The Cat MEGAPACK ®. Andrew Lang
Читать онлайн книгу.
he said with an attempt at heartiness. “Sure, it’s Julie. You come right in, Julie, and have a chair.” He backed unsteadily, spread his arms in a wide gesture.
“Thanks,” she said, and then she added, “Uncle Charley.”
There was one chair to have, a lopsided platform rocker. An oak library table occupied the center of the floor. On it was a pottery lamp connected to the ceiling fixture. A couch covered with artificial leather was the only other piece of furniture. The ragged carpet on the floor was felted with cat hairs.
Of course, there were cats. Julie counted five of the creatures without trying, and then there were two more. She remembered that one of the things Harvey held against Uncle Charley was his love of cats.
“Nasty little insincere animals, cats,” was Harvey’s opinion. “They’ll go to anybody who feeds them.”
Julie rather liked cats, but not to the extent that Uncle Charley did. Seven cats, ranging from a half-grown calico that was pretending that Julie was frightening, to a huge gray Tom with one eye and a chewed ear.
“Like cats, Julie?” Uncle Charley asked.
She said that she did. She took her eyes off the ugly gray tom who was acting coy around the platform of the rocker, and looked at Uncle Charley.
Uncle Charley wasn’t exactly beautiful. He had yellowish eyes like the yellow cat that was rubbing on his pants legs. A four-day gray beard stubble sprouted from his hollow cheeks. His nose was almost thin enough to have an edge on it.
Uncle Charley looked right back at her and grinned. It wasn’t exactly a nice grin. The grin somehow reminded her of the shadowy figure she had seen lurking around Uncle Charley’s front door.
“By the way, did someone leave here just before I arrived?” she queried.
“Leave?” Uncle Charley shook his head. He kept looking at her. She wasn’t sorry that he found her attractive. But there was such a thing as carrying appreciation too far. She pulled her fur a little closer around her neck and gave the navy blue skirt of her suit a prim tug.
“I came to talk to you about Harvey,” she said quickly. “Harvey and his new business.”
“Harvey?” Uncle Charley made a face as though he wasn’t pleased to be reminded of Harvey. “Oh, Harvey.” He winked at Julie. “Which reminds me—”
He went stumbling back through the cased opening into the dining room. A black cat lurked there in the shadows and yowled. Uncle Charley opened the kitchen door and disappeared into the room beyond.
A white cat came out of the dining room and straight toward Julie as if bent on something important. It sat down six feet in front of the patent rocker and began to wash its face.
The calico half-kitten came romping out from the couch, its hind parts making more rapid progress than its forelegs. An alley tiger intercepted the calico and batted it for a loop. The ugly gray cat rubbed against Julie’s ankles and purred like Harvey’s electric razor on a cold morning. He left short gray hairs clinging to the smooth surface of Julie’s stockings.
“Go away,” she said to the battle-scarred veteran, and suppressed an uneasy shudder. For no reason at all, her nerves were tight with strain.
Uncle Charley emerged from the kitchen with two fingers stuck down inside two water tumblers he was carrying and a squat bottle of brandy in his other hand.
“Speaking of Harvey always reminds me to take a drink,” he said. “A puritan, Harvey.”
“You just don’t know him,” Julie said. “I don’t think you ever tried very hard to know him.”
“Ha!” Uncle Charley put the glasses down on the library table and poured a generous portion into each tumbler. “Here you are, Julie.” He handed her a glass. “This is mighty good stuff.”
It was, in spite of the memory of Uncle Charley’s none-too-clean fingers. It tasted like the brandy that was served in the Stork Club.
“Harvey doesn’t drink,” Uncle Charley said.
“Sometimes,” she contradicted. At Christmas Harvey would drink, or when he was in Chicago entertaining some business associate.
“Harvey doesn’t know he’s alive,” Uncle Charley said. Then he started looking at her again.
“About Harvey’s new business,” she said. “You know what he did, don’t you? He started a soft drink bottling plant. He put all his money into equipment.”
“Ha!” Uncle Charley sat down on the library table. “Soft drinks. Like Harvey. A blasted Puritan.”
“We can’t all drink brandy,” Julie reminded him. “And there’s money in it.”
Uncle Charley refilled his glass. He practically leered at Julie.
“To our better acquaintance, my dear.”
Julie took a deep breath and lunged into her subject. She didn’t understand quite what it was all about, but soft drink production had been curtailed. It had to do with sugar and the war, and you got a certain percent of the sugar you had used the year before and, of course, Harvey’s business hadn’t been running the year before.
“Put his money on the wrong horse,” Uncle Charley said. “A stupid fool!”
“He’s not!”
“Didn’t make any mistake when he hooked you, though,” Uncle Charley said. “But what you can see in him, I don’t know.”
Julie frowned, wet her smooth curving lips, and plunged on with a hint of desperation getting into her tone.
“Harvey needs some money,” she blurted. “He could remodel his plant and manufacture something for the war effort. He’s tried banks and they won’t lend him anything on his present equipment.”
“No credit,” Uncle Charley said. “He can’t borrow any money from me.”
Julie put her glass down on the floor because there was no place else to put it. The gray cat immediately became interested.
“He’s not asking you for money, Uncle Charley,” she said. “I am. Of course, you mustn’t let him know that.”
“That’s different. That’s entirely different.” Uncle Charley chuckled. “You’ve got credit with me, pet.”
Other men of fifty-five had looked at Julie that same way and implied the same thing with different words. They had offered her everything from a mink coat to a tropic cruise, and they had been very little different from Uncle Charley. Dressed different, heavens knows.
Julie’s lips thinned and curled at the outer extremities. Disgust narrowed her long blue eyes.
“Uncle Charley, be your age!”
Uncle Charley put down his glass. He blinked at her.
“So you think I’m old? Just a dozen, fifteen years older than that milksop you’re married to.”
He took a step toward Julie. She stood up. It was obvious that she was going to have some trouble with Uncle Charley. He reached out to paw her shoulder, chuckling.
“Guess I know you models,” he said.
“You’re sure about that?” And then she clipped the side of Uncle Charley’s gaunt face.
It wasn’t a slap. It was a blow from a small, hard fist. It rocked Uncle Charley back so that he stepped on the paw of the white cat. He didn’t seem to hear his pet’s pained cry.
“You—you hit me,” he said, but not whining. “You’ve got spirit. Picture Harvey married to a girl with spirit. I like girls with spirit.”
She turned her back on him and stepped indignantly to the door. Harvey had been entirely