He returned to the apartment just as Koko emerged from some secret hiding place. The cat was stepping carefully and looking around with cautious eye and incredulous ears.

"I feel the same way," Qwilleran said. "Let's play the game and see if you can come up with something useful." They went to the dictionary, and Koko played brilliantly. Inning after inning he had Qwilleran stumped with ebionitism and echidna, cytodiagnosis and czestochowa, onychophore and opalinid.

Just as Qwilleran was about to throw in the sponge, his luck changed. Koko sank his claws into the front of the book, and the page opened to arene and argue. On the very next try it was quality and quarreled. Qwilleran felt a significant vibration in his moustache.

20

The morning after Mrs. Hawkins's visit and Koko's stellar performance with the dictionary, Qwilleran waked before the alarm clock rang, and bounded out of bed. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

Tait must have had a grudge against the Fluxion ever since the coverage of the paternity trial. The family had probably tried to hush it up, but the Fluxion would naturally insist that the public has a right to know. None of the agonizing details had been spared. Perhaps the Rampage had dealt more kindly with the Taits; it was owned by the Pennimans, who were part of the Muggy Swamp clique.

For eighteen years Tait had lived with his grudge, letting it grow into an obsession. Despite, his subdued exterior, he was a man of strong passions. He probably hated the Fluxion as fervently as he loved jade. His ulcers were evidence of inner turmoil. And when the Fluxion offered to publish his house, he saw an opportunity for revenge; he could fake a theft, hide the jades, and let them be recovered "after the newspaper had simmered in its embarrassment.

What would be a safe hiding place for a teapot as thin as a rose petal? Qwilleran asked himself as he prepared Koko's breakfast.

But would Tait go to such lengths for the meager satisfaction of revenge? He would need a stronger motive.

Perhaps he was not so rich as his position indicated. He had lost the manufacturing plant; he had gambled on a jade expedition that failed to produce; he owed a large decorating bill. Had he devised a scheme to collect insurance? Had he and his wife argued about it? Had they quarreled on the night of the alleged theft? Had the quarrel been violent enough to cause a fatal heart attack? Qwilleran placed Koko's breakfast on the kitchen floor, slipped into his suit coat, and started filling his pockets. Here and there around the apartment he collected his pipe, tobacco pouch, matches, card case, a comb, some loose silver, his bill clip, and a clean handkerchief, but he could not find the green jade button that usually rattled around in his change pocket. He remembered leaving it on the desk top.

"Koko, did you steal my lucky piece?" Qwilleran said.

"YARGLE!" came the reply from the kitchen, a yowl gargled with a throatful of veal kidneys in cream.

Once more Qwilleran opened the envelope of photographs he was going to deliver to Tait. He spread them on the desk: wide-angle pictures of beautiful rooms, medium shots of expensive furniture groupings, and close-ups of the jades.

There was a perfect shot of the rare white teapot as well as one of the bird perched on the back of a lion. There were the black writing! desk, ebony and black marble heavily ornamented with gilded bronze; the table supported by a sphinx; the white silk chairs that did not look comfortable.

Koko rubbed against Qwilleran's ankles. "What's on your mind?" the man said. "I made your breakfast. Go and finish it. You've hardly touched that food!" The cat arched his back, curved his tail into a question mark, and walked back and forth over the newsman's shoes.

"You're getting your playmate today," Qwilleran said. "A little cross-eyed lady cat. Maybe I should take you along.

Would you like to put on your harness and go for a ride?" Koko pranced in figure eights with long-legged grace.

"First I've got to punch another hole in your harness." The kitchen offered no tools for punching holes in leather straps: no awl, no icepick, no sixpenny nails, not even an old-fashioned can opener. Qwilleran managed the operation with the point of a nail file.

"There!" he said, as he went to look for Koko. "I defy you to slip out of it again!… Now, where the devil did you go?" There was a wet, slurping, scratching sound, and Qwilleran wheeled around. Koko was on the desk. He was licking a photograph.

"Hey!" yelled Qwilleran, and Koko jumped to the floor and bounded away like a rabbit.

The newsman examined the prints. Only one of them was damaged. "Bad cat!" he said. "You've blistered this beautiful photo." Koko sat under the coffee table, hunched in a small bundle.

It was the Biedermeier armoire he had licked with his sandpaper tongue. The surface of the photograph was still sticky. From one angle the damage was hardly noticeable. Only when the light hit the picture in a certain way could the dull and faintly blistered patch be noticed.

Qwilleran examined it closely and marveled at the detail in Bunsen's photo. The grain of the wood stood out clearly, and whatever lighting the photographer had used gave the furniture a three-dimensional quality. The chased metal around the tiny keyhole was in bold relief. A fine line of shadow accentuated the edge of the drawer across the bottom.

There was another thin dark line down the side panel of the armoire that Qwilleran had not noticed before. It sliced through the grain of the wood. It hardly made sense in the design or construction of the cabinet.

Qwilleran felt a prickling in his moustache, and stroked it hurriedly. Then he grabbed Koko and trussed him in his harness.

"Let's go," he said. "You've licked something that gives me ideas!" It was a long and expensive taxi ride to Muggy Swamp. Qwilleran listened to the click of the meter and wondered if he could put this trip on his expense account. The cat sat on the seat close to the man's thigh, but as soon as the taxi turned into the Tait driveway, Koko was alerted. He rose on his hind legs, placed his front paws on the window and scolded the landscape.

Qwilleran told the driver, "I want you to wait and take me back to town. I'll probably be a half hour." "Okay if I go to the railway station and get some breakfast?" the man asked. "I'll stop the meter." Qwilleran tucked the cat under his left arm, coiled the leash in his left hand, and rang the doorbell of the Spanish mansion. As he stood waiting, he detected a note of neglect about the premises. The grass was badly in need of cutting.

Curled yellow leaves, the first of the season to fall, were swirling around the courtyard. The windows were muddied.

When the door opened, it was a changed man who stood there. Tait, despite his high color, looked strained and tired. The old clothes and tennis shoes he wore were in absurd contrast to the black-and-white marble elegance of the foyer. Muddied footprints had dried on the white marble squares.

"Come in," said Tait. "I was just packing some things away." He made an apologetic gesture toward his garb.

"I brought Koko along," said Qwilleran coolly. "I thought he might help in finding the other cat." And he thought, Something's gone wrong, or he's scared or the police have been questioning him. Have they linked the murder of his decorator with the theft of his jades?

Tait said, "The other cat's here. It's locked up in the laundry room." Koko squirmed, and was transferred to Qwilleran's shoulder, where he could survey the scene. The cat's body was taut, and Qwilleran could feel a vibration like a low-voltage electric current.

He handed the envelope of photographs to Tait and accepted an offhand invitation into the living room. It had changed considerably. The white silk chairs were shrouded with dust covers. The draperies were drawn across the windows. And the jade cases were dark and empty.