Eventually he located the door into the living room, but that large area was even more difficult to navigate. He had not yet learned the floor plan, although he knew it was booby-trapped with clusters of chairs and tables in mid-room. A flash of violet-blue lightning illuminated the scene for half a second, hardly enough time to focus one's eyes, and then it was darker than before. If one could find the wall, Qwilleran thought, it should be possible to follow it around to the archway leading to the foyer. It was a method that Lori Bamba's elderly cat had used after losing his sight. It may have worked well for old Tinkertom, who was only ten inches high and equipped with extrasensory whiskers, but Qwilleran cracked his knee or bruised his thigh against every chair, chest, and table placed against the wall.
Upon reaching the archway, he knew he had to cross the wide foyer, locate the entrance to the dining room, flounder through it to the kitchen, and then find the emergency candles. A flashlight would have solved the problem, but Qwilleran's was in the glove compartment of his car. He would have had a pocketful of wooden matches if Dr. Melinda Goodwinter had not convinced him to give up his pipe.
"This is absurd," he announced to anyone listening. "We might as well go to bed, if we can find it." The Siamese were abnormally quiet. Groping his way along the foyer wall, he reached the stairs, which he ascended on hands and knees. It seemed the safest course since there were two invisible cats prowling underfoot. Eventually he located his bedroom, pulled off his clothes, bumped his forehead on a bedpost, and crawled between the lace-trimmed sheets.
Lying there in the dark he felt as if he had been in the Potato Mountains for a week, rather than twenty-four hours. At this rate, his three months would be a year and a half, mountain time. By comparison, life in Pickax was slow, uncomplicated, and relaxing. Thinking nostalgically about Moose County and fondly about Polly Duncan and wistfully about the converted apple barn that he called home, Qwilleran dropped off to sleep.
It was about three in the morning that he became aware of a weight on his chest. He opened his eyes. The bedroom lights were glaring, and both cats were hunched on his chest, staring at him. He chased them into their own room, then shuffled sleepily through the house, turning off lights that had been on when the power failed. Three of them were in Hawkinfield's office, and once more he entered the secret room, wondering what it contained to make secrecy so necessary. Curious about the scrapbook that Koko had discovered, he found it to contain clippings from the Spudsboro Gazette—editorials signed with the initials J.J.H. Qwilleran assumed that Koko had been attracted to the adhesive with which they were mounted, probably rubber cement.
The cat might be addicted to glue, but Qwilleran was addicted to the printed word. At any hour of the day or night he was ready to read. Sitting down under a lamp and propping his feet on the editor's ottoman, he delved into the collection of columns headed "The Editor Draws a Bead."
It was an appropriate choice. Hawkinfield took potshots at Congress, artists, the IRS, the medical profession, drunk drivers, educators, Taters, unions, and the sheriff. The man had an infinite supply of targets. Was he really that sour about everything? Or did he know that inflammatory editorials sold papers? From his editorial throne be railed against Wall Street, welfare programs, Hollywood, insurance companies. He ridiculed environmentalists and advocates of women's rights. Obviously he was a tyrant that many persons would like to assassinate. Even his style was abusive:
"So-called artists and other parasites, holed up in their secret coves on Little Potato and performing God knows what unholy rites, are plotting to sabotage economic growth . . . Mountain squatters, uneducated and unwashed, are dragging their bare feet in mud while presuming to tell the civilized world how to approach the twenty-first century ..."
The man was a mono-maniac, Qwilleran decided. He stayed with the scrapbook, and another one like it, until dawn. By the time he was ready for sleep, however, the Siamese were ready for breakfast, Yum Yum howling her ear-splitting "N-n-NOW!" Only at mealtimes did she assume her matriarchal role as if she were the official breadwinner, and it was incredible that this dainty little female could utter such piercing shrieks.
"This is Father's Day," Qwilleran rebuked her as he opened a can of boned chicken. "I don't expect a present, but I deserve a little consideration."
Father's Day had more significance at Tiptop than he knew, as he discovered when he went to Potato Cove to pick up the four batwing capes.
