apartment, the women were beginning to venture down from the attic.
"Is it safe?" they asked.
Cluthra said, "If it was a man, which way did he go?" "What was it? Does anyone know what it was?" "That crazy radio," Russ said. "It turned on all by itself." "How could it do that?" "I don't know," said Qwilleran… but he did. After the dealers had straggled out the front door and Ben had departed for an evening at The Lion's Tail, Qwilleran unlocked his apartment door and looked for the cats. Yum Yum was sitting on top of the refrigerator with eyes bright and ears alert-eyes and ears a trifle too large for her tiny wedge-shaped face. Koko was lapping up a drink of water, his tail lying straight on the floor as it did when he was especially thirsty.
"Okay, Koko," said Qwilleran. "How did you do it? Have you teamed up with Mathilda?" The tip of Koko's tail tapped the floor lightly, as he went on drinking.
Qwilleran wandered through his suite of rooms and speculated on each one. He knew Koko could turn a radio dial by scraping it with his hard little jaw, but how was this feline Houdini getting out of the apartment? Qwilleran moved the swan bed away from the wall and looked for a vent in the baseboard. He examined the bathroom for trap doors. (turn-of- the-century plumbers had been fond of trap doors), but there was nothing of the sort. The kitchenette had a high transom window cut through to the hall, presumably for ventilation, and it would be easily accessible from the top of the refrigerator, but it was closed and latched.
The telephone rang. "Qwill," said Mary's pleasing voice, "are you doing anything about your knee? You looked as if you were in pain tonight." "I used cold compresses until the swelling went down." "What you need now is a heat lamp. May I offer you mine?" "I'd appreciate it," he said. "Yes, I'd appreciate it very much." In preparation for his session with the heat lamp, Qwilleran put on a pair of sporty walking shorts that had survived a country weekend the previous summer and admired himself in the long mirror on the dressing room door, at the same time pulling in his waistline and expanding his chest. He had always thought he would look admirable in Scottish kilts. His legs were straight, solid, muscular and moderately haired-just enough to look virile, not enough to look zoological. The puffiness around the left knee that had destroyed its perfection had now subsided, he was glad to note.
He told the cats, "I'm having a guest, and I want you guys to use some discretion. No noisy squabbles! No flying around and disturbing the status quo!" Koko squeezed his eyes and tilted his whiskers in what looked like a knowing smile. Yum Yum exhibited indifference by laundering the snow-white cowlick where her fur grew in two directions on her breast.
When Mary arrived, carrying a basket, Koko looked her over from an unfriendly distance.
"He's not overwhelmed with joy," she said, "but at least he's civil this time." "He'll get used to you," Qwilleran assured her.
In her basket she had homemade fruitcake and an espresso maker, as well as a heat lamp. She plugged in the little silver coffee machine and positioned the infrared lamp over Qwilleran's knee and then sat in the twiggy rocker.
Immediately the country bumpkin of a rocking chair looked gracefully linear and organically elegant, and Qwilleran wondered why he had ever thought it was ugly.
"Do you have any idea what caused the outburst in the Cobb apartment?" she asked.
"Just another of the cockeyed things that happen in this house…. By the way, I wonder why Hollis Prantz didn't attend the meeting." "Half the dealers stayed away. They probably knew we'd collect money for flowers." "Prantz was here this afternoon, looking for some antique radios the Cobbs were supposed to be saving for him — or so he said. Does that make sense?" "Oh, certainly. Dealers make most of their money by selling to each other…. How does the heat feel? Is the lamp too close?" Soon a rushing, bubbling roar in the kitchen announced that the espresso was ready. It alarmed Yum Yum, who ran in the opposite direction, but Koko made it his business to march into the kitchen and investigate. With a mixture of pride and apology Qwilleran said, "Koko's a self-assured fellow, but Yum Yum's as nervous as a cat; when in doubt, she exits. She's what you might call a pussycat's pussycat. She sits on laps and catches mice — all the things cats are supposed to do." "I've never owned a cat," Mary said as she poured the coffee in small cups and added a twist of lemon peel. "But I used to study them for their grace of movement when I was dancing." "No one ever owns a cat," he corrected her. "You share a common habitation on a basis of equal rights and mutual respect… although somehow the cat always comes out ahead of the deal. Siamese particularly have a way of getting the upper hand." "Some animals are almost human…. Please try this fruitcake, Qwill." He accepted a dark, moist, mysterious, aromatic wedge of cake. "Koko is more than human. He has a sixth sense. He seems to have access to information that a human couldn't collect without laborious investigation." Qwilleran heard himself saying it, and he hoped it was still true, but deep in his heart he was beginning to wonder.