by Unknown
One day in the Park a muddy-faced little girl of six, who feared nothing at all, came up and patted him, examined his teeth with curious interest, and finally sat on him. These attentions Zero received with great joy. Weeks passed, and he had not given the slightest sign of the curious instinct with which his former master had credited him.
Staines liked him, principally because he so obviously liked Staines. Staines thought him a faithful and affectionate beast, with nothing to distinguish him from the normal. When he recalled Smith’s story of the snatched railway ticket, he explained it all as a chance. These flukes did happen sometimes.
And then one afternoon he went to call upon the Murrays—a practice that was becoming rather common with him—and as Jane was particularly fond of Zero, Zero accompanied him. When they reached the square, Zero sat down on the pavement. Staines called him, and the dog wagged his tail, but did not move. Staines went on without him, but presently had to stop, for Zero had now changed his tactics, and was running round and round Staines’ legs. The incident of the railway ticket flashed across his mind. He was a business man, and not superstitious; however, it did not matter to him in the least which two sides of the square he took, and he determined to turn back and take the other two sides, and see what would happen. As soon as he turned back, Zero followed at heel in his usual quiet and unobtrusive manner.
A loud crash caused him to look round. A heavy stone coping had fallen from a roof, and if the dog had not brought him back it would have fallen upon him. Here was a nice little story with a mildly sensational interest for Staines to tell over the teacups.
Mr Murray was matter-of-fact.
“Your story is true, of course,” he said. “Your dog did make you take the other two sides of the square, and the fact that you turned back probably saved your life. But, all the same, the dog didn’t know. By what means could the brain of a dog recognise the imminent dissolution of part of the roof of a house?”
“Zero did know,” said Jane. She was Mr Murray’s only daughter, and without being wildly beautiful, was an extremely pleasing and friendly young woman to look at. At present she was feeding Zero with thin bread-and-butter. Zero had been told, even by Jane herself, that this form of diet was bad for his figure, but he accepted it with resignation—rather an enthusiastic kind of resignation.
“What makes you say that Zero knew?” her father asked, with indulgent superiority.
“Because I know he knew,” said Jane firmly and finally.
“And then,” said Mr Murray, “women tell us they ought to have the vote.”
“Miss Murray,” said Richard firmly, “that dog is not to be fed any more, please.”
“Last piece,” said Jane. “And he’s promised to do Swedish exercises.”
Richard was inclined to agree with Mr Murray. The coincidence was again remarkable; it might even be called very extraordinary. And, given a choice of two things, Richard preferred to believe the easier. Why, fond though he was of Zero, he had to admit that the dog was not even clever.
He had tried to teach Zero to find a hidden biscuit, but though he had hidden the biscuit in all manner of places he had never yet selected a place that Zero had been able to discover. He was just a dear old fool of a bulldog, and it was absurd to suppose that he was a miracle.
But Jane Murray remained firm in her belief, and even condescended to be serious about it.
“Look here,” she said, “if you put your horse at a jump, and you’re feeling a bit shy of it yourself, do you mean to say the horse doesn’t know?”
“Of course he knows. But he only knows it by the way you ride him.”
“Well, I’ve had it happen to me. All I can say is that I wasn’t conscious of riding any differently. It was my first season in Ireland, and I wasn’t used to the walls. I said to myself, ‘It’s got to be.’ I did really mean to get over. But the horse knew the funk in my head and refused. However, I’ll give you another point. How do you explain the homing instinct of animals?”
“I’ve never thought about it. I suppose when a pigeon gets up high it can see no end of a distance.”
“That won’t do. Dogs and cats have the same instinct—especially cats. For that matter, crabs have been taken from the sea and returned to it again at a point eighty miles away, and have found their way back. It’s not done by sight, scent, or hearing. It must be done by some special sense which they have got and we have not.”
“It sounds plausible.”
“It’s the only possible explanation. And when once we’ve admitted that animals have a special sense which we have not, I don’t quite see how we are to say what the limitations of that sense are. It is not really a bit more wonderful that Zero should have the sense of impending danger than that a crab, eighty miles from home, should be able to find its way back.”
“Well, you may be right. I wish now that I’d asked that chap Smith a bit more about the dog.”
A few days later one of the partners in Richard’s business announced his intention of getting married. He was a junior partner, two years younger than Richard.
“Well, Bill,” said Richard, after he had offered his congratulations, “what shall I give you for a wedding-present?”
“Give us that dog of yours.”
“Never. Try again.”
“Oh, I was only rotting. But, seriously, I’d as soon have a dog as anything. Not a bulldog—they’re too ugly.”
“It’s a good, honest kind of ugliness. What breed then?”
“Gwen’s keen on black poodles.”
That settled it. Richard hunted up Smith’s card. He had always meant to do some business with the man if he got an opportunity, and here was the opportunity. On the following day he journeyed to Wandsworth and found Smith. Smith looked less spruce and prosperous than before. He did not actually declare that the performing dog had had his day, but he admitted that business was not what it had been.
“Too many of us in it. And, I tell you, I’m afraid to bring out a new idea—it’s pinched before you’ve had a week’s use of it. Public’s a bit off it, too. I’m doing practically nothing with the ’alls. I train for others, and I’m trying to build up a business as a dealer. Only first-class dogs, mind.”
“That’s what I want. I came here to buy a dog.”
“Let’s see. Bulldogs were your fancy. Well, I’ve got one of the Stone breed that’s won the only time it was shown and will win again.”
“This is not for myself. It’s a present. Black poodle.”
“I see. Well, you’ve come to the right market. How far were you prepared to go?”
“Show me a really valuable dog and I will pay the real value. I’m not buying for the show-bench; but I want the best breed, good health, good temper, cleverness and training—two years old for choice.”
“Ask enough,” said Smith, smiling. “Well, if you don’t mind stepping into the yard I can fit you. I’m asking twenty guineas, and he’s worth every penny of it—he’d bring that money back, to anybody who cared to take it, before a year was out.”
The dog was shown—an aristocrat with qualities of temper and intelligence not always to be found in the aristocrat. Richard Staines thought he would be paying quite enough, but decided to pay it. He returned to the house to write his cheque.
“There you are, Mr Smith. By the way, do you remember Zero, the dog you gave me? He’s sitting in my taxi outside.”
“I remember him. He’d never win prizes for anybody—not like that poodle you’ve just bought. You couldn’t teach him anything either. But he could see ahead, that dog could.”
<
br /> Smith heard how Richard Staines had been saved from the falling roof, and evinced no surprise at it at all. “Yes,” he said, “that dog always knew. Did I tell you about the milk?”
“No. What was that?”
“Me and Cowbit next door got our milk from the same man. I went out one morning to take the can in, when Zero came bullocking past me and knocked the can over. He never tried to drink the milk that was spilled, but just stood there, wagging his old tail. Mind you, sir, that was after he had saved me from the train smash. ‘Well,’ I said to him, ‘I suppose you know’; and I went in to Cowbits’ to tell them not to touch that milk. Cowbit laughed at the story, and took milk in his tea. But his missus wouldn’t have any, and wouldn’t let the baby have none either. Cowbit was ill for days and pretty near died. Mineral poison it was, from one of the milk-pans going wrong.”
“How do you suppose the dog knew?”
“Me suppose? Why, I never asked myself the question. He did know—that was all about it. Still, if I had to explain it, I should say it was some kind of an instinct.”
And Richard mercifully forebore to ask Mr Smith how he would explain that particular kind of instinct.
III
Richard was best-man at his partner’s wedding. He afterwards attended a crowded reception. It was too crowded; and there were far too many people there who wanted to talk to Jane Murray. She was popular, and there was a group round her all the time. Not for five minutes could Richard get her to himself. It was this selfishness on the part of others which depressed him, not the reception champagne, which was no worse than is usual on such occasions.
The crowds bored him and when he got back to his flat the solitude bored him. Not even Zero was there. Richard’s valet had taken the dog out for exercise; this had been done in obedience to Richard’s own orders, but it now seemed to him in the light of a grievance. The grievance became more acute when his servant returned without the dog.
“Very sorry, sir; I wouldn’t have had it happen for anything. I was walking in Regent’s Park, with the dog at my heels, and all of a sudden he made a bolt for it. I whistled and called, but he went straight on. And when I started running after him, he made a dash into a big shrubbery. That was how he foxed me, sir. While I was hunting him on one side, he must have bolted out on the other. Never known the dog act like that before. It was just as if something had come over him. Speaking in a general way——”
“Well, what did you do?” asked Richard sharply.
“I spoke to the park-keepers, and to a couple of policemen outside, and then I went on to Scotland Yard. The address is on the collar, sir. I should think there’s no doubt you’ll—”
“That’ll do!” snapped Richard. “I thought you could be trusted to take a dog out, at any rate. Well, my mistake.”
With a further expression of contrition, the man withdrew, and almost instantly the telephone-bell on Richard’s desk rang sharply.
He went slowly to the telephone, and managed to put the concentration of weariness and disgust into the word “Hallo!”
The voice that answered him was the voice of Mr Murray.
“That you, Staines?... Right—yes, quite well, thanks... I wanted to say when Jane got back this evening she found Zero waiting for her outside our front door... He’s here now, and seems quite cheerful about it... Thought you might like to know.”
Richard rapidly changed his tone of dejection for that of social enthusiasm. He thanked profusely. He would send for the dog at once.
“Well, look here,” said Mr Murray, “Jane and I have got a night off—dining alone. If by any chance you’re free, I wish you’d join us. Then you can take the intelligent hound back with you.”
Richard said that he was free, which was a lie; and that he would be delighted to come, which was perfectly true.
He subsequently rang up a man at his club, cancelled an engagement on the score of ill-health, and went to dress. Such was his elation that he even condescended to tell his servant that the dog had been found and was all right.
Zero had done wrong. He must have known that he had done wrong; but he welcomed his master with gambols in the manner of an ecstatic bullock, and showed no sign of penitence at all. It was the habit of Richard to punish a dog that had done wrong, but he did not punish Zero. He called him a silly old idiot, and asked him what he thought he had been doing, but Zero recognised that this was badinage and exercised his tail furiously.
At dinner, Mr Murray said that Zero was an interesting problem. The dog was apparently a fine judge at sight of the stability of structures, but could not find his way home.
“That’s not proved,” said Richard, laughing. “He knew his way home all right, but he was trying to better himself. He’s not fed at tea-time in St James’s Place.”
“He’s had nothing here,” said Jane.
“Really, Jane,” said her father.
“Practically nothing. A few biscuits and the least little bit of wedding-cake for luck.”
“Pity I didn’t take him to the reception; then he could have had a vanilla ice as well.”
“Wrong,” said Jane. “They hadn’t got vanilla—only the esoteric sorts. I know, because I tried. Never you mind, Zero. When the election comes on, you shall wear papa’s colours round your strengthy neck and kill all the collies of the opposition.”
“By the way,” said Richard, “how’s old Benham?”
“Poor old chap, he’s still dying,” said Mr Murray. “It makes me feel a bit like a vulture, waiting for his death like this. Still, I suppose it can’t be helped.”
Benham was the sitting member for Sidlington, and Mr Murray had been predestined to succeed him. Murray had fought two forlorn hopes for his party, and had pulled down majorities. He had fairly earned Sidlington—an absolutely safe seat. He had moderate means and no occupation. He had taken up with politics ten years before—shortly after the death of his wife—and had found politics a game that precisely suited him.
The discussion for the remainder of dinner was mostly political, and Jane—as was generally the case when she chose to be serious—showed herself to be a remarkably well-informed and intelligent young woman.
“I’ve no chance; she’s too good for me,” said Richard to himself—by no means for the first time—as he looked at her and listened to her with admiration.
Jane had just left the two men to their cigars when a servant entered with a card for Mr Murray.
“Where have you put him?” he asked the man.
“The gentleman is in the library, sir.”
“Good! Say I’ll be with him directly. Awfully sorry, Staines; this is a chap from Sidlington, and rather an important old cock down there.”
“Go to him, of course. That’s all right.”
“I’m afraid I must. But here’s the port and here’s the cigars. When you get tired of solitude, you’ll find Jane in the drawing-room. Smoking’s allowed there, you know.”
Staines got tired of solitude very soon. In the drawing-room, the conversation between Jane and himself took a new note of earnestness and intimacy. Zero slept placidly through it all.
An hour later Mr Murray came back to the drawing-room with the news of Benham’s death. He in return received, with goodwill and no surprise, the news that a marriage bad been arranged, and would shortly take place, between his daughter and Richard Staines.
IV
During the engagement, which was brief, Zero found that two people—of whom his master was one—had very little time to talk to him; but he was not ab
solutely forgotten.
“What are we to do with Zero while we’re away?” asked Richard.
“Could we take him with us?” asked Miss Murray.
“I don’t think so,” said Richard. “There would be bother at these foreign hotels; and there’s the quarantine to think about.”
“Suppose I said that if Zero didn’t go, I wouldn’t go either?”
“Quite simple. In that case, I should go alone.”
And then they both laughed, being somewhat easily pleased at that time. Zero was offered to Mr Murray temporarily as an election mascot, but Mr Murray was not taking any risks—one of his principal supporters had a favourite collie. Finally, it was decided that Zero should pay a visit to his former master, Smith, until his master returned. He made one brief appearance at the wedding reception, where his supreme but honest ugliness conquered the heart of every nice woman present. He refused champagne, foie-gras sandwiches, and vanilla ices offered to him by the enthusiastic and indiscreet. However, he managed to find Jane, and Jane found bread-and-butter until word was brought that a person of the name of Smith had called for the dog.
“Bit fat, you are,” said Smith, as he ripped the white rosette off the dog’s collar. “Been doing yourself too well. Ah, now you’re going to live healthy!”