Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

“And you mustn’t breathe it to a soul!” she ended, beaming. “That is, not before the announcement — I think we’ll have that with the salad — people never pay very much attention to salad—”

“Breathe what, Aunt Emily?” said Tommy, confused.

“The Princess, darling — the dear Princess and Monsieur Tibault — they just got engaged this afternoon, dear things! Isn’t it fascinating?”

“Yeah,” said Tommy, and started to walk blindly through the nearest door. His aunt restrained him.

“Not there, dear — not in the library. You can congratulate them later. They’re just having a sweet little moment alone there now—” And she turned away to harry the butler, leaving Tommy stunned.

But his chin came up after a moment. He wasn’t beaten yet.

“Strange, isn’t it, how often fact copies fiction?” he repeated to himself in dull mnemonics, and, as he did so, he shook his fist at the library door.

Mrs. Dingle was wrong, as usual. The Princess and M. Tibault were not in the library — they were in the conservatory, as Tommy discovered when he wandered aimlessly past the glass doors.

He didn’t mean to look, and after a second he turned away. But that second was enough.

Tibault was seated in a chair and she was crouched on a stool at his side, while his hand, softly, smoothly, stroked her brown hair. Black cat and Siamese kitten. Her face was hidden from Tommy, but he could see Tibault’s face. And he could hear.

They were not talking, but there was a sound between them. A warm and contented sound like the murmur of giant bees in a hollow tree — a golden, musical rumble, deep-throated, that came from Tibault’s lips and was answered by hers — a golden purr.

Tommy found himself back in the drawingroom, shaking hands with Mrs. Culverin, who said, frankly, that she had seldom seen him look so pale.

The first two courses of the dinner passed Tommy like dreams, but Mrs. Dingle’s cellar was notable, and by the middle of the meat course, he began to come to himself. He had only one resolve now.

For the next few moments he tried desperately to break into the conversation, but Mrs. Dingle was talking, and even Gabriel will have a time interrupting Mrs. Dingle. At last, though, she paused for breath and Tommy saw his chance.

“Speaking of that,” said Tommy, piercingly, without knowing in the least what he was referring to, “Speaking of that—”

“As I was saying,” said Professor Tatto. But Tommy would not yield. The plates were being taken away. It was time for salad.

“Speaking of that,” he said again, so loudly and strangely that Mrs. Culverin jumped and an awkward hush fell over the table. “Strange, isn’t it, how often fact copies fiction?” There, he was started. His voice rose even higher. “Why, only to-day I was strolling through—” and, word for word, he repeated his lesson. He could see Tibault’s eyes glowing at him, as he described the funeral. He could see the Princess, tense.

He could not have said what he had expected might happen when he came to the end. But it was not bored silence, everywhere, to be followed by Mrs. Dingle’s acrid, “Well, Tommy, is that quite all?”

He slumped back in his chair, sick at heart. He was a fool and his last resource had failed. Dimly he heard his aunt’s voice, saying, “Well, then—” and realized that she was about to make the fatal announcement.

But just then Monsieur Tibault spoke.

“One moment, Mrs. Dingle,” he said, with extreme politeness, and she was silent. He turned to Tommy.

“You are — positive, I suppose, of what you saw this afternoon, Brooks?” he said, in tones of light mockery.

“Absolutely,” said Tommy sullenly. “Do you think I’d—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Monsieur Tibault waved the implication aside, “but — such an interesting story — one likes to be sure of the details — and, of course, you are sure — quite sure — that the kind of crown you describe was on the coffin?”

“Of course,” said Tommy, wondering, “but—”

“Then I’m the King of the Cats!” cried Monsieur Tibault in a voice of thunder, and, even as he cried it, the house-fights blinked — there was the soft thud of an explosion that seemed muffled in cotton-wool from the minstrel gallery — and the scene was fit for a second by an obliterating and painful burst of fight that vanished in an instant and was succeeded by heavy, blinding clouds of white, pungent smoke.

“Oh, those horrid photographers,” came Mrs. Dingle’s voice in a melodious wail. “I told them not to take the flashlight picture till dinner was over, and now they’ve taken it just as I was nibbling lettuce!”

Some one tittered a little nervously. Some one coughed. Then, gradually the veils of smoke dislimned and the green-and-black spots in front of Tommy’s eyes died away.

They were blinking at each other like people who have just come out of a cave into brilliant sun. Even yet their eyes stung with the fierceness of that abrupt illumination and Tommy found it hard to make out the faces across the table from him.