Leonidas sighed.
Then he sat back in his chair and slowly swung his pince-nez.
If Leslie Horn’s story were true, the only conclusion he could draw was absurd, too absurd to waste time brooding about until Miss Chard was found, and forced to fill in the gaps.
His own day, now that he considered it, led him to equally absurd conclusions. The brush man was genuine, but the refrigerator man— Cuff might know about that, possibly.
Leonidas half started to go into the kitchen and ask, and then he sat back heavily in his chair again.
The thought which had come to him out of the blue was so alarming that it stunned him. He closed his eyes and tried to think it out.
Tudbury’s Horse had admittedly come on the spur of the moment, but suppose that someone had deliberately applied the spur? Anyone who wanted the body of Medora Winthrop brought publicly to light could reasonably assume that Tudbury’s Horse would find her.
Leonidas toyed with the idea, and found it sound.
But, when that mad tea party came to an end, why had the police not been summoned? Why had the Fire Department been called? What was the reason for all this beating about the bush? Why was someone trying to harry them? What was going to happen next?
“Exactly!” Leonidas murmured to himself. “M yes. What, indeed?”
That was it, of course. Someone felt sufficiently safe and sure of themselves to want the body found. Someone was purposely harrying them. It was a part of the plan.
At last, Leonidas thought with satisfaction, the dynamo was turning, even if it turned in the wrong direction. At least it was whirling. It was all right for Lieutenant Haseltine to do his best thinking in a turmoil of action and crowds, in whizzing cars, or in rocket ships, or while misinformed mobs howled for his lifeblood. That was all right for fiction.
In fact, it was better to sit alone, in solitude, in isolation, and just think quietly.
Leonidas smiled, and opened his eyes.
The smile froze on his face.
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. Mum had a fit about this house, too.”
“Did she,” Leonidas said, “indeed?”
“Yes. Mum says it’s awful the way everyone’s made a camp ground out of it. She was talking with Judge Round just before we left—”
Leonidas
