Something the Cat Dragged In Read Online Free PDF

and say so. Then Mrs. Pommell invites you to tea so the members can look you over and ask you a lot of embarrassing questions. If you haven’t folded up and quit by then, you’re supposed to submit an essay on ‘Why I am dedicated to the preservation of our heritage.’ ”
    “Good Lord!”
    “And after all that, they take a secret vote on whether to let you in. One single nay and that’s the end. No second chances.”
    “Considering the requirements, I’m surprised they have any members to vote,” said Shandy. “Who does belong to this august assemblage?”
    “Well, there’s Mr. and Mrs. Pommell, as I mentioned. He’s head of the First Balaclava County Guaranteed National Trust, Savings, and Loan. You know him, I expect, seeing as how you folks have an account there.”
    That could have gone without saying. The Guaranteed was the only bank in town. “I believe I’ve met Mrs. Pommell, too,” Shandy agreed.
    “I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s president of the Garden Club and a few more things, as she’d be first to tell you if you gave her half a chance. And there’s Henry Hodger the lawyer, and Congressman Sill who served one term in the state legislature back when Alvan T. Fuller was governor. He’s still active in politics, or claims he is. Goes to Boston and hangs around the State House. Making a pest of himself, most likely.”
    This observation was also redundant. Shandy’d had the misfortune to hear Sill orate on far too many occasions. “Does Mrs. Sill belong?” he asked.
    “She used to, but she’s been bedridden ever since she had that stroke about ten years ago, poor soul. Just lies there staring at the ceiling, though if I had to choose between that and old Sill’s face, I daresay I’d take the ceiling, too. And there’s Lot Lutt who used to be on the board of directors over at the soap factory. He’s a widower. And William Twerks, who’s never done a hand’s turn at anything in his life to the best of my knowledge.”
    “Twerks is the hulking chap who lives in that brown-and-yellow house with the fancy trimmings isn’t he?” Shandy remarked. “I’ve had a few encounters with him.”
    Twerks had, in fact, wandered over to the campus on various occasions for the purpose of ogling female students doing fieldwork in their sawed-off jeans, and been dealt with by them in various imaginative and interesting ways.
    Mrs. Lomax’s lips twitched. She knew, of course. “Yes, Twerks is quite a one for the ladies, they say, though he’s never stuck to one long enough to matter. Anyway, he goes to the meetings alone. And that’s the lot, as far as I know, except for Professor Ungley, and I guess you can’t count him any more. He claimed to be curator of that museum they’ve talked about starting for the past forty years or so, but never get around to. He’d gas along about how much work it was trying to get the place organized, but he never did anything as far as I could make out. Though he did keep a lot of records and papers in that big filing cabinet down in his study, so maybe he was working on those when I used to think he was just snoozing in his chair. Serve me right for judging if he was.”
    “He never showed you any—er—plans or documents or whatever that he was working on?”
    “No, and I never looked to see.”
    “Naturally not, but don’t you think we might have a glance now?”
    “Seeing as how that’s what I got you down here for.” Mrs. Lomax picked up her keys. “The thing is, Professor, somebody’s been in his place. You follow me and I’ll show you what I mean. I haven’t touched anything.”
    She paused to unlock Ungley’s door. “I’d meant to clean up, after I got back home from the to-do down behind the clubhouse. I figured the heirs would be nosing around, and I wouldn’t want them thinking I didn’t keep the place decent.”
    “You don’t know who they are?”
    “Nary a notion, unless he left everything to the college, which would be