Mrs. Hopple rang the bell for the next course. “And what kind of voice does this wonderful little animal have, dear? Does he scold like the Siamese or meow like the other cats?”
Donald considered his reply while he properly chewed and swallowed the last mouthful of leek. Then he erupted into a loud babel of sounds: “AWK AWK ngngngngng hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh beep-beep-beep beep-beep-beep AWK.”
The maid’s eyes expressed alarm as she entered the dining room to remove the plates, and she was still regarding Donald with suspicion when she served the next course.
At that moment the boy shouted: “There he is! There’s Whiskers!” He pointed to the window, but by the time the adults had turned their heads to look, Whiskers had disappeared.
The main course was the kind of simple provincial dish the Hopples approved: a medley of white beans, lamb, pork ribs, homemade sausages, herbs, and a little potted pheasant. Their cook, imported from the French wine country, would have nothing to do with microwave ovens or food processors, so they had built a primitive kitchen with a walk-in fireplace to keep Suzette happy. The cassoulet that was now served had been simmering in the brick oven all day. With it came a change of subject matter, and the meal ended without further reference to Whiskers.
After dinner Donald performed his regular chore of feeding the Gang—taking their dinner tray upstairs in the glass-enclosed elevator, rinsing their antique silver drinking bowl (attributed to Paul Revere), and filling it with bottled water. Meanwhile his parents were served their coffee in the library.
“You were right about the boy,” Mr. Hopple remarked. “His imagination runs away with him.”
His wife said: “Donald’s story is probably an elaboration on an actual occurrence. No doubt the cat is a stray, perhaps the runt of a litter, unwanted, and thrown out of a passing car.”
“You have an explanation for everything, sweetheart. And you are so efficient. Did you make any plans for the weekend?”
“No, darling. I knew you’d be coping with jet lag. But I invited the gardener’s grandchildren to have lunch with Donald. They’re his own age, and he needs to meet town children occasionally.”
On Saturdays the Hopples usually breakfasted in festive style in the conservatory, but both maids were suffering from morning sickness the next day, so the family trooped into the kitchen. There they sat at an ancient wooden table from a French monastery, under a canopy of copper pots and drying herbs, while Suzette cooked an omelette in a long-handled copper skillet over an open fire.
After breakfast Donald said: “Mother, can I take some of the Gang’s catfood to the kittens in the stable?”
“May I, darling,” she corrected softly. “Yes, you may, but ask yourself if it’s advisable to spoil them. After all, they’re only barn cats.”
“Two of the kittens are very smart, Mother. They’re as smart as the Siamese.”
“All right, Donald. I value your opinion.” After he had scampered away, Mrs. Hopple said to her husband: “See? The Whiskers story was only a fantasy. He’s forgotten about it already . . . . By the way, don’t forget to ask Bobbie about the bonfire, dear.”
Her husband thanked her for the reminder and went to buzz the stable on the intercom. “Good morning, Bobbie. This is Hopple speaking. We haven’t met as yet, but I’ve heard good reports of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Since you live near the south gate, I’m wondering if you’ve observed any trespassing in the meadow. Someone had a bonfire there, and that’s bad business.”
“No, sir. Never saw anything like that,” the new stableboy said, “but I’ve been away for three days at a science conference, you know.”
“If you notice any unauthorized activity, please telephone us immediately—any hour of the day or evening.”
“Sure thing,” said Bobbie.
“One more question: Have you seen any . . . unusual cats in the stable or on the grounds?”
“Only a bunch of kittens and an old mother cat.”
“No strange-looking stray with long whiskers?”
There was a pause, and then the young man said: “No, I only heard some funny noises—like a duck quacking, and then some kind of electronic beep. I couldn’t figure where it came from.”
“Thank you, Bobbie. Keep up the good work.”
Mr. Hopple flicked off the intercom and said to his wife: “Donald is making those ridiculous noises in the stable. How long should we allow this to go on before consulting the doctor?”
“Darling, he’s just playing games. He’ll grow out of it soon. It’s common for young children to invent imaginary friends and have conversations with them.”
“I can assure you that I never did,” said her husband, and he went to his study, asking not to be disturbed.
Before noon the houseman took the Mercedes into town to pick up the Bunsen twins, a boy and a girl. Mrs. Hopple welcomed them warmly and gave them a picnic basket in which the cook had packed food enough for twelve children. “Wear your beeper, Donald darling,” she reminded him. “I’ll let you know when it’s time to bring your guests back.”
Donald drove the twins to the meadow in the pony cart. Having observed his father in social situations, he played the role of host nicely, and the picnic went smoothly. No one fell down. No one picked a fight. No one got sick.
When Mrs. Hopple beeped her son, he drove his guests back to the house with brief detours to the dog kennel, rabbit hutch, chicken coop, and horse stable.
“Did you have a nice time?” Mrs. Hopple asked the excited twins.
“I ate four chocolate things,” said the boy.
“My mother told me to say thank you,” said the girl.
“I saw a snake,” the boy said.
“We saw Whiskers,” the girl said.
“He’s green!”
“No, he’s blue with green whiskers.”
“His eyes light up.”
“Sparks come out of his whiskers.”
“He can fly.”
“Really?” said Donald’s mother. “Did he say anything to you?”
The twins looked at each other. Then the boy quacked like a duck, and the girl said: “Beep beep beep!”
Mrs. Hopple thought: Donald has coached them! Still, the mention of sparks made her uneasy. Living so far from town, the Hopples had an understandable fear of fire. She left the house hurriedly and rode a moped to the stable.
Bobbie was in the corral, exercising the horses. Donald was unhitching the pony. The barn cats were in evidence, but there was no sign of a creature with red-hot whiskers. Her usual buoyant spirit returned, and she laughed at herself for being gullible.
On the way back to the house she overtook the head gardener, laboring arthritically up the hill, carrying a basket of tulips and daffodils. She rebuked him kindly. “Mr. Bunsen, why didn’t you send the flowers up with one of the boys?”
“Gotta keep movin’,” he said, “or the old joints turn to ce—ment.”
“Mr. Hopple is arranging to hire some more help for you.”
“Well, ’twon’t do no good. Nobody wants to do any work these days.”
“By the way, you have two delightful grandchildren, Mr. Bunsen. It was a pleasure to have them visit us.”
“They watch too much TV,” he complained . . . . “Lookit that grass turnin” brown. No rain for ten days! . . . Somethin’ else, too. Some kind of critter’s been gettin’ in the greenhouse. Eats the buds off the geraniums. And now the tractor’s broke. Don’t know what happened. Just conked out this afternoon.”
“You must call the mechanic early Monday morning,” Mrs. Hopple said encouragingly. “Ask for priority service.”
“Well, ’twon’t make no difference. They come when they feel like it.”
The gardener’s grouchy outlook had no effect on Mrs. Hopple, who was always cheerful. Mentally reciting a few lines of Wordsworth, she carried the flowers into the potting shed, a room entirely lined with ceramic tile. There she was selecting vases fr
om a collection of fifty or more when a commotion in the nearby kitchen sent her hurrying to investigate.
Suzette was standing in the fireplace—which was now cold and swept clean—and she was banging pots and pans and screaming up the chimney. From the cook’s raving—three parts English and two parts French—it appeared that a diable up on the toit was trying to get down the cheminée into the cuisine.
Mrs. Hopple commended the cook on her bravery in driving a devil off the roof but assured her that the chimney was securely screened and nothing could possibly enter the kitchen by that route, whether a raccoon or squirrel or field mouse or devil.
Back in the potting shed she found a silver champagne bucket for the red tulips and was choosing something for the daffodils, when the buzzing intercom interrupted.
“Tractor’s okay, Miz Hopple,” said the gardener. “Started up again all by itself. But there’s some glass busted out in the greenhouse.”
She thanked Mr. Bunsen and went back to her flowers, smiling at the man’s perverse habit of tempering good news with a bit of bad. As she was arranging daffodils in a copper jug, Donald burst into the potting shed. “I couldn’t find you, Mother,” he said in great distress. “The rabbits are gone! I think somebody stole them!”
“No, dear,” she replied calmly. “I think you’ll find them in the greenhouse, gorging on geranium buds. Now, how would you like strawberries Chantilly tonight?” It was the family’s favorite dessert, and Donald jumped up and down and gave his mother a hug.
Later, she said to Suzette, speaking the cook’s special language: “I’ll drive to the ferme and pick up the fraises and the crème.” Mrs. Hopple liked an excuse to breeze around the country roads in the Ferrari convertible with the top down. Today she would drive to the strawberry farm for freshly picked fruit and to the dairy farm for heavy cream.
First she ran upstairs to find a scarf for her hair. As she passed the door of the Gang’s suite, she heard Donald making his ridiculous noises and the cats replying with yowling and mewing. She put her hand on the doorknob, then decided not to embarrass her son by intruding.
When she returned a moment later, silk-scarved and cashmere-sweatered, Donald was leaving the suite, looking pleased with himself.
“Are you having fun, darling?” she asked.
“Whiskers was in there,” he replied. “He was climbing around the waterwheel, and he looked in the window. I let him in. He likes our cats a lot.”
“He likes them very much, darling. I hope you closed the window again. We don’t want the Gang to get out, do we?”
Blithely Mrs. Hopple went to the garage and slipped into the seat of the Ferrari. She pressed a button to lift the garage door and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. There was not even a cough from the motor and not even a shudder from the big door. She persevered. She used sheer willpower. Nothing happened.
The houseman had not returned with the Mercedes after taking the twins home, but there were three other cars. She climbed into the Rolls; it would not start. The Caddy was equally dead. So was the Jeep.
Something, she thought, is mysteriously wrong. The houseman would blame it on the KGB or acid rain.
Resolutely she marched back to the house and confronted her husband in his study, where he was locked in with computer, briefcase, and dictating machine. He listened to her incredible story, sighed, then went to inspect the situation, while Mrs. Hopple did a few deep-breathing exercises to restore her equanimity.
“Nothing wrong,” he said when he returned. “The cars start, and the doors open. I think you need a change of scene, sweetheart. We’ll go out to dinner tonight. Wear your new Saint Laurent, and we’ll go to the club. Suzette can give the boy his dinner.”
“We can’t, darling. We’re having strawberries Chantilly, and I promised Donald.”
So the Hopples stayed home and enjoyed an old-fashioned family evening. Dinner was served on the terrace, followed by croquet on the lawn and corn-popping over hot coals in the outdoor fireplace. Donald made no mention of Whiskers, and his parents made no inquiries.
Early Sunday morning, when the June sunrise and chattering birds were trying to rouse everyone at an abnormal hour, the telephone rang at Hopplewood Farm.
Mr. Hopple rose sleepily on an elbow and squinted at the digital clock radio. “Four-thirty! Who would call at this ungodly hour?”
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 trespassing?” 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 classified information if I were you.”
“Classified! 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 win
dow 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 glass 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 space at the south window. “Donald’s right,” she said. “The glass 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 glass 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 grass and chasing faded butterflies, 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 Cat Who Had 14 Tales Page 12
