Black Alibi Read Free

the underside of the awning without seeming to have any source, the lightweight table went over, and Kiki and chair with it, and the circle of interviewers scattered like chaff.
    Panic blazed up among the overcrowded tables like fire spreading through straw. There was a mass stampede to the rear, indoors, where doors could be closed protectively against it, even though they were largely glass. Women screamed, and this time not for effect, men shouted hoarsely, waiters’ trays went crashing down flat with tinny reverberations; tables and chairs toppled on all sides, glasses broke, those in tbe rear stumbled and fell to their hands and knees now and then in their efforts to get through ahead of those before them; finally, even one of the veranda door panes itself shivered and disintegrated in the melee. No one was quite sure where it was any more, nor what it was doing, and no one stopped to find out.
    Kiki, screaming berserkly, couldn’t extricate herself for a minute from the position she had fallen into. She was flat on her back, but the chair seat, upended against her, held her legs helplessly in air. She had a horrifying glimpse of an infuriated black head looming upon her, ears flat, jaws balefully open in spite of the inadequate muzzle that still clung to them, to reveal a set of needlepointed fangs.
    There was no time to do anything. A thick, blue-glass, mesh-protected siphon of seltzer had rolled unbroken toward her from somebody’s table. She snatched it up, hugged it to her chest, closed her eyes expiringly, and played it madly around her in all directions. Whether that saved her or the fear-maddened beast had had no intention of attacking her anyway and was only seeking its own escape, is one of those moot points that are never satisfactorily decided afterwards.
    Moments later, eyes still tightly shuttered to avoid seeing what she could not escape from and the contents of the siphon beginning to ebb dangerously, she felt herself being hoisted upright again by helping hands that had come back belatedly to rescue her now that the acutest point of danger was past.
    “Where did it go?” she shuddered, opening her eyes and looking blankly around at the carnage on all sides of her.
    Brakes were screaming hectically out in the middle of the road. Somebody pointed. It had managed, almost miraculously, to breast the heavy evening traffic unharmed and get to the other side. She was just in time to see its loping black form, all the way across the Alameda, turn up into a threadlike little alley, a veritable crack between the buildings, that opened on that side, and disappear in the gloom.
    “How are you going to get it back, senorita?” somebody asked fatuously, fanning her with his hat while a restorative was held to her lips.
    Kiki flipped her hands violently downward, her face a mask of wreathed weeping. “I don’t want it back!” she screamed hysterically. “I don’t care if I never see it again! Look at the way I look!” She pawed helplessly at her disarrayed hair tumbling loosely down her shoulder. “Help me back to my car,” she sniffled after a moment or two. “I want to go home—”
    Two of the men assisted her falteringly out to the edge of the curb between them, and the Packard was brought up. Manning, fortunately for himself, was no longer in it; he had jumped out to give chase, along with a few of the bolder spirits in the crowd.
    Kiki flopped limply into the back seat, still weeping gently, or at least simmering in a resemblance to weeping, into a handkerchief held just under her mouth. For once she was not putting on any act; her nervous system had just received a bad shock, and she felt the way she was acting.
    To complete the catastrophic misadventure, the main body of the crowd, as it ebbed back amidst the littered debris of the café terrace, had turned definitely unfriendly toward her, seeming to hold her personally responsible for ruining its aperitif hour. Hisses and boos could plainly be