The Pet-Sitting Peril by Willo Davis Roberts Page B

everything we brought with us.”
    â€œOkay. I’m tired, too. I suppose I better go up and check on Fred first. Do you think Ishould bring him down here, too? I’d hate to have Rudy go for him and wreck something.”
    â€œI’ll put the choke chain on Rudy and hold him while you hold Fred,” Sam proposed. “If it looks like it’ll get wild, you can always put Fred back in his own apartment.”
    Nick felt strange climbing the stairs in the quiet house. It was different at night. Spooky, just as Al had said. Nick knew that Mr. Griesner was home, downstairs in the back of the house. And probably Mrs. Sylvan was home, too, though he hadn’t heard her come in.
    Up here on the second floor there was no one but himself. No music throbbed behind the door of Clyde and Roy’s apartment. The stairs creaked even under Nick’s meager weight, and though the bulb was on in the upper hallway, it didn’t produce much light.
    Nick let himself into Mrs. Monihan’s apartment, and was halfway across the living room toward Fred when an odor reached him. For a few seconds he didn’t identify it, and then he did.
    Hot. Something was hot, burning.
    Panic gushed through him; for a momenthe almost turned and ran, but reason took over almost immediately. It wasn’t a fire, not yet, he thought. Something was simply overheated.
    He went into the kitchen and reached for the light switch, staring at the electric stove. One of the burners glowed crimson, and smoldering at the edge of the red circle was a cereal box that had fallen over onto the element.
    Nick reached for a spatula from the set of utensils on the wall and pushed the blackening carton into the sink. When he ran water on it, charred bits of cardboard flaked off and gave off an odor much like the one he’d smelled in the alley.
    Nick turned off the burner and waited until the heat and color faded from it, inhaling deeply so that his breathing slowed to normal.
    Who had turned the burner on? It couldn’t possibly have been on ever since Mrs. Monihan left to visit her sister. Nick knew he would have noticed it.
    He’d been in the kitchen several times a day, to put out fresh water and food for Maynardand Fred. Fred followed him now, leaping onto a chair, switching his long, thick tail.
    Could Fred have been on the counter and knocked over the cereal box so that it fell across the burner? Yes, Nick decided, that could have happened. He wiggled the knob experimentally. Could Fred have accidentally turned it on if he’d brushed against it? Even now the big cat sprang onto the window sill looking out over the back stairs; obviously he wouldn’t have any problem leaping onto the counter and the stove.
    It didn’t seem likely that a cat brushing against the knob could have turned it, but how else could it have gotten on?
    Nick made sure the cereal box was soaked and no longer dangerous, then scooped up Fred and locked the door behind them to return downstairs.
    â€œI don’t think it’s safe to leave you alone in there,” he muttered, while Fred purred his pleasure at the attention.
    Fred was not quite so pleased when he was carried into Mr. Haggard’s living room. He stopped purring and glared at Rudy, wholeaped up to meet him, restrained by the choke chain.
    â€œI thought you were never coming back,” Sam complained. “Once I got the chain on him, Rudy figured we were going for another walk, and it was all I could do to keep him still.”
    Nick related what had happened. “Do you think a cat could turn on a burner on the stove?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe. Fred’s a strong cat. Anyway, you caught it in time. Put him down, Nick, see what happens.”
    What happened left them both shaken. For though they had thought themselves prepared to handle the situation if Rudy and Fred took a dislike to each other, they had underestimated both Rudy’s strength and the