The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (17 page)

“Galloping longhorns, it’s a cobra!” yelled Osbert. “Dittany, stay back! Ethel! Ethel, come here. Come on, old girl! Come on!”

No longer a raging, snarling demon-dog, Ethel bounded back to them, ears flapping, tail churning, delighted with herself as well she had reason to be.

“She saved his life,” Dittany marveled. “Ethel risked her own life to save Carolus Bledsoe’s.”

“I doubt if Ethel read the card, dear.” Osbert had one arm around Dittany and the other around their faithful friend. “Ethel, old pard, I don’t know how to-Dittany darling, have we a really big steak in the house?”

“No, but we’ll get you one, Ethel.” Dittany was sniffling into the thick black fur. “We’ll get you anything you want, forever and ever.

Oh Ethel, what if the cobra had bitten you? Osbert, what are we going to do about that thing? We can’t leave it crawling around loose.”

“I don’t think any snake’s going to crawl far in this weather, dearest,” he reassured her. “Look, it’s already got its hood down, it’D be torpid in a minute. So will we if we stay out here any longer without our coats. Come on back in the house before you catch pneumonia.”

“Ethel wouldn’t let a germ get near us,” Dittany laughed, rubbing away her tears on Osbert’s sleeve. “Would you, old buddy? Are you quite sure that cobra’s not about to start chasing us, Osbert?”

“What it’s about to do is freeze to death if it doesn’t find a place to get warm pretty soon. I see a bunch of tissue paper in what’s left of that box, which would have given it some insulation against the cold. Probably not quite enough, though, which was a lucky break for us. If it were warm it would have reacted a darn sight faster.”

The cobra would have warmed up fast enough once it got inside the house. Dittany realized she was shivering. “Darling, don’t you find this totally unbelievable?”

“Oh, I don’t know, dear. I shouldn’t say a cobra was any more unbelievable than the tarantula that showed up on Carolus’s coat at the airport.”

“But that came out of Arethusa’s corsage. Didn’t it?”

“Darling, Aunt Arethusa must have been toting that mess of shrubbery around for hours before we met her. Even she’d have had a hard time not to notice a spider the size of a kitten somewhere along the way.”

“Then it must have been in the bouquet Andy McNaster-darling, Andy wouldn’t have done a thing like that. Would he?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, darling. People were coming and going all the time, you know. We weren’t paying any attention to them because we were talking among ourselves. It could have been anybody. Come on, it’s wiggling. Let’s get away from here.”

Safe inside the door, Osbert turned around for a last look at the deadly reptile. It was flat on the snow now, trying to crawl away but getting no traction on the cold, slippery surface. Loathesome as the snake was, he felt a twinge of pity.

“What a rotten thing to do. Darling, I think I’ll put on my high boots and heavy gloves and see if I can rig a snare at the end of my fishing pole. We can’t just let it die out there.”

“It would have let Ethel die,” said Dittany soberly. “But after all, it’s only a snake. I don’t suppose it understands how we feel about her. I’ll go find one of those heavy cardboard boxes Mum bought the time she was going to get organized. Then I’ll put on my own boots and come with you.”

“No, darling, I’m afraid it would be too traumatic for Ethel if we both went. You’d better stay here and be ready to administer first aid if she swoons.”

Ethel’s was, after all, the greater need. “All right, darling,” Dittany conceded, “but I move we give the cobra a few minutes’ more refrigerating time before you go back out there.”

As things turned out, capturing the cobra was no great feat. By the time Osbert had rigged a wire noose on the end of his fly rod and Dittany had got him togged out in a manner that suggested the White Knight’s safeguards against the bites of sharks, the cobra was so thoroughly refrigerated that Osbert could simply have picked it up by the tail and tossed it into the box. However, he carried out the operation by the book, then set the box down cellar next to the furnace with a cord around the middle and a brick on top in case the cobra should revive feeling frisky.

“Maybe we should have set a saucer of milk inside,” Dittany fretted. “The poor thing will be hungry when it thaws out.”

“Are you quite sure cobras drink milk, dear?” Osbert was having a tough time getting out of his protective gear, and spoke in short grunts.

“That’s what the villain fed the snake in The Speckled Band.”

“Possibly his was a milk snake. Would you mind helping me off with these boots? They’re so full of socks I can’t budge them.”

“Not at all, dear,” Dittany replied, suiting the action to the word.

“That third pair was probably redundant, but I wasn’t about to take any chances of his biting you in the calf. Or her, as the case may be.

Darling, has it occurred to you that Roger Munson’s going to be awfully miffed because we didn’t let him tell us how to catch the cobra?”

“Actually, it hadn’t. What does occur to me is that we’ve got to find out pronto who left that box. Would you mind calling the Binkles and asking them if they saw a messenger stop here?”

“I’ll call but they won’t be home. They both sing in the choir at St.

Agapantha’s.”

“One of them could have come down with laryngitis,” Osbert pointed out.

Evidently neither of them had; Dittany got no answer. That was bad. At this end of Applewood Avenue, there were only themselves and the Binkles. The road, which was no avenue at all, petered out into a cul-de-sac connecting only with Cat Alley, the lane that rambled across to the Enchanted Mountain and trickled up and over into the country road on the opposite side of what was really no mountain, either, but only a fair-sized hill.

Cat Alley hadn’t been plowed all winter but the young bloods of Lobelia Falls had done plenty of skiing, sliding, and snowmobiling on it. By now the snow was packed down so hard that a four-wheeldrive vehicle could probably get through from the other end without much trouble. As could a skier or a snowmobiler, of course. The hitch there was that the Monks’ kitchen windows gave them clear views of the lane and the mountain, and Osbert and Dittany had been in the kitchen some little while when the doorbell rang.

Granted, they hadn’t been concentrating on the scenery but they could hardly have missed anybody approaching the house.

“I can’t believe that messenger came the back way,” said Osbert.

“We’d surely have seen him. Or her.”

“But we didn’t hear a car in the road,” Dittany argued.

“The messenger could have parked at the corner and walked in.

Or ridden a bike. Or a horse with muffled feet. Hooves, I mean,”

Osbert amended, as he was a stickler for technical equine accuracy.

“Darling, why don’t you phone around to a few of the neighbors and see whether anybody saw anything? I’d better check on Carolus.”

“You’re not intending to question him?”

“Oh no, that would hardly be according to protocol. We have to wait for the sheriff.”

“What sheriff?”

Osbert blushed a little. “I mean Sergeant Mac Vicar. I like to think of him as the sheriff. You understand, don’t you, dear?”

“Of course, dearest. You’re not going to get to brooding on distant mesas up there and forget to bring down the tray, are you?”

“Nary a brood, pardner. I wonder whether Carolus would like some of my Max Brands to read.”

“Why don’t you give him that new book of Arethusa’s instead?”

Dittany suggested. “Perfidy in a Peruke ought to send him galloping back to Wilhedra’s waiting arms, though what she wants of him is beyond me.”

She gave Osbert a bon voyage kiss to help him upstairs and went to the telephone. Three numbers later, she was still dialing in vain.

Everybody and his grandfather must have gone to church. Was this a sudden mass craving for divine guidance, she wondered cynically, or an urge to buttonhole fellow congregants after the services and exchange views on the play, the Architrave’s acquisition of the ThorbisherFreep collection, and Carolus Bledsoe’s middle toe?

Why the heck couldn’t a few of them have stayed home and peeked through the front room curtains? Dittany gave up after the sixth try and went to see what she could scrape together for dinner assuming she got stuck with having to cook one.

She didn’t. Arethusa and her entourage rolled in about half past two burbling about the marvelous pizza they’d stopped for at a place Andy knew and insisting they couldn’t possibly eat another bite. Unless Dittany had been planning to offer them tea and some of that leftover coffee cake, Arethusa added thoughtfully. Dittany replied with relief that she had in fact been about to do just that, and sat them down around the kitchen table because she was darned if she’d mess up the dining room twice in one day.

It didn’t take long to discover that Arethusa had another fish in her net. Archie was keeping his eyes fixed on her as if he were Coventry Patmore gestating some sentimental line like, “Ah, would I were that blob of raspberry jelly upon thin alabaster cheek.”

Andy was looking similarly moonstruck, though that was nothing to write home about, and Carolus Bledsoe was no doubt wondering why Arethusa wasn’t up there cheering his bed of pain instead of down here gobbling up everything edible. Only Daniel seemed immune to her allure. His full attention was still fixed upon Andrew McNaster.

Dittany, having refilled the teapot and got its cosy tugged firmly down over its fat brown sides, fixed her own attention on Daniel.

She knew, of course, about the boy bees and the girl bees. She accepted the fact that boy bees sometimes preferred boy bees to girl bees, whereas girl bees might choose to buzz along with other girl bees to the total exclusion of boy bees. It was not her place to pass judgment on their proclivities even though she herself was firmly aligned with the boy bee-girl bee faction. But Daniel’s interest in Andy didn’t strike her as that of a boy bee getting up his nerve to invite another boy bee to join him at the next buttercup for a sip of nectar and maybe a little roll in the pollen. What the heck was Daniel up to?

Daniel was up to eating another slice of coffee cake, at any rate.

Dittany cut it for him and went on making tea-table conversation even as she pondered his odd behavior. She wasn’t able to get in much pondering time, however, as Sergeant Mac Vicar showed up on the dot of three in strict accordance with local protocol.

He’d changed into his customary uniform, which didn’t make him any less awe-inspiring a figure. He refused tea, to Dittany’s relief since Arethusa had by now pretty much cleared the table, and got straight to business.

“Deputy Monk, hae there been any new developments?”

Osbert swallowed the last of his own cake and made his brief report. “We’ve acquired a cobra.”

Whatever Sergeant MacVicar might have been expecting, it clearly was not a cobra. He actually went so far as to raise his eyebrows.

“Oh aye?”

“The box was addressed to Carolus Bledsoe,” Osbert amplified, “but Ethel wouldn’t let him have it.”

“Zounds,” cried Arethusa. “That dog takes entirely too much upon herself, in my considered opinion. Why should Carolus be deprived the solace of herpetological companionship at the whim of an ill-bred and quite possibly bogus canine?”

Dittany flew to her faithful friend’s defense. “Ethel was afraid the cobra would bite somebody, for Pete’s sake.”

“Mere pusillanimous conjecture. It’s probably quite an amiable cobra. Carolus could have whiled away his convalescence playing the flute for its enjoyment. Cobras are notable music lovers.”

“Cobras are deaf as fence posts,” Osbert contradicted. “They don’t hear those flutes the snake charmers tweetle at them. They weave back and forth pretending to dance, but what they’re really doing is trying to make up their minds where to bite the guy for waking them.”

“F faith? If the creatures are that fuzzy-minded, I can’t see where they offer any serious threat,” Arethusa retorted, licking jam off her fingers. “As far as I’m concerned, your cobra’s a mere tempest in a teapot.”

“If I might be permitted to get a worrd in edgewise,” Sergeant MacVicar remarked with ponderous dignity, “I’m still waiting for Deputy Monk to finish his reporrt.”

“Oh, all right, if you’re going to start gargling r’s at me.”

Arethusa lapsed into sullen silence, leaving Osbert the floor. His account of the cobra’s arrival was crisply delivered and variously received.

“Diabolical,” breathed Daniel, his sharp little dark eyes glistening-

“Trite and cliche,” sneered Archie.

The agent was all set to harangue the gathering on how many third, fourth, and fifth-rate novels he’d got stuck with reading in which venomous reptiles had been sent to unwitting victims, but Andy McNaster cut him off.

“What have you done with her?”

“Her who?” asked Osbert, startled by the intensity of Andy’s demand.

“Her. The cobra. Where is she?”

Osbert regarded his frantic interrogator narrowly. “How do you know it’s a she?”

Andy licked his lips. “I always think of a cobra as a she. I thought everybody did. They have that feminine grace about them, and they wear hoods. Fascinators, my grandma used to call them. Like I said, what have you done with her?”

“She’s down cellar in a box.” Osbert sounded somewhat bewildered, as well he might. “We put her next to the furnace to thaw out.”

“I must go to her.”

Andy leaped from his chair, raced into the pantry, raced out again, found the door that really did lead to the cellar, and galloped down the stairs. Osbert, Sergeant MacVicar, Daniel, and Archie galloped after him. Dittany was all set to gallop, too, but Arethusa snatched her back.

“Hold, wench. Who’s going to cook supper if that thing fangs you?”

“Unhand me, Arethusa.” Dittany wrenched free and stuck her head down the cellarway. “Osbert, you come straight back upstairs and get your extra socks on.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” Osbert called back. “We’re just going to lift the lid a tiny crack and peek in to see how she’s doing. Oh gosh, she doesn’t look-“