The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (17 page)

Arethusa, happy now with a whole tableful of food to herself and nobody trying to make conversation, was stuffing it in with a skill born of much practice and looking around for a waiter because she couldn’t recall having drunk any of that champagne which had been poured for her. Hiram, on the other hand, was eyeing the gussied-up victuals askance and stepping well back from the buffet so that he wouldn’t inadvertently absorb anything he couldn’t recognize.

“Thanks, ma’am, but I ought to ooze myself back to the house an’ tell ‘em you’re still among those present even if nobody else is. I kind o’ hate to leave, though; I’m hankerin’ to get a closer look at that bugger with the slicked-down hair an’ the purple socks. He reminds me o’

that bird who shot me through the forehead.”

“How interesting,” Arethusa remarked through a mouthful of curried shrimp. “It’s a small world, isn’t it? I expect Mr. Snarf will be back sooner or later.”

In fact, having run off his initial panic and brought himself to a realization of his duties, Hedrick Snarf was even then reentering the ballroom. So were a few of the guests who’d managed to get hold of themselves and reflect on how much of that expensive food and drink they might still have a chance to consume. The more intrepid among the waiters and waitresses were beginning to sweep up the broken crystal and chill more champagne.

Hiram, having effaced himself behind the potted palms, was doing his darnedest to demanifest, eyeballs and all.

Everybody was pretending that the apparition had been only a jolly jape and that they hadn’t been fooled but were just going along with the joke. Everybody else was pretending to believe his fellow guests’ protestations and was sneering at them behind their backs. The sangfroid and savoir faire with which the guest of honor was eating her way from one end of the buffet to the other did much to quell any lingering palpitations; the replenished supply of bubbly was soon effervescing in veins that had so recently run cold with terror of the unknown though not unseen.

The party, in short, was back on, louder and gayer than before since all those present except Arethusa were working so hard to convince each other that they weren’t a bit scared and never had been. Bonhomie was rife, if not rampant, until all of a sudden, out of the figurative blue, the top plate from a stack of clean china that had been sitting unattended and unnoticed on a side table with not a soul anywhere near it rose straight into the air, sailed roughly four and a quarter meters of its own accord, and biffed Hedrick Snarf spang athwart the starboard ear.

As the startled innkeeper rubbed the assaulted and no doubt smarting organ, another plate soared Snarf-ward and caught him on the bridge of his nose. Arethusa, who had been leaning over to spear an oyster, drew herself up in haughty rebuke.

“Really, Mr. Snarf, it says very little for your managerial skills that you can’t even control a stack of dessert plates.”

“But I-ouch! Quit that.”

Plates were flying thick and fast, Snarf was no longer the only one getting biffed. Titans and titanesses were eyeing each other with unfeigned suspicion and overt resentment.

The champagne that had enlivened their spirits was now exciting their ire, they too began chucking china.

When the available stock of crockery was depleted, they fell to throwing food. Hoarse guffaws and ribald remarks roared from an unseen throat but couched in the robust language of an old-time mule skinner who’d been in plenty of dance-hall fights in his day and knew how a first-rate brawl ought to be run spurred them on to ever more indecorous behavior. The inn that had become such a hotbed of gentilesse and politesse during the latter reign of Andrew McNaster was beginning to look like Bare Mountain on a really busy Walpurgisnacht.

There was only one thing left to do, Arethusa decided, and she appeared to be the only person in the room still competent to do it. Threading her way through the carnage much as a certain angel was said to have done during the Battle of Mons on August 23, 1914, she managed without scathe to reach the telephone.

“Sergeant MacVicar, I feel it my duty to inform you that a riot, debauch, fracas, melee, or affray is raging here at the inn, and that the incompetent Mr. Snarf is doing nothing whatsoever to quell it.”

A loud crash, as of a chandelier being smashed to smithereens by somebody who’d essayed to swing on it, which later proved to have been the case, punctuated her statement in a way that no sergeant of police and most particularly Sergeant Donald MacVicar of the Lobelia Falls constabulary could have ignored. In a matter of perhaps three and a half minutes and two more broken windows, the full weight of the law, including Deputy Osbert Monk, had invaded the premises and Sergeant MacVicar had spoken the awful words.

“Noo then, what’s going on here?”

Arethusa did not wait to hear the answer, if indeed there was one. Her duty done, the buffet quite destroyed, the champagne bottles all empty and being used as weapons, she saw nothing to stay for. Nor did she feel any compulsion to take formal leave of Mr. Snarf. He had, in her estimation, behaved quite abominably. She entered the checkroom and searched out the Spanish shawl she had used for a wrap, the attendant appointed to perform such duties having refused to come out from under the counter and fetch it for her. She flung the great sweep of black silk and cabbage roses over her velvet gown with a cavalier’s flourish, and sailed forth from the inn.

iVot until she had stepped

out on the sidewalk and drawn a few deep breaths did Arethusa Monk become aware that she was not alone. Floating in the air at about the level of her tourmaline brooch were a pair of turquoise-colored orbs. Croaking in her ear was a disembodied voice, all but worn out from much hollering yet managing to utter words of genteel address.

“I figgered I better see you safe home, ma’am. Seems to me there’s too damn many riffraffy buggers hangin’

around this here gin mill tonight.”

“How very gallant of you, Mr. Jellyby.” Arethusa glanced down for an arm proffered for her to take. Seeing none and not wanting to embarrass her kind escort, she merely gave the eyeballs an affable nod. “One hates to be thought snobbish, but didn’t you find that scurvy pack of tycoons and magnates Mr Snarf foisted upon us a trifle infra dig?”

“Hell, yes. Mangiest bunch o’ flea-bitten coyotes I ever run into, an’ that’s sayin’ some. Where was you plannin’ to go, ma’am? If you’d like to hop along home an’ loosen your corsets, I could manifest on over to Charlie Henbit’s place an’ pass the word that you ain’t been abducted.”

“Thank you, but why don’t we go there together? Any fears about my wellbeing will be more quickly allayed if they see me in the flesh. Furthermore, we might talk Dittany into making us a pot of tea. With, perchance, cookies.

Spurred by the thought of cookies, Arethusa strode forward with verve and purpose. Hiram, of course, had no trouble keeping up with her since all he had to do was glide. He could have manifested himself a pair of feet but perhaps it hadn’t seemed worth the bother. He probably figured Arethusa wouldn’t notice one way or the other, as in fact she didn’t. She was much too involved in planning the earful she intended to give Andrew McNaster on the subject of Hedrick Snarf the next time he telephoned from Hollywood to remind her that when he leered at some gorgeous movie actress in a suave and sinister fashion, his leer was really for her. It occurred to Arethusa that Andrew hadn’t been calling lately with the same monotonous regularity as he’d done before he’d found so many other younger beauties to leer at. She wavered for a moment between a vague perturbation as to whether or not she’d heard from him this week and a somewhat less vague hope that one of these days he might quit calling altogether.

Which would not solve the problem of how to cope with the incompetent Snarf. She might even have to telephone Andrew herself, if she could remember where she’d put his telephone number. Perhaps it would be better to write a letter. The thought of writing led inevitably to musings upon Sir Percy and Lady Ermintrude. Hence it was from a deep rosy-brown study that Arethusa was aroused by a tumult reminiscent of that other tumult she’d so recently escaped from, except that here she could detect no sounds of smashing plates or squishing food. It was Hiram who made the inevitable inquiry.

“Great balls o’ fire! What the jeezledy blanketyblank’s goin’ on over there?”

Arethusa cocked her head, listened with full attention for about half a minute, then gave the only reasonable explanation. “Offhand, I surmise that Ethel has cornered some creature of the night. A fruit-eating bat, perchance, or a stray lerot. Or are lerots diurnal?”

Without waiting for an answer, she upped the pace to a quick trot. When they got to the corner of Apple wood Avenue, they could see that every light in Dittany and Osbert’s house was blazing. Ethel was just inside the door, still emitting ungodly sounds. Zilla Trott was standing on the stoop brandishing, of all things, an old-fashioned wire carpet beater. She looked ready to go on the warpath but seemed nonplussed as to which warpath she should take.

“Gadzooks,” panted Arethusa, “wherefor the tumult?

Can’t you shut that creature up? What’s happened to Dittany?”

“Shut up, Ethel,” said Zilla, taking first things first as was her wont.

Obliging animal that she was, Ethel shut. It being now possible to make oneself heard without screaming, Zilla explained. “Dittany’s trying to get the twins quietened down. Ethel woke them up and scared them half to death, poor mites.”

“But why? Me thought Ethel was devoted to the twins.”

“She is, that’s why she was barking. She was trying to protect them from the Peeping torn.”

“Stap my garters!” cried Arethusa. “You mean he was here? Did you see him?”

Zilla shook her head. “I’m not sure. I saw something, at any rate. It was just after Sergeant MacVicar called about the riot. Osbert whizzed off and Dittany and I started picking up the supper dishes. Then we noticed this black form outside the big window over the kitchen table and Ethel started braying like the Bull of Bashan and the twins started yelling and Dittany ran up to stand guard over them. I grabbed the first weapon that came to hand-“

“Weapon? A carpet beater?”

“Well, sure, why not? I wasn’t aiming to murder the rogue, I just wanted to get in a few licks and teach him some manners. But he got away, don’t ask me how. I’ve always thought I was fairly spry on my pins.”

Hiram Jellyby’s floating eyeballs flashed brilliant scarlet. “Godfrey mighty, woman, don’t you know no better?

You could o’ been kilt! Which way did the bugger go?”

“If I knew that,” Zilla snorted, “do you think I’d still be standing here?”

“If you had a lick o’ sense, you’d be home in your own kitchen where you belong. But that’s a woman for you.

Runnin’ around like a hen with its head cut off, lookin’ for some bugger that’s hidin’ in the bushes waitin’ for you to come by so’s he can stick a knife in you, like as not.”

“Horsefeathers! I’d like to see him try.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t. You two females get yourselves safe inside while I scout around a little. He won’t see me in the dark.”

“Like fun he won’t. Your eyes are lit up like a pair of bicycle lamps.”

“So he’ll think I’m a pair o’ bicycles. Who cares? Zilla, you better make Miz Arethusa here a cup o’ tea. She’s havin’ a fit o’ the weewaws.”

“I am not!” Arethusa was quick to spurn the imputation that she was showing the white feather, though she remembered just in time to be gracious about it. “Thanks to your kind offices, sir, my mind is quite at ease. I should, however, relish a cup of tea since that Snarf creature reneged on his offer of dinner and I was forced to make a meager supper of leftover hors d’oeuvres. We might also think in terms of cookies, if Dittany can leave the infants long enough to set them out. One might further consider the soothing effect of a few doggie bones on Ethel. She’s about to erupt again, and I must confess I find that Wagnerian woo-woo of hers somewhat grating on the nerves.”

“Good thought. I’ll get some.”

Not stopping to read the ingredients on the package and get mad about the lack of essential vitamins and minerals, Zilla fetched forth a handful of dog biscuits. Taking this as a signal that her duty was done, Ethel graciously accepted the offering and began to munch. Hiram dimmed his eyeballs and set off on the hunt. Since there really didn’t seem to be much else left to do, the two women went inside and put on the teakettle.

No sound of infant wails could be heard from above, it wasn’t long before Dittany came down. Seeing that Arethusa had managed to find the cookies without aid, she got straight to the nitty-gritty.

“Who started the riot?”

Arethusa’s reply was short and decisive. “Hedrick Snarf, of course.”

“But what the heck for?”

“Because he’s a blithering tomnoddy. Were these all the cookies you had?”

“Yes. Eat some bread and butter if you’re still hungry.

Come on, Arethusa, there must have been more to it than plain idiocy.”

“Well, the caviar was not Beluga and the champagne was improperly chilled. Or else,” Arethusa conceded after brief cogitation, “it might perchance have had something to do with Hiram Jellyby’s eyeballs. They do have a way of shooting magenta sparks that some of the guests appeared to find a trifle disconcerting. As for myself, I found Mr.

Jellyby quite the gentleman, as retired mule skinners go.

He appointed himself my protector, a gesture I thought quite courageous in a man of such unreliable physique.”

“For Pete’s sake forget the manners and get on with the mayhem,” Dittany sputtered. “What happened?”

“As I recall, first everybody ran out, then they all ran back in, then they started throwing things and pounding each other with champagne bottles, at which point I went out to the reception desk and telephoned Sergeant MacVicar. And through it all, that purple-footed jackanapes of a Snarf did nothing but whine and complain and bluster around. It was a source of deep and abiding satisfaction to me when Mr. Jellyby caught him so neatly on the nose with that first plate.”