Pocketing the shilling I handed him, the porter and his companion departed, and seemed pleased at the opportunity. I rather wondered that they spared me the garrulity I might have expected of their efforts to fritter away ten minutes of their employer’s time, delaying their return to the shop and further duty.
"Oh, Val, what a perfectly marvelous table! I never saw anything like it"
If I'd walked in with the pagoda of Shwei-dagon, she couldn't have been more enthusiastic. Her sister Annie, who was visiting us at the time, was equally pleased, though not quite so frenzied in her approval. I thoroughly enjoyed their comments on the table, feeling very much the conquistador displaying the plunder of a new world; and after the first five minutes of their fanfare of ecstasy, I wondered how I had ever in the presence of such beauty contrived to beat the price down five guineas . . . about twenty-five dollars, real money. And thus I gave little thought to the strange conduct of Goole, our collie, who, as the porters entered with the table, growled, and fled from the room, whining.
"'Vonne, it's lovely . . . and so odd," remarked Annie, as Yvonne with a final caress broke away from me and set to work dusting the lustrous tabletop. "It's positively uncanny how anything of wood can be so lifelike. I’m almost afraid to turn my back to it."
"And Val calls me temperamental!" jeered Yvonne.
But it does remind me of some beast of prey," insisted Annie. "Why, even the wood has leopard markings"
"Stupid!" I protested; "leopards are spotted, not striped."
And then for the first time I noted that the top, when viewed from a certain angle, did have the faintest, shadowy suggestion of tiger stripes which very oddly gave it the appearance of having a slightly convex surface.
"You two will be the death of me!" laughed Yvonne. "Zebras are just as striped, and they're nothing but sport-model jackasses!"
And that settled the discussion.
That night, some time after we had gone to bed, Yvonne woke me . . . or thought she did.
"Did you hear that?" she whispered.
I had been hearing it for some time, and for some time had been wondering whether an unreasonable amount of Paul Whitby's Bacardi punch and three Patargas Coronas in a row could have made me hear that scarcely perceptible but persistent purring which had gradually become a dull thump-thump.
"Do I hear what?" I contrived to mutter sleepily.
"That awful thumping."
And Yvonne's nails sank into my arm, waking me very thoroughly. It was all rather disturbing. Things were becoming involved: for Yvonne hadn't smoked even one of those Patargas, and scarcely tasted that potent, aromatic punch; and she too was hearing what had now become the heavy tramping of a wooden colossus striving to tread stealthily across strange territory.
"Burglars!” she gasped. "Do go to the 'phone and call the police."
"Police be damned! By the time the operator makes the connection and I manage to say 'Are you there?' in the proper mumble, I'll be slugged and the house looted. Anyway, I think it's a pile-driver working on that building just around the corner"
"You would!" sneered Yvonne. "Oh"
Good Lord! I couldn't laugh that off: from the drawing-room came the sound of a regiment of cavalry
