He sounded very angry. Harriet could tell from his voice that he had stormed up the steps to the library. “You won’t believe the iniquity … you will not believe when I tell you the unmitigated finkiness of those guys.”
Then Mrs Welsch’s voice, calm and comforting, obviously leading him to a chair. “What, darling? My heavens, what is it?”
“Well, mumble mumble, they’re just the worst mumble mumble. I just could not believe …”
“Darling, here, have your drink.”
Harriet was standing up in the bathtub, she was trying so hard to hear.
“What did you do today, Harriet?”
How annoying. Ole Golly had chosen this time to start a conversation. Harriet pretended not to hear as she kept listening.
“That mumble, he’s an absolutely inspired fink, that’s what he is, a real mumble I tell you, I never saw a mumble like him.”
“Did you take a lot of notes?” Harriet tried to crane her ears past Ole Golly’s question. Would she just shut up a minute?
“Darling, that’s terrible, simply mumble.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. They’re really going to mumble it up. If anything it’ll be the worst show of the season. They’re real mumbles, they are.”
“What are you doing, Harriet M. Welsch, standing up in that bathtub?” Ole Golly looked exceedingly fierce. “Sit down there this minute and I’ll wash your back. Look at those ears. Do you perhaps pour ink into them?”
“No, they itch a lot.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing, all that noise downstairs.”
“Well, I’d like to hear it all the same.”
“Your father has a very high-pressure job, that’s all.”
“What’s a high-pressure job?”
“It means he’s not allowed to do exactly what he wants with the job, and what he is allowed to do he isn’t given enough time to do it in.”
“Oh,” said Harriet, thinking, What does that mean? “Do spies have high pressure?”
“Oh, yes, if they get caught.”
“I’m never caught.”
“Not yet.”
“Ole Golly, are you ever going away?”
“When you get so big you don’t need me, yes, but not right this minute. You’re getting pretty old though,” Ole Golly said, surveying Harriet critically.
There was a pause, then Harriet said, “Ole Golly, do you have a boyfriend?”
“Yes,” said Ole Golly and looked away.
“YES!” Harriet almost fainted into her bath water.
“Yes,” said Ole Golly with dignity. “Now time for bed.”
There was a pause and then Harriet asked, “It’s unsanitary to have a lot of cats in the house, isn’t it?”
Ole Golly looked rather startled. “I always think of cats as rather clean, but then, a lot of cats … How many cats?”
“I think twenty-five, but I’m not sure. They move around a lot.”
“Twenty-five? Here’s your towel. Who do you know with twenty-five cats?”
“Oh, somebody.” Harriet adored being mysterious.
“Who?”
“Oh, just somebody.” And Harriet smiled to herself.
Ole Golly knew better than to pursue it. She always said that privacy was very important, especially to spies.
When Harriet was all through with her dinner and bundled off to bed she began to think of Harrison Withers and all his cats. Harrison Withers lived on Eighty-second at the top of a dilapidated rooming house. He had two rooms, one for him and one for the cats. In his room he had a bed, a chair, a work table at which he made birdcages, and a whole wall of birdcage-making tools. In the other room there was nothing but the cats. In the kitchen there was one glass, one cup, and twenty-six plates all stacked up.
It suddenly occurred to Harriet to wonder if he ate exactly the same food as the cats, or different food. She must find out tomorrow. She could find out by following him around the supermarket. She fell asleep contentedly. Right before she fell asleep she wondered who in the world Ole Golly’s boyfriend was.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, after her cake and milk, Harriet went straight to Mrs Plumber’s house. She knew it was dangerous, but once her curiosity was aroused she had never been able to give up a spot on her route. As she got to the house she saw Little Joe Curry in conversation with the maid. She sidled around the front, took a ball from her pocket that she always carried for such moments, and began to engage in an innocent-looking game of ball right in front of them.
Little Joe was leaning against the door. He always looked tired when he wasn’t eating. The maid sounded very aggravated. “Haven’t got the change. She went off left me without a cent.”
“Well, when will she be back? I could come back.”
“Lord knows. When she go to Elizabeth Arden she sometimes gone all day. Lot of work to do on her, you know.” The maid giggled nastily.
“Man, she got all that jack and don’t pay. They all alike – more they got, less they pay.” And with that pronouncement Little Joe shuffled off back for his afternoon snack.
Harriet looked unconcerned as he went past. The maid went inside. Harriet leaned against the hydrant and wrote:
I WONDER WHAT THEY DO TO HER ALL DAY. I ONCE SAW MY MOTHER IN A MUD PACK. THEY’LL NEVER GET ME IN A MUD PACK.
She slammed her book and went to the Dei Santis’. The store was terribly busy. Everyone was running to and fro, even Franca who usually had to be propped up somewhere. Little Joe wasn’t even back yet. Well, thought Harriet, this looks like a rotten spy day. She checked Mrs Plumber and the Dei Santis off her list and went on to the Robinsons, the next people on the route.
The Robinsons were a couple who lived in a duplex on Eighty-eighth Street. When they were alone they never said a word to each other. Harriet liked to watch them when they had company, because it made her laugh to see them showing off their house. Because the Robinsons had only one problem. They thought they were perfect.
Luckily their living room was on the ground floor of their duplex. Harriet scurried through the back passageway to the garden and there, by leaning around a box kept for garden tools, she could see in without being seen.
The Robinsons were sitting, as they always were, staring into space. They never worked, and what was worse, they never even read anything. They bought things and brought them home and then they had people in to look at them. Otherwise they didn’t seem to do a blessed thing.
The doorbell rang.
“Ah,” said Mrs Robinson. “There they are now.”
She got up sedately and walked slowly, even though she had obviously been sitting there waiting for the ring. She looked critically as Mr Robinson adjusted his smoking jacket, then went to the door.
“Come in, Jack, Martha, how