eb93c43e214c621f9157c05b4b6a6878

“Oh,” he said, then lapsed into a brooding silence once more. From which he soon rebounded with even more vigor. “Or we can all come and live at the hotel permanently, and be friends and be merry! Odelia and Chase love Paris, they absolutely do, and we could invite the rest of the family to join us and we can all live here happily ever after.”

“I don’t think so, buddy. So let’s enjoy it while it lasts, huh? Now where is this darned cat burglar is what I would like to know.”

He eyed me strangely.“Why are you watching that chimney, Max?”

“Well, because everybody knows that cat burglars crawl out of chimneys.”

“But… how could a human fit in that thin pipe? That’s physically impossible.”

I stared at him for a moment, then back at that pipe, then finally I grumbled,“Darn it. You’re right. He couldn’t fit through that pipe if he tried!” So I’d been looking in the wrong direction this entire time. Between my lack of intimate knowledge of chimneys and Dooley being more focused on Marion than our burglar, chances were he’d given us the slip!

But then suddenly Marion called out,“Max! Dooley! Over here!”

We joined her quick as a flash—or rather two flashes—and lo and behold: one floor down, a man dressed in black from head to toe was scaling the wall, seemingly effortlessly, heading in the direction of one of the balconies!

And if I wasn’t mistaken, it was actually our balcony!

CHAPTER 25

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“Quick! Let’s get him!” I cried.

We hopped down onto the balcony below, and even before that burglar could enter the room, I slipped through the window and bellowed,“Odelia! Chase! The burglar—he’s here!”

To my surprise, the light was still on in the bedroom, and both my humans were still awake. Without a moment’s hesitation, Odelia was up and gestured for Chase to follow her. The cop didn’t wait for explanations, but slipped from under the covers and was tiptoeing in the direction indicated.

The cat burglar, probably having been spooked first by three cats darting between his legs, and then by the light that was still on in the room, didn’t stick around to have a nice conversation about the tricks of his trade, but was shimmying up a drainpipe on his way to the roof.

Chase, catching sight of the guy, shouted,“Hey, you!”

‘Hey, you’ might work with some burglars, but this one seemed reluctant to halt his progress just because he was being ‘hey, you’d’ and so Chase had no other recourse but to follow suit. Dressed in blue pajamas and barefoot, he clambered up that drainpipe in hot pursuit, three cats quick to follow him as well.

Odelia, meanwhile, said,“I’m calling Barney!” Which seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances.

Up on the roof, meanwhile, Chase tried to get his bearings, and find out which way the burglar had fled. Finally he clapped eyes on his quarry, and repeated,“Hey, you!”

Unfortunately the magic formula still failed to grip, and the burglar hurried off in the opposite direction, Chase now giving chase.

“We better keep up,” I told the others.

“This is so exciting!” Marion cried.

“Does your boyfriend like this sort of thing?” asked Dooley. “Cause this is what we do in Hampton Cove all the time.”

“You do? Oh, it’s such an exciting life you lead, Dooley.”

“You bet,” said Dooley, well pleased with this endorsement.

But then the heat of the chase required we all shut up and focus on getting our guy before he got away, and so we headed in the direction Chase had proceeded.

Now your typical hotel roof isn’t actually flat, so it’s not as if you’re on a sidewalk. There’s ridges and antennae and chimneys and wires and such. In other words: an obstacle course on uneven terrain. And since the sides of the roof are to be avoided, seeing as how they constitute a straight drop to the actual sidewalk several floors below and so certain death, it’s not exactly a walk in the park either.

And so I worried. About Chase, I mean. If he fell off this roof, Odelia would never forgive us. So even though my intention had been to nab the burglar, on second thought I decided I needed to reconsider my goal to one where I prevented Chase from having to be scraped off a Parisian sidewalk!

And so I determined where the edge of the roof was and made sure that when Chase got too close for comfort, I yelled out a warning, which he thankfully heeded.

The burglar, meanwhile, was hopping across that roof as if he’d never done anything else in his life. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the chamois? They’re a type of goat native to mountainous terrain, and they hop from crag to crag in an effortless sort of way. Well, if I hadn’t known any better, I would have said this burglar was a denizen ofthose goats. In other words not a cat burglar so much as a goat burglar.

He hopped to the next section of the roof, then momentarily disappeared from view, and popped up again on the other side.

Chase had a hard time keeping up. He may be a great cop, but he doesn’t have an ounce of goat blood in him, unfortunately.