Chapter 15 #2
I don’t think I should ever get used to seeing that, Mouser said quietly, pulling his head down deeper into his shoulders as he ambled closer to the entrance with Tilly. He ducked even further when Tilly followed Katherine and Mrs. Chrysler over the threshold.
The interior of the building was dimly lit here, with the same kind of lanterns they’d observed underground, now glowing blue with clear glass panes.
A wide empty space met them, with large empty shelves lining the walls and the light fading away into a large dark corridor beyond.
There was a door at the end of the corridor, with warm yellow light spilling underneath.
“Darn it, no crates,” said Mrs. Chrysler, pulling the robe’s cowl up over her head, pushing back her long sleeves, and grabbing a lantern off the wall to hold up in front of her.
“Nothing much at all,” said Katherine, looking around as her eyes adjusted to the gloomy blue light.
“But, what’s this?” On the interior of the wall bearing the door, she spied a large nail with a clipboard hanging from it, dangling a pencil on a string.
She unhooked it from the nail and brought it closer to Imogene’s lantern to inspect it, and her friend peeked over her shoulder, pushing back again a drooping sleeve.
“Looks like an inventory record, doesn’t it?
” Mrs. Chrysler said. The pages on the clipboard were lined with dates, tallies, and check marks in one set of thick, boxy writing, with squiggles in another, lighter hand at the end of each row.
“Look. ‘Units’ and ‘Subunits’… ‘In’ and ‘Out’… Arrivals and departures of crates and the caskets, I’d guess. ”
“And is that Ms. Angela’s signature?” Katherine pointed to the final column. The squiggles were untidy, but pairs of sweeping capital A’s and S’s stood out prominently in the spidery script, dominant above all the other letters.
“Well, we did see her with a clipboard,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “When that big crate was in the hallway, remember? She must inspect them.”
Katherine scanned the record and saw that there were weekly entries for the “Units” (i.e.
, crates) and daily entries for the “Subunits” (i.e.
, caskets) that must be filled with plop.
Each of the daily entries was time-stamped in the morning.
“This seems like a good place to leave a note, Imogene,” she said, “to make sure it gets to whom it needs to.”
“Too right, Katty.” Mrs. Chrysler dug their handiwork out of her bag and admired the craftsmanship one more time before affixing it above the first sheet of the clipboard.
“Oh, wait a second,” she said, stopping Katherine from putting it back on its nail quite yet.
She leafed through some of the other pages and took one from near the top, putting it in her bag.
“Can’t have too much proof of the recent hauls. ”
Katherine nodded.
Then the light shifted in the room, and Katherine looked up to see the yellow glow underneath the far door now blocked in two places. Someone was standing behind it. The handle began to jiggle.
“That’s our cue,” said Mrs. Chrysler, returning the lantern to its hook and shuffling back toward the open freight entrance. She suddenly stopped at the sound of feet on gravel outside. Katherine, too, halted at the threshold. The patrollers were coming back.
“In or out, Imogene?” she asked urgently.
Before either woman could move, the door behind them opened. The figure was backlit, but nevertheless, Katherine guessed by his garb he was an orderly. She could see him squinting into the darker room ahead of him.
“Who’s there?” the figure called.
Mrs. Chrysler and Katherine pressed themselves against the wall, Tilly and Mouser froze in the middle of the room, and they all watched Mr. Scruffles dart into the open air.
The black cat, however, was not wholly visible.
He opted to emerge via the solid wall next to the door, and his head was still missing.
Mouser began retching, leaving a warm, moist pile on the floor.
“Ugh, Gerald, did you hear that?” came a voice from outside.
“Yes, what was that?”
Mrs. Chrysler concealed her disgust as well as could be expected, eyeing the steaming mound, and Katherine saw the backlit orderly hesitate, straining to find the source of the horrid, wet noise in the darkness.
“Who’s out there?” he called, drawing a foot back out of the room.
“It’s us! Who do you think?” came the angry voice of Gerald. “Look, Ernie, the door is open!” He and Ernie rounded the freight entrance and peered into the dimly lit room. “What did you open this door for?”
“I didn’t open that door,” yelled the orderly from his position at the end of the passage. “Why would I? And what is that smell?”
“Gerald,” Ernie said, “the door was padlocked… on the outside.”
Katherine thought she saw Gerald’s face grow suddenly pale.
Mr. Scruffles shot past Gerald’s legs, making him jump, and Mrs. Chrysler mouthed two words to Katherine: “We’re going.” She then burst from the shadows with her arms raised and Katherine in tow. They rushed past Ernie and Gerald, Mrs. Chrysler fluttering the loose robe.
“Maybe it was a ghost!” she hollered.
The two miners yelled, taken aback, and the orderly bolted into the room, then slipped on Mouser’s leavings and skidded across the floor, taking the men out at the knees on the gravel.
“Kitties!” Katherine called.
Woo hoo hoo, said Mr. Scruffles, bolting past Mouser. I don’t know what you’ve been eating, my friend, but I believe that could be weaponized.
Don’t tease him, said Tilly, keeping pace with the threadbare cat as they pursued Katherine and Mrs. Chrysler back to the bushes. It happens to the best of us.
When indeed everyone was back in the shelter of the shrubberies in the darkening twilight, Katherine whipped out her brooch and her knitted map and bade the stricken Ruben to let down his scarf for the cats to tread on. The tangle of men on the gravel were still struggling to their feet.
“Was that a cat?” Gerald demanded.
“It was them! From last night!” came the voice of Ernie. “But what were they wearing?”
Poof.
Outside the Gilded Midden, the two women led Ruben into a nearby alley to help him dress.
“I hope that was worth it?” the old man said, adjusting his garments and rubbing his hands to bring warmth back to his fingers.
“Yes, worth it,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “We were successful. Thank you, Ruben.”
The old man nodded, then stumped off toward the tavern, but Katherine stopped him, a hand on his arm. “Let’s not go back to the Midden just yet. I just can’t face that fried bar food again,” she said.
And so, her party returned to the Gilded Midden for overnight accommodations only after finding a reasonably priced bistro for dinner.
The same room was available for the night, but Katherine was dismayed to discover that the linens apparently had not been changed.
She immediately noticed the stitching from her repair of Mr. Scruffles’ destructive mouse hunt.
“Oh, Imogene,” Katherine said with a shiver. “Was it always this way, when we used to stay here?”
Her friend shrugged. “I don’t know. They might have washed the sheets and simply put them right back, you know.”
Katherine doubted that to the extreme, eyeing the grease and crumbs from Ruben’s untidy meal the previous night. Who knew how long those sheets had been on that straw… “I am very glad,” she said, “that I have been sleeping in my clothes…”