Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane Read Online Free PDF

who has just seen St. Francis in a Park Avenue penthouse. Then she belched unequivocally, snapping her eyes into focus. “Yes, the inmates! ” she declared. “The inmates. Of course.” Once more she fumbled through papers, knocking an ornamental Buddha and an ashtray to the floor. At last, flushed and triumphant, like Venus hotly rising, she came up with the sought-for document. As prepared by Miss Mawr, it was a typewritten list of grievances adumbrating, at length, certain acts of classic outrage that had been perpetrated against the school by the madcap inmates of a mysterious United States Air Force installation which, as had already been vividly demonstrated, was literally but a stone’s throw away and set apart only by a wall.
    The lofty turrets of the mansion commanded a conqueror’s view of the school, so that among the list of charges were such stunning provocations as:
    (A) the hurling into the library window of two stunned frogs, an insulted and outraged bullfinch and a lox and cream cheese sandwich, the means of propulsion being a crossbow and there being appended to the payload an enigmatic printed note that stated simply: “POLICE BRUTALITY.”
    (B) the parachuting of a snake onto the girls’ volleyball court, the appended note reading, this time: “LOVE ME, LOVE MY ADDER.”
    (C) the loud and choral chanting of all but the last line of various obscene limericks during “Parents’ Day” ceremonies, a phenomenon artfully capped by a sudden barrage of flying jockstraps during the serving of tea on the lawn. The inmates had also posted a sign, discernible from the lawn, on a mansion turret, reading: “Consuelo Endicott has crabs!”
    (D) numerous telephone calls to resident members of the school staff during the dead of night, with only heavy breathing heard from the other end of the line, although once a voice reportedly said, “Repent!” While on still another occasion the anonymous caller stated simply, “Varicose veins!” and promptly hung up.
    (E) heavy mailings to the staff of Rosicrucian literature, a wondrously inscrutable venture that was followed, hard upon, by the arrival on the campus of proselytizing ambassadors of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mendicants for Christ, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Fifteenth Church of Christ Cyclotron, a local Baptist church and one bewildered Millerite. All of them claimed to be there at the request of Miss Endicott and were difficult to dispose of, especially the Witnesses, who had come equipped with a phonograph and records, and had obstinately refused to leave until the records were horribly smashed by a sturdy Miss Klutz, who taught the girls at the school gymnastics and happened to be a Catholic.
    There had been more, much more: “Innumerable acts of audacity too numerous to enumerate,” as Miss Mawr had once expressed it. Mawr had put it to the Founder and asked that she deal with it, knowing that it was hopeless. The Founder dealt with nothing. She was content with having founded. For six full days she had labored, and now was fixed, like a moth in jade, in an endless seventh day: perpetually resting. The rest she left to Mawr and to Mawr’s various predecessors.
    “Oh dear, oh dear,” sighed Miss Endicott, smoothing the rumpled list as she fidgeted like a blue jay waiting its turn to attack Alfred Hitchcock. “These charges, Miss Mawr…”
    “What shall we do, Madame Founder?”
    “Do? Yes, do. What shall we ever, ever do!”
    “I thought you’d decided, Madame Founder. I thought that was why you’d sent for me.”
    “Yes, of course I sent for you.”
    “Yes.”
    “What are ‘crabs’?”
    The silence that ensued had an airless, lunar quality; and through the window, from the tennis court, floated a faint and faraway cry that sounded like “Score.”
    “They are vermin,” said Miss Mawr.
    “Vermin?”
    “Vermin. Parasitic vermin.”
    “Not salty things that scuttle?”
    “No,” said Mawr, expressionless. “‘Crab’ is a