The Cat Who Had 14 Tales Part 12

Mrs. Hopple sat up in bed. "It's five twenty-five by the old clock on the mantel. There's been another power failure."

Her husband cleared his throat and picked up the receiver. "Yes?"

"Hi, Mr. Hopple. This is Bobbie Wynkopp. Sorry to call so early, but you told me-if I saw anything . . ."

"Yes, Bobbie. What is it?"

"That place in the meadow that was burned-how big was it?"

"Hmm . . . as well as I could estimate from the air . . . it was . . . about ten feet in diameter. A circular patch."

"Well, there's another one just like it."

"What! Did you see any trespa.s.sing?" Mr. Hopple was fully awake now.

There was a pause. "Mr. Hopple, you're not gonna believe this, but last night I woke up because my room was all lit up. I sleep in the attic, on the side near the meadow, you know. It was kind of a green light. I looked out the window . . . . You're not gonna believe this, Mr. Hopple."

"Go ahead, Bobbie-please."

"Well, there was this aircraft coming down. Not like your kind of plane, Mr. Hopple. It was round, like a Frisbee. It came straight down-very slow, very quiet, you know. And it gave off a lot of light."

"If you're suggesting a flying saucer, Bobbie, I say you've been dreaming-or hallucinating."

"I was wide awake, sir. I swear! And I don't smoke. Ask anyone."

"Go on, Bobbie."

"The funny thing was . . . it was so small! Too small to carry a crew, you know, unless they happened to be like ten inches high. It landed, and there was some kind of activity around it. I couldn't see exactly. There was a fog rising over the meadow. So I ran downstairs to get my dad's binoculars. They were hard to find in the dark. The lights wouldn't go on. We were blacked out, you know . . . . Are you still there, Mr. Hopple?"

"I'm listening. What about your parents? Did they see the aircraft?"

"No, but I wish they had. Then I wouldn't sound like some kind of crazy. My mother works nights at the hospital, and when Dad goes to bed, he flakes right out."

"What did you see with the binoculars?"

"I was too late. They were taking off. The thing rose straight up-very slow, you know.

And when it got up there . . . ZIP! It disappeared. No kidding. I couldn't sleep after that.

When it got halfway daylight I went out to the meadow and had a look. The thing scorched a circle, about ten feet across. You can see for yourself. Maybe you should have it tested for radioactivity or something. Maybe I shouldn't have gone near it, you know."

"Thank you, Bobbie. That's an extremely interesting account. We'll discuss it further, after I've made some inquiries. Meanwhile, I'd consider it cla.s.sified information if I were you."

"Cla.s.sified! Don't worry, Mr. Hopple."

"Was that the stableboy?" his wife asked. "Is anything wrong? . . . Darling, is anything wrong?"

Mr. Hopple had walked to the south window and was gazing in the direction of the meadow-a study in preoccupation. "I beg your pardon. What did you say? That boy told me a wild story . . . . Ten-foot diameter! He's right; that's remarkably small." There was a loud thump as a six-year-old threw himself against the bedroom door and hurtled into the room.

"Darling," his mother reminded him, "we always knock before entering."

"They're gone! They're gone!" he shouted in a childish treble. "I wanted to say good morning, and they're not there!"

"Who's not there, darling?"

"The Gang! They got out the window and climbed down the waterwheel!"

"Donald! Did you leave the window open?"

"No, Mother. The window's broke. Broken," he added, catching his mother's eye. "The gla.s.s is kind of . . . melted! I think Whiskers did it. He kidnapped them!" She shooed him out of the bedroom. "Go and get dressed, dear. We'll find the Gang.

We'll organize a search party."

Mrs. Hopple slipped into a peignoir and left the suite. When she returned, a moment later, her husband was still staring into s.p.a.ce at the south window. "Donald's right," she said. "The gla.s.s has actually been melted. How very strange!" Still Mr. Hopple stared, as if in a trance.

"Dearest, are you all right? Did you hear what Donald said?" Her husband stirred himself and walked away from the window. He said: "You can organize a search party if you wish, but you'll never find the Gang. They're not coming back. Neither is Whiskers."

He was right. They never came back. The two smartest kittens in the stable also disappeared that night, according to Donald, but the rabbits were found in the greenhouse, having the time of their lives.

Life at Hopplewood Farm is quite ordinary now. Garage doors open. Cars start.

Television reception is perfect. Only during severe electrical storms does the power fail.

No one lets the rabbits out of the hutch. The tractor is entirely reliable. Nothing tries to sneak down the chimney. Window gla.s.s never melts.

And little Donald, who may suspect more than he's telling, discusses planets and asteroids at the dinner table and spends hours peering through his telescope when his parents think he's asleep.

The Sin of Madame Phloi "The Sin of Madame Phloi" was first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, June 1962.

From the very beginning Madame Phloi felt an instinctive distaste for the man who moved into the apartment next door. He was fat, and his trouser cuffs had the unsavory odor of fire hydrant.

They met for the first time in the decrepit elevator as it lurched up to the tenth floor of the old building, once fashionable but now coming apart at the seams. Madame Phloi had been out for a stroll in the city park, chewing city gra.s.s and chasing faded b.u.t.terflies, and as she and her companion stepped on the elevator for the slow ride upward, the car was already half-filled with the new neighbor.

The fat man and the Madame presented a contrast that was not unusual in this apartment house, which had a brilliant past and no future. He was bulky, uncouth, sloppily attired.

Madame Phloi was a long-legged blue-eyed aristocrat whose creamy fawn coat shaded to brown at the extremities.

The Madame deplored fat men. They had no laps, and of what use is a lapless human?

Nevertheless, she gave him the common courtesy of a sniff at his trouser cuffs and immediately backed away, twitching her nose and showing her teeth.

"GET that cat away from me," the fat man roared, stamping his feet thunderously at Madame Phloi. Her companion pulled the leash although there was no need; the Madame with one backward leap had retreated to a safe corner of the elevator, which shuddered and continued its groaning ascent.

"Don't you like animals?" inquired the gentle voice at the other end of the leash.

"Filthy, sneaky beasts," the fat man said with a snarl. "Last place I lived, some lousy cat got in my room and et my parakeet."

"I'm sorry to hear that. But you don't need to worry about Madame Phloi and Thapthim.

They never leave the apartment except on a leash."

"You got TWO? Well, keep 'em away from me or I'll break their rotten necks. I ain't wrung a cat's neck since I was fourteen, but I remember how." And with the long black box he was carrying, the fat man lunged at the impeccable Madame Phloi, who sat in her corner, flat eared and tense. Her fur bristled, and she tried to dart away. Even when her companion picked her up in protective arms, Madame Phloi's body was taut and trembling.

Not until she was safely home in her modest but well-cushioned apartment did she relax.

She walked stiff-legged to the sunny spot on the carpet where Thapthim was sleeping and licked the top of his head. Then she had a complete bath herself-to rid her coat of the fat man's odor. Thapthim did not wake.

This drowsy, unambitious, amiable creature-her son-was a puzzle to Madame Phloi; she herself was sensitive and spirited. She didn't try to understand him; she merely loved him. She spent hours washing his paws and breast and other parts he could easily have reached with his own tongue. At dinnertime she consumed her food slowly so there would be something left on her plate for his dessert, and he always gobbled the extra portion hungrily. And when he slept, which was most of the time, she kept watch by his side, sitting with a tall regal posture until she swayed with weariness. Then she made herself into a small bundle and dozed with one eye open.

Thapthim was lovable, to be sure. He appealed to other cats, large and small dogs, people, and even ailurophobes in a limited way. He had a face like a beautiful brown flower and large blue eyes, tender and trusting. Ever since he was a kitten he had been willing to purr at the touch of a hand-any hand. Eventually he became so agreeable that he purred if anyone looked in his direction from across the room. What's more, he came when called; he gratefully devoured whatever was served on his dinner plate; and when he was told to get down, he got down.

His wise parent disapproved of this uncatly conduct; it indicated a certain lack of character, and no good would come of it. By her own example she tried to guide him.

When dinner was served she gave the plate a haughty sniff and walked away, no matter how tempting the dish. That was the way it was done by any self-respecting feline. In a minute or two she returned and condescended to dine, but never with open enthusiasm.

Furthermore, when human hands reached out, the catly thing was to bound away, lead them a chase, flirt a little before allowing oneself to be caught and cuddled. Thapthim, sorry to say, greeted any friendly overture by rolling over, purring, and looking soulful.

From an early age he had known the rules of the apartment: "No sleeping in the cupboard with the pots and pans."

"Sitting on the table with the typewriter is permissible."

"Sitting on the table with the coffeepot is never allowed." The sad truth was that Thapthim obeyed these rules. Madame Phloi, on the other hand, knew that a rule was a challenge, and it was a matter of integrity to violate it. To obey was to sacrifice one's dignity . . . . It seemed that her son would never learn the true values in life.

To be sure, Thapthim was adored for his good nature in the human world of typewriters and coffeepots. But Madame Phloi was equally adored-and for the correct reasons. She was respected for her independence, admired for her clever methods of getting her own way, and loved for the cowlick on her white breast and the squint in her delphinium blue eyes. In appearance and behavior she was a cla.s.sic Siamese. By c.o.c.king her head and staring with heart-melting eyes, she could charm a porterhouse steak out from under a knife and fork.

Until the fat man and his black box moved in next door, Madame Phloi had never known an unfriendly soul. She had two companions in her tenth-floor apartment-genial creatures without names who came and went a good deal. One was an easy mark for between-meal snacks; a tap on his ankle always produced a crunchy tidbit. The other served as a hot-water bottle on cold nights and punctually obliged whenever the Madame wished to have her underside stroked or her cheekbones ma.s.saged.

Life was not all petting and treats, however; Madame Phloi had her regular work. She was official watcher and listener for the household.

There were six windows that required watching, for a wide ledge ran around the building flush with the tenth-floor windowsills, and this was a promenade for pigeons. They strutted, searched their feathers, and ignored the Madame, who sat on the sill and watched them dispa.s.sionately but thoroughly through the window screen.

While watching was a daytime job, listening was done after dark, requiring greater concentration. Madame Phloi listened for noises in the walls. She heard termites chewing, pipes sweating, and sometimes the ancient plaster cracking, but mostly she listened to the ghosts of generations of deceased mice.

One evening, shortly after the incident in the elevator, Madame Phloi was listening.

Thapthim was sleeping, and the other two were quietly turning pages of books, when a strange and horrendous sound came from the wall. The Madame's ears flicked to attention, then flattened against her head.

An interminable screech was coming out of that wall, like nothing the Madame had ever heard. It chilled the blood and tortured the ears. So painful was the shrillness that Madame Phloi threw back her head and complained with a piercing howl of her own. The strident din even waked Thapthim. He looked about in alarm, shook his head wildly, and clawed at his ears to get rid of the offending noise.

The others heard it, too.

"Listen to that!" said the one with the gentle voice.

"It must be the new man next door," said the other. "It's incredible!"

"How could anyone so crude produce anything so exquisite? Is it Prokofiev he's playing?"

"I think it's Bartok."

"He was carrying his violin in the elevator today. He tried to hit Phloi with it."

"He's a nut . . . . Look at the cats! Apparently they don't care for violin music." Madame Phloi and Thapthim, bounding from the room, collided with each other in a rush to hide under the bed.

That was not the only noise emanating from the next-door apartment in those upsetting days after the fat man moved in. The following evening, when Madame Phloi walked into the living room to commence her listening, she heard a fluttering sound dimly through the wall, accompanied by highly conversational chirping. This was agreeable music, and she settled down on the sofa to enjoy it, tucking her brown paws neatly under her creamy body.

Her contentment was soon disturbed, however, by a slamming door and then the fat man's voice bursting through the wall like thunder.

"Look what you done, you dirty skunk!" he bellowed. "Right in my fiddle! Get back in your cage before I brain you!"

There was a frantic beating of wings.

"GET down off that window or I'll bash your head in!" The threat brought a torrent of chirping.

"Shut up, you stupid cluck! Shut up and get back in that cage or I'll . . ." There was a splintering crash, and then all was quiet except for an occasional pitiful "peep!"

Madame Phloi was fascinated. In fact, when she resumed her watching ch.o.r.e the next day, pigeons seemed rather insipid entertainment. Thapthim was asleep, and the others had left for the day, but not before opening the window and placing a small cushion on the chilly marble sill.

There she sat, a small but alert package of fur, sniffing the welcome summer air, seeing all and knowing all. She knew, for example, that the person walking down the tenth-floor hallway, wearing old tennis shoes and limping slightly, would halt at the door, set down his pail, and let himself in with a pa.s.skey.

Indeed, she hardly bothered to turn her head when the window washer entered. He was one of her regular court of admirers. His odor was friendly, although it suggested damp bas.e.m.e.nts and floor mops, and he talked sensibly; there was none of that falsetto foolishness with which some persons insulted the Madame's intelligence.

"Hop down, kitty," he said in a musical voice. "Charlie's gotta take out that screen. See, I brought some cheese for the pretty kitty."

He held out a modest offering of rat cheese, and Madame Phloi investigated it and found it was the wrong variety, and she shook one fastidious paw at it.

"Mighty fussy cat," Charlie laughed. "Well, now, you sit there and watch Charlie clean this here window. Don't you go jumpin' out on the ledge, 'cause Charlie ain't runnin'

after you. No sir! That old ledge, she's startin' to crumble. Someday them pigeons'll stamp their feet hard, and down she goes! . . . Hey, lookit the broken gla.s.s out here!

Somebody busted a window."

Charlie sat on the marble sill and pulled the upper sash down in his lap, and while Madame Phloi followed his movements carefully, Thapthim sauntered into the room, yawning and stretching, and swallowed the cheese.

"Now Charlie puts the screen back in, and you two guys can watch them crazy pigeons some more. This screen, she's comin' apart, too. Whole buildin's crackin' up." Remembering to replace the cushion on the cool, hard sill, he went on to clean the remaining windows, and the Madame resumed her post, sitting on the edge of the cushion so that Thapthim could have most of it.

The pigeons were late that morning, probably frightened away by the window washer.

When the first visitor skimmed in on a blue gray wing, Madame Phloi first noticed the tiny opening in the screen. Every aperture, no matter how small, was a temptation; she had to prove she could wriggle through any tight s.p.a.ce, whether there was a good reason or not.

She waited until Charlie had limped out of the apartment before she started pushing at the screen with her nose, first gingerly, then stubbornly. Inch by inch the rusted mesh ripped away from the frame until the whole corner formed a loose flap. Then Madame Phloi slithered through-nose and ears, slender shoulders, dainty Queen Anne forefeet, svelte torso, lean flanks, hind legs like steel springs, and finally proud brown tail. For the first time in her life she found herself on the pigeon promenade. She shuddered deliciously.

Inside the screen the lethargic Thapthim, jolted by this strange turn of affairs, watched his daring parent with a quarter inch of his pink tongue protruding. They touched noses briefly through the screen, and the Madame proceeded to explore. She advanced cautiously and with mincing step, for the pigeons had not been tidy in their habits.

The ledge was about two feet wide. Moving warily, Madame Phloi advanced to its edge, nose down and tail high. Ten stories below there were moving objects but nothing of interest, she decided. She walked daintily along the extreme edge to avoid the broken gla.s.s, venturing in the direction of the fat man's apartment, impelled by some half-forgotten curiosity.

His window stood open and unscreened, and Madame Phloi peered in politely. There, sprawled on the floor, lay the fat man himself, snorting and heaving his immense paunch in a kind of rhythm. It always alarmed her to see a human on the floor, which she considered feline domain. She licked her nose apprehensively and stared at him with enormous eyes. In a dark corner of the room something fluttered and squawked, and the fat man opened his eyes.

"SHcrrff! GET out of here!" he shouted, struggling to his feet and shaking his fist at the window.