Cold Steal by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Author:Phoebe Atwood Taylor [Taylor, Phoebe Atwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0914378546
Published: 2020-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

HE WAS not sitting alone in solitude, or isolation, or anything remotely resembling either state.

Quietly squatting on his mulberry broadloom carpet, surrounding his chair, backed up almost into the fireplace, were a quantity of little girls. Dozens of little girls. Red-cheeked, bright-eyed little girls who were studying him with that inquisitive, slightly suspicious intensity peculiar to the very young.

Leonidas stared unblinkingly back at them, confident that the mirage would evaporate. Of course, the little girls were a mirage. They had to be. Hordes of small girls couldn’t permeate a room so quietly in such a short time. They were a mirage. A myopic error. A vision conjured by a tired mind.

He became aware suddenly of a woman looming in the doorway.

“I can’t imagine,” Judge Round said absently, ignoring Leonidas, “what became of Wendy—”

And forthwith, she departed.

Leonidas hastily whipped on his pince-nez. There was an aura of Thurston and Houdini in the way the judge vanished from sight.

“All,” Leonidas told himself firmly, “a bad dream. Myopic errors.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again.

There was no sign of the judge, but the little girls were still there. They were real.

Unlike Tudbury’s Horse, they seemed to have no conversational bouquets poised to fling at him. They appeared to be quite comfortably content to sit and stare without any explanatory verbiage whatsoever. If, their expressions said, if you want ice broken, you go right ahead and break it.

“Er— Good evening,” Leonidas said.

He took off his pince-nez, and then tentatively put them on again.

Several of the little girls giggled.

“In the outermost reaches of far Mongoon,” Leonidas remarked, “which, incidentally, is ruled by my good friend the Maharajah, I understand that there is an Upper Urdul tribe called the Mimballa, whose womenfolk take the vow of perpetual silence, or Mimball. Am I right in thinking that you are Mimballa from the Upper Urdul?”

All of the little girls giggled, and the two nearest him squealed.

“We’re from Dalton Centre!’- one of the pair said.

“Oh! that’s a pity,” Leonidas said. “And you’re not Mimballa, either?”

“We’re Pussycats!”

“M’yes. Of course. To be sure.” Leonidas never batted an eyelid. “You’d have to be, to creep in here so quietly. Will you be stopping long, d’you think, or will the catnip trail beckon again? I mean, I’ve only got beds for four.”

The little girls broke down completely.

“You’re funnier than he said!” the small blonde spokesman announced.

“Er-who?”

“Jock!”

“Ah, yes. Jock. You know Jock?”

“He takes my sister to the Friday Afternoon Junior Assemblies. He thinks Sis is keen.” Everybody had a good giggle at that. “Did you like his surprise?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Leonidas said, quickly. “Jock hasn’t been here to show it to me.”

“He hasn’t? I guess he doesn’t know you’re home,” the blonde child said. “I’ll have Sis phone him, when I get home.’!

At least, Leonidas thought, the infant had a home, and gave some indication of returning to it, which was more than could be said for any member of Tudbury’s Horse.

“Sis likes to phone him. She thinks up things to ask him, and then she calls him, and then Mum has a fit.

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