Assignment in Tomorrow

by Anthology

  The editor was still far from convinced. “Good job of training——”

  “For a guy I used to respect, you certainly have the brain of a flea. Here—I don’t know your name,” he said to Wood. “What would you do if you had Moss here?”

  Wood snarled.

  “You’re going to tell us where to find him. I don’t know how, but you were smart enough to figure out a code, so you can figure out another way of communicating. Then you’ll tell us what happened.”

  It was Wood’s moment of supreme triumph. True, he didn’t have his body yet, but now it was only a matter of time. His joy at Gilroy’s words was violent enough to shake even the editor’s literal, unimaginative mind.

  “You still don’t believe it,” Gilroy accused.

  “How can I?” the editor cried plaintively. “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you as if it could be possible.”

  Gilroy probed in a pile of rubbish until he uncovered a short piece of wood. He quickly drew a single line of small alphabetical symbols. He threw the stick away, stepped back and flashed the light directly at the alphabet. “Now spell out what happened.”

  Wood sprang back and forth before the alphabet, stopping at the letters he required and indicating them by pointing his snout down.

  “T-a-l-b-o-t w-a-n-t-e-d a y-o-u-n-g h-e-a-l-t-h-y b-o-d-y M-o-s-s s-a-i-d h-e c-o-u-l-d g-i-v-e i-t t-o h-i-m——”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” the editor blurted.

  After that exclamation there was silence. Only the almost i inaudible padding of Wood’s paws on the soft ground, his excited panting, and the hoarse breathing of the men could be heard. But Wood had won!

  Gilroy sat at the typewriter in his apartment; Wood stood ) beside his chair and watched the swiftly leaping keys; but the editor stamped nervously up and down the floor.

  “I’ve wasted half the night,” he complained, “and if I print this story I’ll be canned. Why, damn it, Gilroy—— How do you think the public’ll take it if I can’t believe it myself?”

  “Hm-m-m,” Gilroy explained.

  “You’re sacrificing our job. You know that, don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t mean that much to me,” Gilroy said without glancing up. “Wood has to get back his body. He can’t do it unless we help him.”

  “Doesn’t that sound ridiculous to you? ‘He has to get back his body.’ Imagine what the other papers’ll do to that sentence!”

  Gilroy shifted impatiently. “They won’t see it,” he stated.

  “Then why in hell are you writing the story?” the editor asked, astounded. “Why don’t you want me to go back to the office?”

  “Quiet! I’ll be through in a minute.” He inserted another sheet of paper and his flying fingers covered it with black, accusing words. Wood’s mouth opened in a canine grin when Gilroy smiled down at him and nodded his head confidently. “You’re practically walking around on your own feet, pal.”

  Let’s go.”

  He flapped on his coat and carelessly dropped a battered hat on his craggy head. Wood braced himself to dart off. The editor lingered.

  “Where’re we going?” he asked cautiously.

  “To Moss, naturally, unless you can think of a better place.”

  Wood could not tolerate the thought of delay. He tugged at the leg of the editor’s pants.

  “You bet I can think of a better place. Hey, cut it out, Wood—I’m coming along. But, hell, Gilroy! It’s after ten. I haven’t done a thing. Have a heart and make it short.”

  With Gilroy hastening him by the arm and Wood dragging at his leg, the editor had to accompany them, though he continued his protests. At the door, however, he covered Wood while Gilroy hailed a taxi. When Gilroy signaled that the street was clear, he ran across the sidewalk with Wood bundled in his arms.

  Gilroy gave the address. At its sound, Wood’s mouth opened in a silent snarl. He was only a short distance from Moss, with two eloquent spokesmen to articulate his demands, and, if necessary, to mobilize public opinion for him! What could Moss do against that power?

  They rode up Seventh Avenue and along Central Park West. Only the editor felt that they were speeding. Gilroy and Wood fretted irritably at every stop signal.

  At Moss’s street, Gilroy cautioned the driver to proceed slowly. The surgeon’s house was guarded by two loitering black cars.

  “Let us out at the comer,” Gilroy said.

  They scurried into the entrance to a rooming house.

  “Now what?” the editor demanded. “We can’t fight past them.”

  “How about the back way, Wood?”

  Wood shook his head negatively. There was no entrance through the rear.

  “Then the only way is across the roofs,” Gilroy determined. He put his head out and scanned the buildings between them and Moss. “This one is six stories, the next two five, the one right next to Moss’s is six, and Moss’s is three. We’ll have to climb up and down fire escapes and get in through Moss’s roof. Ready?”

  “I suppose so,” the editor said fatalistically.

  Gilroy tried the door. It was locked. He chose a bell at random and rang it vigorously. There was a brief pause; then the tripper buzzed. He thrust open the door and burst up the stairs, four at a leap.

  “Who’s there?” a woman shouted down the stair well.

  They galloped past her. “Sorry, lady,” Gilroy called back. “We rang your bell by mistake.”

  She looked disappointed and rather frightened; but Gilroy anticipated her emotion. He smiled and gayly waved his hand j as he loped by.

  The roof door was locked with a stout hook that had rusted into its eye. Gilroy smashed it open with the heel of his palm. They broke out onto a tarred roof, chill and black in the overcast, threatening night.

  Wood and Gilroy discovered the fire escape leading to the next roof. They dashed for it. Gilroy tucked Wood under his left arm and swung himself over the anchored ladder.

  “This is insane!” the editor said hoarsely. “I’ve never done such a crazy thing in my life. Why can’t we be smart and call the cops?”

  “Yeah?” Gilroy sneered without stopping. “What’s your charge?”

  “Against Moss? Why——”

  “Think about it on the way.”

  Gilroy and Wood were on the next roof, waiting impatiently for the editor to descend. He came down quickly but his thoughts wandered.

  “You can charge him with what he did. He made a man into a dog.”

  “That would sound swell in the indictment. Forget it. Just walk lightly. This damned roof creaks and lets out a noise like a drum.”

  They advanced over the tarred sheets of metal. Beneath them, they could hear their occasionally heavy tread resound through hollow rooms. Wood’s claws tapped a rhythmic tattoo.

  They straddled over a low wall dividing the two buildings. Wood sniffed the air for enemies lurking behind chimneys, vents and doors. At instants of suspicion, Gilroy briefly flashed his light ahead. They climbed up a steel ladder to the six-story building adjoining Moss’s.

  “How about a kidnap charge?” the editor asked as they stared down over the wall at the roof of Moss’s building.

  “Please don’t annoy me. Wood’s body is in the observation ward at the hospital. How’re you going to prove that Moss kidnaped him?”

  The editor nodded in the gloom and searched for another legal charge. Gilroy splashed his light over Moss’s roof. It was unguarded.

  “Come on, Wood,” he said, inserting the flashlight in his belt. He picked up Wood under his left arm. In order to use his left hand in climbing, he had to squeeze Wood’s middle in a strangle hold.

  The only thing Wood was thankful for was that he could not look at the roof three stories below. Gilroy held him securely, tightly enough for his breath to struggle in whistling gasps. His throat knotted when Gilroy gashed his hand on a sharp sliver of dry paint scale.

  “It’s all right,” Gilroy hissed reassuringly. “We’re almost there.”

&
nbsp; Above them, he saw the editor clambering heavily down the insecurely bolted ladder. Between the anchoring plates it groaned and swayed away from the unclean brick wall. Rung by rung they descended warily, Gilroy clutching for each hold, Wood suspended in space and helpless—both feeling their hearts drop when the ladder jerked under their weight.

  Then Gilroy lowered his foot and found the solid roof beneath it. He grinned impetuously in the dark. Wood writhed out of his hold. The editor cursed his way down to them.

  He followed them to the rear fire escape. This time he offered to carry Wood down. Swinging out over the wall, Wood felt the editor’s muscles quiver. Wood had nothing but a miserable animal life to lose, and yet even he was not entirely fearless in the face of the hidden dangers they were braving. He could sympathize with the editor, who had everything to lose and did not wholly believe that Wood was not a dog. Discovering a human identity in an apparently normal collie must have been a staggeringly hard fact for him to swallow.

  He set Wood down on the iron bars. Gilroy quickly joined them, and yanked fiercely at the top window. It was locked.

  “Need a jimmy to pry it open,” Gilroy mused. He fingered the edges of the frame. “Got a knife on you?”

  The editor fished absent-mindedly through his pockets. He brought out a handful of keys, pencil stubs, scraps of paper, matches, and a cheap sheathed nail file. Gilroy snatched the file.

  He picked at the putty in the ancient casement with the point. It chipped away easily. He loosened the top and sides.

  “Now,” he breathed. “Stand back a little and get ready to catch it.”

  He inserted the file at the top and levered the glass out of the frame. It stuck at the bottom and sides, refusing to fall. He caught the edges and lifted it out, laying it down noiselessly out of the way.

  “Let’s go.” He backed in through the empty casement. “Hand Wood through.”

  They stood in the dark room, under the same roof with Moss. Wood exultantly sensed the proximity of the one man he hated—the one man who could return his body to him. “Now!” he thought. “Now!”

  “Gilroy,” the editor urged, “we can charge Moss with vivisection.”

  “That’s right,” Gilroy whispered. But they heard the doorknob rattle in his hand and turn cautiously.

  “Then where’re you going?” the editor rasped in a panic.

  “We’re here,” Gilroy replied coolly. “So let’s finish it.”

  The door swung back; pale weak light entered timidly. They stared down the long, narrow, dismal hall to the stairs at the center of the house. Down those stairs they would find Moss——

  Wood’s keen animal sense of smell detected Moss’s personal odor. The surgeon had been there not long before.

  He crouched around the stairhead and cautiously lowered himself from step to step. Gilroy and the editor clung to banister and wall, resting the bulk of their weight on their hands. They turned the narrow spiral where Clarence had fatally encountered the sharpness of Wood’s fangs, down to the hall floor where his fat body had sprawled in blood.

  Distantly Wood heard a cane tap nervously, momentarily; then it stopped at a heated, hissed command that scarcely carried even to his ears. He glanced up triumphantly at Gilroy, his deep eyes glittering, his mouth grinning savagely, baring the red tongue lolling in the white deadly trap of fangs. He had located and identified the sounds. Both Moss and Talbot were in a room at the back of the house——

  He hunched his powerful shoulders and advanced slowly, stiff-legged, with the ominous air of all meat hunters stalking prey from ambush. Outside the closed door he crouched, muscles gathered for the lunge, his ears flat back along his pointed head to protect them from injury. But they heard muffled voices inaudible to men’s dulled senses.

  “Sit down, doc,” Talbot said. “The truck’ll be here soon.”

  “I’m not concerned with my personal safety,” Moss replied tartly. “It’s merely that I dislike inefficiency, especially when you claim——”

  “Well, it’s not Jake’s fault. He’s coming back from a job.” Wood could envision the faint sneer on Moss’s scrubbed pink face. “You’ll collapse any minute within the next six months, but the acquisitive nature is as strong as ever in you, isn’t it, Talbot? You couldn’t resist the chance of making a profit, and at a time like this!”

  “Oh, don’t lose your head. The cata-whatever-you-call-it can’t talk and the dog is probably robbing garbage cans. What’s the lam for?”

  “I’m changing my residence purely as a matter of precaution. You underestimate human ingenuity, even limited by a dog’s inarticulateness.”

  Wood grinned up at his comrades. The editor was doughfaced, rigid with apprehension. Gilroy held a gun and his left hand snaked out at the doorknob. The editor began an involuntary motion to stop him. The door slammed inward before he completed it.

  Wood and Gilroy stalked in, sinister in their grim silence. Talbot merely glanced at the gun. He had stared into too many black muzzles to be frightened by it. When his gaze traveled to Wood his jaw fell and hung open, trembling senilely. His constantly fighting lungs strangled. He screamed, a high, tortured wail, and tore frantically at his shirt, trying to release his chest from crushing pressure.

  “An object lesson for you, Talbot,” Moss said without emotion. “Do not underestimate an enemy.”

  Gilroy lost his frigid attitude. “Don’t let him strangle. Help him.”

  “What can I do?” Moss shrugged. “It’s angina pectoris. Either he pulls out of the convulsions by himself—or he doesn’t. I can’t help. But what did you want?”

  No one answered him. Horrified, they were watching Talbot go purple in his death agony, lose the power of shrieking, and tear at his chest. Gilroy’s gun hand was limp; yet Moss made no attempt to escape. The air rattled through Talbot’s predatory nose. He fell in a contorted heap.

  Wood felt sickened. He knew that in self-preservation doctors had to harden themselves, but only a monster of brutal callousness could have disregarded Talbot’s frightful death as if it had not been going on.

  “Oh, come now, it isn’t as bad as all that,” Moss said acidly.

  Wood raised his shocked stare from the rag-doll body to Moss’s hard, unfearful eyes. The surgeon had made no move to defend himself, to call for help from the squad of gangsters at the front of the house. He faced them with inhuman prepossession.

  “It upsets your plans,” Gilroy spat.

  Moss lifted his shoulders, urbanely, delicately disdainful. “What difference should his death make to me? I never cared for his company.”

  “Maybe not, but his money seemed to smell O.K. to you. He’s out of the picture. He can’t keep us from printing this story now.” Gilroy pulled a thin folded typescript from his inside breast pocket and shoved it out at Moss.

  The surgeon read it interestedly, leaning casually against a wall. He came to the end of the short article and read the lead paragraph over again. Politely, he gave it back to Gilroy.

  “It’s very clear,” he said. “I’m accused of exchanging the identities of a man and a dog. You even describe my alleged technique.”

  “ ‘Alleged!’ ” Gilroy roared savagely. “You mean you deny it?”

  “Of course. Isn’t it fantastic?” Moss smiled. “But that isn’t the point. Even if I admitted it, how do you think I could be convicted on such evidence? The only witness seems to be the dog you call Wood. Are dogs allowed to testify in court? I don’t remember, but I doubt it.”

  Wood was stunned. He had not expected Moss to brazen out the charge. An ordinary man would have broken down, confronted by their evidence.

  Even the shrinking editor was stung into retorting: “We have proof of criminal vivisection!”

  “But no proof that I was the surgeon.”

  “You’re the only one in New York who could’ve done that operation.”

  “See how far that kind of evidence will get you.”

  Wood listened with growing anger. S
omehow they had permitted Moss to dominate the situation, and he parried their charges with cool, sarcastic deftness. No wonder he had not tried to escape! He felt himself to be perfectly safe. Wood growled, glowered hatred at Moss. The surgeon looked down contemptuously.

  “All right, we can’t convict you in court,” Gilroy said. He hefted his gun, tightening his finger on the trigger. “That’s not what we want, anyhow. This little scientific curiosity can make you operate on Wood and transfer his identity back to his own body.”

  Moss’s expression of disdain did not alter. He watched Gilroy’s tensing trigger finger with an astonishing lack of concern.

  “Well, speak up,” Gilroy rasped, waving the gun ominously.

  “You can’t force me to operate. All you can do is kill me, and I am as indifferent to my own death as I was to Talbot’s.” His smile broadened and twisted down at the comers, showing his teeth in a snarl that was the civilized, over-refined counterpart of Wood’s. “Your alleged operation interests me, however. I’ll operate for my customary fee.”

  The editor pushed Gilroy inside and hurriedly closed the door. “They’re coming,” he chattered. “Talbot’s gangsters.”

  In two strides Gilroy put Moss between him and the door. His gun jabbed rudely into Moss’s unflinching back. “Get over on the other side, you two, so the door’ll hide you when it swings back,” he ordered.

  Wood and the editor retreated. Wood heard steps along the hall, then a pause, and a harsh voice shouted: “Hey, boss! Truck’s here.”

  “Tell them to go away,” Gilroy said in a low, suppressed tone.

  Moss called, “I’m in the second room at the rear of the house.”

  Gilroy viciously stabbed him with the gun muzzle. “You’re asking for it. I said tell them to go away!”

  “You wouldn’t dare to kill me until I’ve operated——”

  “If you’re not scared, why do you want them? What’s the gag?”

  The door flung open. A gangster started to enter. He stiffened, his keen, battle-trained eyes flashing from Talbot’s twisted body to Moss, and to Gilroy, standing menacingly behind the surgeon. In a swift, smooth motion a gun leaped from his armpit holster.