Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 10 Who Talked to Ghosts

"I haven't had a chance to look at it," Qwilleran admitted.

"Then let's go out there. It's a beauty!" Homer stood up slowly as if unlocking his joints one by one. "Contrary to popular opinion I'm not put together with plastic bones and steel pins. What you see is all original parts. Rhoda," he called out, "tell Al to leave his bill and we'll send him a check."

Walking toward the barn the two men made slow progress, although Homer's flailing arms and legs gave an impression of briskness. Qwilleran looked back toward the farmhouse and saw a small fawn-colored bundle on the kitchen windowsill; he waved a hand.

The Goodwinter barn was a classic style with a gambrel roof, its boards once painted red and now a red-streaked silvery gray. A lean-to had been added on one side, and the remains of a squat stone silo stood at the opposite comer like a gray ghost.

They walked in silence. "Can't walk... and talk... at the same time," said Homer, flinging his limbs rhythmically.

The barn was farther from the house than Qwilleran had realized, and larger than he had imagined. The closer they approached it, the loftier it loomed. A grassy ramp led up to enormous double doors. He said, "Now I know what they mean by big as a barn door."

They were pausing at the foot of the ramp for Homer to catch his breath before attempting the ascent. When he recovered from the exertion he explained, "The doors had to be large so a loaded hay wagon could drive into the barn. The man-size door cut in the big door is called the eye of the needle."

As he spoke, a corner of the latter flapped open, and a pregnant cat stepped through the cat-hatch and waddled away.

"That's Cleo," he said. "She's on my committee in charge of rodent control. Looks like another litter of mousers is on the way. You can never have too many barncats."

"What's the function of the lean-to?" Qwilleran asked.

"Ephraim built it to house his carriages. He had some elegant ones, they say. Later his son kept his Stanley Steamer in there. After Titus Goodwinter was killed, his widow bought a Pierce Arrow-with windshield wipers, mind you! Everyone thought that was the cat's pajamas!"

The weathered wood barn perched high on a fieldstone foundation, and as the land sloped away to the rear, the foundation became a full story high.

"That's what they called a byre in Scotland," Homer said. "The Goodwinters kept cattle and horses down there in the old days." They climbed the grassy ramp slowly and entered the barn through the eye of the needle, the old man pointing out the door hardware - simple hooks and eyes of hand-wrought iron, the work of a local blacksmith.

The interior was dark after the sunshine outdoors. Only a few shafts of light slanted in from unseen windows high in the gables. All was silent except for the muted cooing of pigeons and beating of wings.

"Better open the big doors so we can see," said Homer. "This place gets darker every year."

Qwilleran suddenly realized he had never been inside a barn. He had seen them in the distance while speeding down a highway, and an apple barn was included with the Klingenschoen property, but he had not inspected it. Now, gazing upward at the vast space under the roof, crisscrossed with timbers, he felt the same sense of awe he had experienced in Gothic cathedrals.

Homer saw him gazing upward. "That's a double hay-mow," he explained. "The timbers are sixty feet long, fourteen inches square. Everything's put together with mortise-and-tenon construction - no nails. All white pine. You don't see white pine any more. It was all lumbered out."

He pointed out the marks of the hand axe and hewing adze. "The main floor was called the threshing floor. The boards are four inches thick. It takes a solid floor like this to support a loaded hay wagon - or those danged printing presses."

It was then that Qwilleran noticed the contents of the barn. Wooden packing crates and grotesque machines resembling instruments of torture stood about the straw-strewn floor.

"This is only part of it," the old man went on. "The rest of the crates are down in the stable. Senior Goodwinter was obsessed with handprinting. Every time an old printshop went out of business or modernized, he bought their obsolete equipment. Never got around to taking inventory or even opening the crates. He just kept on collecting."

"That's where I come in!" said a jarring voice behind them. Vince Boswell stood silhouetted in the open doorway. "My job is to find out what's in those crates and catalogue the stuff so they can start a printing museum," he said in his penetrating voice. It was easy to believe he had been an auctioneer. "Yesterday I uncrated a wooden press that's eighteenth century."

"You carry on," Homer told him. "I want to go back to the house before my legs give out. I'm getting a pain in my knees." He retreated down the grassy ramp.