The Second Cat Megapack. George Zebrowski

and alone! Knowing, as he did, Madame Jolicœur’s habitual disposition toward the convenances—willingly to be boiled in oil rather than in the smallest particular to abrade them—he perceived that only two explanations of the situation were possible: either she had lapsed of a sudden into madness; or—the thought was petrifying—the Major Gontard had won out in his French campaigning on his known conquering African lines. The cheerfully sane tone of the lady’s voice forbade him to clutch at the poor solace to be found in the first alternative—and so forced him to accept the second. Yielding for a moment to his emotions, the death-whiteness of his bald head taking on a still deathlier pallor, Monsieur Peloux buried his face in his hands and groaned.

      In that moment of his obscured perception a little black personage trotted into the salon on soundless paws. Quite possibly, in his then overwrought condition, had Monsieur Peloux seen this personage enter he would have shrieked—in the confident belief that before him was a cat ghost! Pointedly, it was not a ghost. It was the happy little Shah de Perse himself—all a-frisk with the joy of his blessed home-coming and very much alive! Knowing, as I do, many of the mysterious ways of little cat souls, I even venture to believe that his overbubbling gladness largely was due to his sympathetic perception of the gladness that his home-coming had brought to two human hearts.

      Certainly, all through that long dinner the owners of those hearts had done their best, by their pettings and their pamperings of him, to make him a participant in their deep happiness; and he, gratefully respondent, had made his affectionate thankings by going through all of his repertory of tricks—with one exception—again and again. Naturally, his great trick, while unexhibited, repeatedly had been referred to. Blushing delightfully, Madame Jolicœur had told about the nightcap that was a necessary part of it; and had promised—blushing still more delightfully—that at some time, in the very remote future, the Major should see it performed. For my own part, because of my knowledge of little cat souls, I am persuaded that the Shah de Perse, while missing the details of this love-laughing talk, did get into his head the general trend of it; and therefore did trot on in advance into the salon with his little cat mind full of the notion that Madame Jolicœur immediately would follow him—to seat herself, duly nightcapped, book in hand, in signal for their game of surprises to begin.

      Unconscious of the presence of the Shah de Perse, tortured by the gay tones of the approaching voices, clutching his book vengefully as though it were a throat, his bald head beaded with the sweat of agony and the pallor of it intensified by his poignant emotion, Monsieur Peloux sat rigid in Madame Jolicœur’s chair!

      * * * *

      “It is declared,” said Monsieur Brisson, addressing himself to Madame Jouval, for whom he was in the act of preparing what was spoken of between them as “the tonic,” a courteous euphuism, “that that villain Notary, aided by a bandit hired to his assistance, was engaged in administering poison to the cat; and that the brave animal, freeing itself from the bandit’s holdings, tore to destruction the whole of his bald head—and then triumphantly escaped to its home!”

      “A sight to see is that head of his!” replied Madame Jouval. “So swathed is it in bandages, that the turban of the Grand Turk is less!” Madame Jouval spoke in tones of satisfaction that were of reason—already she had held conferences with Madame Jolicœur in regard to the trousseau.

      “And all,” continued Monsieur Brisson, with rancor, “because of his jealousies of the cat’s place in Madame Jolicœur’s affections—the affections which he so hopelessly hoped, forgetful of his own repulsiveness, to win for himself!”

      “Ah, she has done well, that dear lady,” said Madame Jouval warmly. “As between the Notary—repulsive, as Monsieur justly terms him—and the charming Major, her instincts rightly have directed her. To her worthy cat, who aided in her choosing, she has reason to be grateful. Now her cruelly wounded heart will find solace. That she should wed again, and happily, was Heaven’s will.”

      “It was the will of the baggage herself!” declared Monsieur Brisson with bitterness. “Hardly had she put on her travesty of a mourning than she began her oglings of whole armies of men!”

      Aside from having confected with her own hands the mourning to which Monsieur Brisson referred so disparagingly, Madame Jouval was not one to hear calmly the ascription of the term baggage—the word has not lost in its native French, as it has lost in its naturalized English, its original epithetical intensity—to a patroness from whom she was in the very article of receiving an order for an exceptionally rich trousseau. Naturally, she bristled. “Monsieur must admit at least,” she said sharply, “that her oglings did not come in his direction;” and with an irritatingly smooth sweetness added: “As to the dealings of Monsieur Peloux with the cat, Monsieur doubtless speaks with an assured knowledge. Remembering, as we all do, the affair of the unhappy old woman, it is easy to perceive that to Monsieur, above all others, anyone in need of poisonings would come!”

      The thrust was so keen that for the moment Monsieur Brisson met it only with a savage glare. Then the bottle that he handed to Madame Jouval inspired him with an answer. “Madame is in error,” he said with politeness. “For poisons it is possible to go variously elsewhere—as, for example, to Madame’s tongue.” Had he stopped with that retort courteous, but also searching, he would have done well. He did ill by adding to it the retort brutal: “But that old women of necessity come to me for their hair-dyes is another matter. That much I grant to Madame with all good will.”

      Admirably restraining herself, Madame Jouval replied in tones of sympathy: “Monsieur receives my commiserations in his misfortunes.” Losing a large part of her restraint, she continued, her eyes glittering: “Yet Monsieur’s temperament clearly is over-sanguine. It is not less than a miracle of absurdity that he imagined: that he, weighted down with his infamous murderings of scores of innocent old women, had even a chance the most meager of realizing his ridiculous aspirations of Madame Jolicœur’s hand!” Snatching up her bottle and making for the door, without any restraint whatever she added: “Monsieur and his aspirations are a tragedy of stupidity—and equally are abounding in all the materials for a farce at the Palais de Cristal!”

      Monsieur Brisson was cut off from opportunity to reply to this outburst by Madame Jouval’s abrupt departure. His loss of opportunity had its advantages. An adequate reply to her discharge of such a volley of home truths would have been difficult to frame.

      * * * *

      In the Vic bakery, between Madame Vic and Monsieur Fromagin, a discussion was in hand akin to that carried on between Monsieur Brisson and Madame Jouval—but marked with a somewhat nearer approach to accuracy in detail. Being sequent to the settlement of Monsieur Fromagin’s monthly bill—always a matter of nettling dispute—it naturally tended to develop its own asperities.

      “They say,” observed Monsieur Fromagin, “that the cat—it was among his many tricks—had the habitude to jump on Madame Jolicœur’s head when, for that purpose, she covered it with a night-cap. The use of the cat’s claws on such a covering, and, also, her hair being very abundant—”

      “Very abundant!” interjected Madame Vic; and added: “She, she is of a richness to buy wigs by the scores!”

      “It was his custom, I say,” continued Monsieur Fromagin with insistence, “to steady himself after his leap by using lightly his claws. His illusion in regard to the bald head of the Notary, it would seem, led to the catastrophe. Using his claws at first lightly, according to his habit, he went on to use them with a truly savage energy—when he found himself as on ice on that slippery eminence and verging to a fall.”

      “They say that his scalp was peeled away in strips and strings!” said Madame Vic. “And all the while that woman and that reprobate of a Major standing by in shrieks and roars of laughter—never raising a hand to save him from the beast’s ferocities! The poor man has my sympathies. He, at least, in all his doings—I do not for a moment believe the story that he caused the cat to be stolen—observed rigidly the convenances: so recklessly shattered by Madame Jolicœur in her most compromising dinner with the Major alone!”

      “But Madame forgets that their dinner was in celebration of their betrothal—following