Rosie said, "I thought your story on the auction was great!" "The story behind the story is better." "What's that? Arch didn't tell me. He never tells me anything." Qwilleran reconstructed the night of Andy's accident. "I can't believe," he said, "that Andy simply missed his footing and fell. He'd have to have been an acrobat to land on the finial the way he did. There were customers coming to look at a chandelier that night. If he was in the process of getting it down off the ceiling, it would mean they had already okayed it; in other words, they were there when he fell!… It doesn't click. I don't think they ever got in the store. I think the whole accident was staged, and Andy was dead when the customers arrived." As he talked, Rosie's eyes had been growing wider and wider. "Qwill, I think Arch and I… I think we might have been the customers! When did it happen?" "Middle of October. The sixteenth, to be exact." "We wanted to get this chandelier installed before our Halloween party, but I didn't want to buy it without Arch seeing it. He came home to dinner, and then we drove back to Junktown. Andy was going to open up especially for us.
But when we got there, the store was locked up, and no one was in sight. In the meantime I noticed a chandelier in the Cobbs' window that looked good, so we bought that one instead." "Were the Cobbs open at that late hour?" "No, but we saw someone going up the steps and asked him if the Cobbs would mind coming down to show us the fixture. He went upstairs and got Mrs. Cobb, and we bought it. It was a couple of weeks later that one of my junking friends told me about Andy's accident, and I never connected — " "Who was the man who was going up the Cobbs' front steps?" "He's a dealer himself. He has the Bit o' Junk shop. It really worked out better for us, because the fixture we bought from Mrs. Cobb was painted tin, and I realized afterwards that Andy's brass chandelier would have been too formal for our dining room." "Did you say brass?" "Yes. Sort of Williamsburg." "Not glass? Not a chandelier with five crystal arms?" "Oh, no! Crystal would be much too dressy for our house." That was when Qwilleran kissed Rosie Riker.
Later in the afternoon he made a few additional entries in the log: — Sold turkey platter, $75.
— Customer broke goblet. Collected $4.50. Showed no mercy.
— Sold apple peeler to make into a lamp, $12.
— Sold bronze grille from Garrick Theatre, $45.
— Photographer sat in banister-back chair. Fluxion will pay for damage.
— SOLD ROLL-TOP DESK, $750!
The woman who came bursting into the shop, asking for a roll-top desk, was not an experienced junker. Qwilleran could tell that by her enthusiasm and her smart clothes.
"The man next door told me you have a roll-top desk," she announced breathlessly, "and I must have one before Christmas." "The one we have is in use," said Qwilleran, "and the user would be extremely reluctant to part with it." "I don't care what it costs," she said. "I've got to have it for my husband's Christmas gift. I'll write you a check, and my driver will pick it up in the morning." Qwilleran felt pleased with himself that evening. He had personally taken in almost $1,000 for Mrs. Cobb. He had gleaned information from Rosie Riker that reinforced his theory about the finial incident. And he had broached an idea to the managing editor of the Daily Fluxion that had made a big impression; if it proved to be workable — and the boss felt that it might — it would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.
After dinner Qwilleran was removing his belongings from the pigeonholes of the roll-top desk when he heard a heavy tread coming up the stairs. He opened his door and hailed his neighbor. Ben was still wearing his Santa Claus disguise.
"Ben, what's a roll-top desk worth?" Qwilleran asked. "There's no price tag on the one I'm using, and I sold it for seven hundred and fifty, chair included." "Oh, excellent swindle!" said the dealer. "Sir, you should be in the business." He trudged toward his apartment, then turned around and resolutely trudged back. "Will you join me in a drop of brandy and a crumb of rare cheese?" "I'll go for some of that cheese," Qwilleran said. He had just finished an unsatisfactory dinner of canned stew.
His host moved a copper wash boiler from the seat of a Victorian sofa, leaving an oval silhouette in the dust on the black horsehair, and the newsman sat on the clean spot and surveyed the appointments of the room: a bust of Hiawatha, a wooden plane propellor, empty picture frames, a wicker baby carriage, a leather pail labeled FIRE, a wooden washboard, a wigless doll.
Ben brought Qwilleran some cheese and crackers on a plate decorated with an advertisement for an 1870 patent medicine that relieved itching. Then he lowered himself with a groan into a creaking chair of mildewed wicker. "We are faint," he said. "Our gashes cry for help." He drank fastidiously from a cracked teacup.
Ben had removed his white beard, and now he looked ab- surd with rouged nose and cheeks, pale jowls, and powdered artificial eyebrows.
Qwilleran said, "I've been in Junktown a week now, and frankly I don't know how you dealers make a living." "We muddle through. We muddle through." "Where do you acquire your goods? Where does it all come from?" Ben waved a hand at the sculptured head of an angel, minus nose. "Behold! A repulsive little gem from the faade of the Garrick Theatre. Genuine stone, with the original bird droppings." He waved toward a discolored washbowl and pitcher. "A treasure from Mount Vernon, with the original soap scum." For half an hour Qwilleran plied his host with questions, receiving flowery answers with no information whatever.
At last he prepared to leave, and as he glanced at a few stray cracker crumbs on the seat of the black horsehair sofa, he saw something else that alerted him — a stiff blond hair. He casually picked it up.
Back in his own apartment he examined the hair under a lamp. There was no doubt what it was — three inches long, slightly curved, tapering at one end.
He went to the telephone and dialed a number.
"Mary," he said, "I've made a discovery. Do you want to see something interesting? Put on your coat and run over here." Then he turned to the cats, who were lounging contentedly on their gilded chairs.
"Okay, you guys!" he said. "What do you know about this?" Koko scratched his left ear with his hind foot, and Yum Yum licked her right shoulder.
20
Qwilleran heard Ben Nicholas leave the house, and shortly afterward the downstairs buzzer sounded, and Mary Duckworth arrived with a fur parka thrown over a skyblue corduroy jumpsuit.
She examined the stiff blond hair.
"Know what it is?" Qwilleran asked.
"A bristle. From some kind of brush." "It's a whisker," he corrected her, "from some kind of cat. I found it on Ben's living room sofa. Either my two rascals have found a way to get into the apartment next door, or the spirit of Mathilda Spencer is getting pretty cheeky." Mary examined the cat whisker. "It's mottled — white and gray." "It obviously belongs to Yum Yum. Koko's are pure white." "Have you any idea how they could get through the wall?" Qwilleran beckoned her to follow as he led the way to the dressing room. "I've checked out the bathroom. The wall is solid tile. The only other possibility is in here — behind these bookshelves." Koko followed them into the dressing room and rubbed his jaw ardently against the books on the lower shelf.