Black Alibi Read Free Page B

there right now is where they’re looking for it.”
    “I know, somebody told me,” Cardozo said disgruntledly. “Somebody must have done something to it to get it started off like that. I told you not to let it get mauled around too much. I thought you said you were going to be right with it, the whole time she had it out with her.” He actually seemed peeved at losing the thing, as though he had grown attached to it.
    “I wasn’t more than two car lengths away,” Manning answered heatedly, “and even then I couldn’t get over to her in time to stop it! I saw what it did. It took a flying leap over her body; the only thing that saved her was she had a bottle of charged water in her hands and squirted some at it. I thought you said it was so tame and harmless, there was nothing to worry about! It would have been a fine thing if it had clawed her up, wouldn’t it?”
    “It was perfectly docile the whole time we had it out at the estancia . The cook’s kid used to go right in the pen and play with it by the hour.”
    “When, two months ago?” Manning said bitterly. “Maybe it was growing up then. It sure came of age tonight!” He cut the discussion short, it being largely a spilt-milk matter by now. “Come on, there’s no use standing here wrangling about it. I came down here to get you, because I thought you might be a help in getting it back.”
    “I’ve got a riata here in the back of the truck I was going to tie it up with on the trip back,” Cardozo assented. “I’ll bring it along, it might come in handy.”
    “It disappeared in there somewhere,” Manning told him, as they made their way back to the hubbub on foot. “Where d’you think it lit to?”
    “To know that, one would have to be a jaguar,” was the ranchman’s dry answer.
    When they returned, order and organization were rapidly being brought out of the chaos. Order, but not any jaguar. The three gendarmes had already become five, and the five in no time at all became seven. Next a lieutenant of police arrived to take charge of this safari on city streets. Next, even one of the municipal fire trucks showed up; but this solely so that the beam of its highpowered searchlight, the strongest available on any piece of apparatus, could be trained into the alley to show them what they were doing. It lit it up with a strange pale blueness, making the weird affair seem even weirder. Finally—but this last of all and not for long hours yet—the curator of the zoo was sent for, to give technical advice and make suggestions, he presumably being an expert in such matters.
    The obvious things were done first. The public at large was cleared out of the alley, with a great flourishing of police batons and repeated warnings of: “Move back, now. Nobody allowed in here, it’s dangerous. It may suddenly reappear when least expected and attack.” The majority of them needed no second urging. There was a confused milling about for a few moments, and then the alley was clear. Ropes were then stretched across it at both ends, to keep it that way.
    The next step was a wholesale ordering out of all inmates who lived along it, for a house-to-house search was impending. Again the order didn’t have to be repeated. There was a panicky mass exodus from the disreputable warrens all along it, with bird cages, cooking utensils, and even potted plants.
    These people were questioned personally by the police lieutenant as they were filed through. For the most part fruitlessly. There was no single case in which anyone had seen where it went . It had flashed through so suddenly that they all arrived at their windows too late; the clamor of the crowd in its wake was what had drawn them to look out, not any sound the beast had made. Two or three were found who admitted they had seen it coming in the distance—although they hadn’t known it for what it was, had taken it in the gloom for a large, rabid black dog. But even these were no help, though they had been right