I chose a black cat because I considered white paws unprofessional.
The woman at the shape counter said paws were not the usual source of difficulty. She showed me the locker where I could leave my clothes. The hire lasted three hours; the shop shut at half past nine. It was seven now. She asked whether I had someone to collect me.
“I work alone.”
“Then be back before we shut, and wait here till ten. You change where you are. We don’t fetch you.”
“I have read the terms.”
She gave me a card with my locker number and collection code. I called Durn before the change and told him the code, in case of difficulty. He said there would be none. I left the card in my coat.
She lowered a small clock to my level after the change. I looked at it, then at her. She said my time had started.
It was an undignified beginning. I spent four minutes learning to turn without consulting my tail.
Miss Vern lived two streets from the shape shop, above the auction rooms she had recently sold. Her housekeeper let cats in. This was the principal piece of information supplied by my client, Durn, along with a photograph of the brooch and the assurance that its owner went to bed at nine.
The brooch was a little green beetle, its wings opened over a stone the size of my thumbnail. I mention the thumbnail because, at the time I first saw the photograph, I still had one.
Durn wanted it returned to him. That was how he put it. People often wanted things returned which had never been theirs. I charged the same either way. Durn said he had never met Miss Vern; she had acquired his beetle through a third party.
The housekeeper was leaving when I reached the steps. She had a shopping bag and very soft ankles. I passed between them with an assurance which I felt would serve me well throughout the evening.
“Oh, you,” she said. “Come for supper?”
I did not answer. I had no voice, which made discretion easier.
She let me into the passage and called upstairs that a cat had arrived. Then she shut the street door behind her. There was a cat flap at the bottom; I nudged it once to make sure it swung both ways before going upstairs.
I went up.
The flat smelled much larger than it was. There was toast in the sitting room, shoe polish near the bedroom, and behind the kitchen door something hot and complicated which made it difficult to remember the significance of toast. I examined the kitchen first. This was reconnaissance.
Miss Vern sat at a small table, separating chicken from a bone. On the table beside her stood a glass with a red flower in it. The flower was false. I could tell immediately, though I could not have told you its price.
“Good evening,” she said.
She had a narrow face and short grey hair, and wore an old knitted jacket with one beautiful thing on it: the beetle. Its wings caught the light when she turned.
I had expected a box. A drawer, perhaps. I was prepared for obstacles. I had not prepared for the obstacle to be eating chicken.
Miss Vern put a piece on a saucer and set it down. I approached carefully. She let her hand hang beside the chair.
I went beneath it to reach the saucer.
She scratched me behind one ear.
I shall describe this accurately. I knew who I was, why I had come, and what was at stake. At no point did I imagine I had ceased to be Ors Pell, a man trusted with delicate work. I simply found that, for several seconds, the delicate work could wait.
The noise came from me before I had authorized it.
“There,” Miss Vern said. “You haven’t forgotten.”
That was alarming. I moved away from her hand.
She regarded me. Then she went on eating.
The first hour would have gone better if I had not spent so much of it studying the chair opposite hers. Its cushion retained the heat of the afternoon. I needed a place from which to observe the brooch, and the chair gave an excellent view.
There was a mantel clock in the sitting room. When I could no longer hear the small dry sound of her knife, I went to check it.
Forty-one minutes gone.
Miss Vern brought her plate through and put it on a tray. She sat down with a newspaper. I took the arm of her chair. From there I could see the fastening when she leaned forward: beyond any power my new paws possessed. Pulling would tear the jacket and attract attention. I had not selected a form suitable for explaining torn knitwear.
I needed her to remove it.
The room was warm. I made it warmer by sitting against her neck.
“Not there,” she said, and moved me to her lap.
I tried again.
She put me on the floor.
I was not discouraged. Discouragement belongs to people who have only one approach.
I walked across the newspaper, stood upon its most interesting paragraph and began to wash a front paw. While I did this, I studied the brooch. A green beetle; two little hinges; the pin extending farther than one would expect. If I could get it loose, I could carry it in my mouth.
Miss Vern folded the newspaper around me and lifted the whole arrangement onto the other chair.
“Useful,” she said. “I must remember that.”
At nine she stood, removed the brooch, and carried it into the bedroom.
I followed at a distance.
She put it on the dressing table, beside a framed photograph. In the photograph Miss Vern was younger and standing in front of the auction rooms. Beside her stood Durn, with hair. They were holding opposite ends of a long, ugly painting. I had seen that painting in his office. He called it a family piece.
I had not seen Miss Vern in his office photographs.
She went into the bathroom. Water ran.
I jumped onto the dressing table.
The brooch was cold against my teeth. I caught the open pin with my lip and dropped it. Nothing serious, but the resulting sound brought Miss Vern back to the door.
For an instant I remained perfectly still. Then I knocked a powder brush to the floor.
It was a convincing piece of misdirection. Cats knock things down. Everybody knows this.
Miss Vern picked up the brooch and closed its pin.
“You’ll hurt yourself.”
She put it in a drawer. I watched which drawer. This was my second mistake.
“Ah,” she said.
She looked at the clock, then at me.
I had not meant to follow her eyes. I did.
“How long have you got?”
I looked toward the powder brush. It seemed important to maintain an interest in it.
“An ordinary cat checks a clock once,” she said. “It may have a fly on it. You’ve been back and forth to mine all evening.”
This was not evidence sufficient to satisfy a magistrate. Unfortunately I had no magistrate with me.
Miss Vern opened the bedroom door wide and stood aside.
“You can go.”
I stayed where I was.
“The stairs are straight ahead. Unless you want me to telephone someone.”
I looked at the clock again. It was twenty past nine. I had forty minutes. Plenty of time to return to the shop. Plenty of time to report failure to Durn and explain why I needed another evening, this time as something with fingers.
Durn had paid half in advance. I had spent nearly all of it on the cat.
Miss Vern went to the sitting room and took the telephone from a low shelf. It was the old sort, with separate buttons. I followed her because no advantage had ever been gained by declining information.
She set the telephone on the carpet.
“One paw. Press firmly. Who sent you?”
I could have left then. I want that understood. There was no locked door, no threat of a cage, no sinister bowl. I remained because she had begun to speak to me as if I were not very good at my profession.
I pressed a button.
It made a sound. Very satisfying. I pressed another.
“I’ll clear that,” she said. “Start again.”
I thought of the photograph. Durn had never met her, had he? They had held that ugly painting between them by a remarkable coincidence.
I dialled him.
She put the call on speaker and waited. Durn had told me that if I called without speaking, he would understand there was a difficulty. I was interested to discover how much he understood.
“Ors?” he said.
Miss Vern looked at me.
“Is that the cat’s name?”
There was a long silence.
“Vern.”
“You sent me a cat.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He keeps looking at your beetle.”
“My beetle?”
“That’s better.”
She sat on the floor. I had the impression she was enjoying the change of level.
“You said you didn’t have it,” Durn said.
“I said I wasn’t selling it to you.”
“You could have let me make an offer.”
“You did make an offer. It was a poor one.”
Miss Vern reached for me. I evaded her hand, then stopped evading it. She scratched the place at the base of my ear. I tried to make my silence sound disapproving. The body had another proposal.
“What is that?” Durn asked.
“Your man.”
“Put him on.”
“He is on.”
“Ors, leave the flat.”
I stood up.
“Before you go,” Miss Vern said, “where are your clothes?”
I looked toward the street.
“Shape shop?”
I tapped the carpet once.
“The one by the bakery?”
Once.
Durn said he would not pay the balance for this.
Miss Vern scratched me again.
“The shop shuts at half past nine,” she told him. “The counter woman leaves by the back. Go and fetch his things.”
I had been told the closing time. I had intended to be finished by nine. There had been no suggestion, when I planned the evening, that I would need to spend nearly an hour in a chair.
“Why should I?” Durn asked.
“Because otherwise he’ll change back in my flat. Then he can tell me about your work with those little silver boxes.”
I turned to her.
“Oh,” she said. “You know about those.”
Durn put the phone down.
He arrived at ten to ten, carrying my clothes in a paper bag and wearing the expression of a man whose choice of agent had disappointed him. Miss Vern put my things in the bathroom and let me in.
I waited on a folded towel. Through the door I heard them discussing the beetle. Durn made a new offer. Miss Vern said no. He named a larger sum. She asked whether this included what he owed her from the sale of a cabinet.
I did not listen to the answer. I was changing, which requires concentration even when one has no influence over it.
When I came out, they were still at the table. The beetle lay between them. Durn was taking papers from his pocket.
“You can go,” Durn told me.
“My balance.”
“You didn’t bring me the brooch.”
“No. I brought you to the brooch.”
Miss Vern laughed. It was the first purely professional encouragement I had received all evening.
Durn paid half the balance, partly, I believe, to end the conversation. I took it. It was more than the work deserved and less than the evening had cost.
At the door, Miss Vern said, “The housekeeper’s cat has white paws. He’s been coming here for six years.”
“Then you knew at once?”
“I knew you weren’t him. I thought you might be another cat.”
I put on my hat.
“You were, for a while,” she said.
That was her opinion.
On the stairs I heard them laughing. I took considerable care not to hurry.
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