Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 10 Who Talked to Ghosts

The Siamese were curled up on the foot of his bed. In Pickax they had their own room, complete with all conveniences, but at the museum they wanted to sleep on the foot of Qwilleran's bed, a quirk that made him wonder about subliminal influences in the place. All was quiet except for an occasional twitching paw or delicate snore. Shortly after he had turned off the bedside lamp and rolled over, he felt the animals snap out of their deep sleep. Koko was grunting. He turned on the lamp in time to see them listening with ears pricked, necks extended, and heads swiveling like periscopes as they strained to see into the adjoining hall. Then, with one accord, they jumped from the bed with fluid grace and scampered toward the kitchen. They had heard something.

Qwilleran had heard it, too, but he assumed the refrigerator motor had kicked on, or the electric pump was refilling the tank, as it sometimes did in the middle of the night for reasons of its own. Nevertheless, he slipped into his moose-skin moccasins and groped his way to the kitchen, where he heard the gentle sound of a cat lapping a drink of water. That was Yum Yum. Koko was on the windowsill, chattering as he did at squirrels - unusual behavior in the middle of the night.

Qwilleran looked out the window and saw nothing, but he thought it prudent to check the museum. Without turning on lights - simply low-beaming a flashlight on and off - he inspected the exhibit rooms and the office. Whimsically he thought, it would be a joke on a skeptic like me if Ephraim Goodwinter were to materialize through a wall - and what a column it would make for the "Qwill Pen"! Hopefully he sat down in the office. Once he thought he saw, from the comer of his eye, a wisp of movement, and he turned quickly, but there was nothing there. If he had been less skeptical he might have been more patient, but he declined to spend more than five minutes on ghost watching.

Returning to his apartment he locked the connecting door and went back to bed, where he turned on the radio and heard WPKX signing off for the night. Yum Yum again nestled against his feet, although her partner had not returned. Qwilleran picked up his book and tried to resume reading, but Koko's absence made him uncomfortable. Once more he padded to the kitchen and called him without hearing a reply. The entire apartment was silent, and it was not the living, breathing silence that means a furry body is hiding and listening; it was the dead silence that falls on a place I when a missing cat is simply not there.

Grumbling under his breath, Qwilleran returned to the museum and found Koko sitting on the registrar's table with other uncatalogued items: a stoneware jug, a hand-cranked. apple peeler, an embroidered pillow celebrating the Columbian Exposition of 1893, a wooden blueberry picker, an old print of sailing ships - and Kristi's bible. The merest quiver in the roots of Qwilleran's moustache told him to carry both the cat and the bible back to the apartment.

This time, with two cats pressing against his feet, he had no trouble falling asleep. He slept soundly until the darkest hour of night, when he found himself sitting up in bed and staring at the face of the stern-eyed, sour-faced miser. He tried to speak, but no words came. He tried to shout. Ephraim came closer and closer, and then the General Grant headboard began to topple. He raised both hands in a futile attempt to stop it from crushing him...

The dream ended, and Qwilleran found himself sitting up in bed with both arms raised and his head throbbing. The cats were blissfully asleep; the headboard was firmly in place; but his skin was clammy, his throat was sore, and his eyes burned.

After taking aspirin and a large glass of water he finished the night on the sofa and succumbed to deep sleep until the telephone rang and the familiar voice of Arch Riker barked, "Did you hear the news on the radio?"

"No, dammit! I was sound asleep!" Qwilleran complained in a hoarse croak. "With a friend like you, who needs an alarm clock? What time is it?"

"Nine-fifteen. Do you want to go back to sleep or do you want to hear some hot breaking news?" asked the publisher of the Something, knowing well what the answer would be.

Qwilleran was instantly awake. "What happened?" he asked in full voice.

"It was on the nine o'clock news. They found the body of a man near where you're living. Were you involved in any fights last night?"

"Who? Who's the man?"

"For an innocent bystander you sound unusually anxious, my friend. They're not releasing his name until they've notified next of kin."

"Where was the body?"

"On Fugtree Road near the Black Creek bridge. That's all I know. Roger's over at the police station getting something for the Something."

Qwilleran had no sooner hung up than Polly Duncan called him with the same news.