Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 11 Who Lived High

"If I were rich and famous, I wouldn't be living at Ye OIde Broken-down Casablanca," Qwilleran said with forced geniality that concealed his irritation. He disembarked at Three and walked.the rest of the way up to Fourteen, silently cursing Sasha what's her name for revealing his financial status. He enjoyed the role of a retired journalist; he did not enjoy the role of a millionaire. Briefly, he considered moving to the Penniman Plaza until he remembered that hotels did not accept cats.

On the way upstairs he heard an ambulance siren winding down in front of the building. Another casualty! Who was it this time?

Arriving at 14-A he found a newspaper clipping under his door with a note from Amber scrawled in the margin: "Did you see this?" It came from the business page of Saturday's Morning Rampage - an interview with one of the principals of Penniman, Greystone & Fleudd. Rexwell Fleudd stated that the proposed Gateway Alcazar was fifty percent leased, and ground would be broken sooner than expected. A one-column head shot of the developer showed a long narrow face with high cheekbones and blow-dried hair. Qwilleran crumpled it in disgust and tossed it in the wastebasket.

Immediately the delicate thud of velvet paws could be heard, bounding out of the bedroom, and Yum Yum, the sleeping beauty, made a nose-dive into the wastebasket to retrieve the crumpled clipping. The crumpling of paper was a sound she could hear in her dreams. Qwilleran took it away from her, not wanting her to chew it and ingest printer's ink.

As he did so, he had another look at that arrogant face and wondered where he had seen it before.

Yum Yum was peeved, and to assuage her ruffled feelings he stroked her fur and paid her a few lavish compliments on her pulchritude, her sweetness of disposition, and her nobility of character. She purred - and went back to bed.

Why does she loll around so much? he asked himself. Is it the smog? Or some kind of stress?

Meanwhile, Koko was waiting for action on the Scrabble table, and he won the first few draws so handily that Qwilleran changed the rules to permit proper nouns, slang, and foreign words. Even with a handicap the cat won, but the man had the satisfaction of spelling such words as IXION, MERCI, CIAO, and SNAFU. Toward the end of the game he spelled a word that proved to be prophetic: OOPS.

As it happened, he intended to spend the afternoon at the library, and on his way downtown he stopped at the Penniman Plaza for lunch. The coffee shop was on the mezzanine, and he was s1epping on the upward-bound escalator when he heard a cracked voice directly behind him crying, "Help me!" He half-turned and caught a glimpse of a dirty white beard. At the same moment someone grabbed his arm. What happened next seemed to be in slow motion: his hand reaching for the handrail... the handrail moving beyond his grasp.

.. his body sinking backward... his feet continuing to move upward... the steps behind him rising to meet his spine...

the whole escalator ascending relentlessly as he lay on his back, riding to the mezzanine feetfirst.

The absurdity of his position stunned him momentarily until screams from onlookers recalled the episode on the subway tracks and marshalled his wits. In a matter of seconds he had to swing his legs around in the narrow space, maneuver his feet lower than his head, scramble to his knees, stand up. Just as the moving steps telescoped into the floor above, he was upright, and hands were helping him step onto terra firma.

"Are you hurt, sir?" a security man asked.

"I don't think so," Qwilleran replied. "Only a trifle surprised." "Let me take you to the manager's office, sir." "First I want to sit down and have a cup of coffee and figure out what happened." "You can get coffee right here in the bar, sir.

Are you sure you're all right?" The uniformed guard conducted Qwilleran into a dimly lighted lounge. "I'll notify the manager, sir. He'll send someone down." "Mr. Qwilleran! What happened?" the bartender called out. He had a reddish moustache, and Qwilleran recognized the jogger from the Casablanca.