The Pet-Sitting Peril Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyedropper.
    â€œThere, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” He loosened his grip on the towel and the indignant cat shot away from him, snarling her fury. Nick wondered uneasily how much harder it would be to administer the stuff the next time. Maybe he’d see if Sam would come over and help him.
    â€œI sure hope you get well soon,” Nick told the cat as he opened the bathroom door and saw her streak past him to hide under a chair in the living room. “If I’d known how hard this was going to be, I’d have asked for twice as much money to do it.”
    Eloise glowered at him. He decided to ignore her. He washed off the scratch and put an antiseptic on it from the medicine chest. Itwasn’t bleeding enough so that he felt the need of a Band-Aid over it.
    â€œSee you next time, I guess,” he said to the cat as he headed for the door. And that was where he made his mistake.
    He turned his back on Eloise and opened the door into the hallway, and the next thing he knew a big white puff of fur ran between his legs, nearly knocking him down, and Eloise disappeared.
    He was so busy trying to keep from braining himself by falling against the doorjamb that he didn’t even see which way she went.
    Breathing through his mouth, Nick stood in the dim hallway, listening. He didn’t hear a thing. He’d told Mrs. Sylvan that he liked cats, but he was beginning to think that in Eloise’s case he might make an exception.
    Which way had she gone? Not outside, she had to be trapped in the house because the front door was closed, but it was a big house.
    Nick walked toward the rear of the place until he came to the manager’s apartment. Behind the door he could hear the television—a ball game. There was no way Nick could seethat the cat could have gotten in there, nor found a way directly outside, so he retraced his steps.
    In Mr. Haggard’s apartment, Rudy whined again, recognizing him. “Be back in a while, boy,” Nick called, and looked up the stairs. Eloise could be up there, or she could have hidden in one of the dark corners down here. The light was on again, but the illumination didn’t extend to the area beneath the stairs. What was that, a closet under there?
    The door was closed, a door painted the same dull brown as the paneling that ran around the bottom four feet of the walls below the faded wallpaper, so it didn’t seem likely the cat could have gotten into the closet. Still, the door didn’t fit well at the bottom. Nick tried the door to see, and it came open easily.
    No sign of Eloise, though the crowded little cubbyhole was full of plenty of other stuff. Old paint cans, boxes labeled CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS and INCOME TAX RECORDS, 1969 TO 1975. There was a faint smell that made Nick frown and reach for the small red can in one corner.
    Gasoline? Would anybody be crazy enough to store a can of gas in a closet with a bunch of flammable stuff?
    He hesitated. It wasn’t his house, after all, but it seemed stupid to ask for trouble. He’d mention it to Mr. Haggard, and he could bring it up with Mr. Griesner.
    And he still hadn’t found Eloise.
    He started up the stairs, slowly, braced to make a grab if the cat tried to go past him. What was he going to tell Mrs. Sylvan if he couldn’t get her cat back into the apartment?
    The upper hall was dim, too, though it wasn’t even starting to get dark outside yet. And quiet, very quiet. Clyde and Roy must not be home. Mrs. Monihan should still be here, she wasn’t leaving until tomorrow. Did he dare ask her assistance in finding Eloise?
    What would she think about leaving her own pets, though, in the hands of someone who’d lost a cat the first time he had anything to do with it?
    Behind him, there was a scratching sound as a key turned in the lock, and one of the double doors opened inward.
    At the same moment, as Nick looked down to see an unfamiliar figure enter the hallway, Eloise