“Are you all right?” yelled Harry.
Angus straightened up creakily. “Of course I’m all right!” he said testily. “Why shouldn’t I be?” “But—but—” stammered Harry, pointing one shaking forefinger under the table. “Leona—the werewolf—didn’t she come in ravening for your throat?”
“She did raven a little bit,” said Angus mildly. “But I spanked her with a rolled up newspaper. Now she’s gone under the table and won’t come out. Who did you say she was?”
“Leona! The werewolf!” shouted Amos, almost beside himself with vexation. “What I’ve been trying to prove to you. Now don’t you believe me, you old idiot?”
To the surprise of both men, McCloud lifted his nose in the air and pointedly ignored Amos, addressing himself instead to Harry.
“In case your friend is interested,” he said, “you might remind him that I am still waiting for a suitable apology for his desecration of one of my favorite melodies.”
“Holy Hannah!” said Harry. “We haven’t time for that. We’ve got to get Leona out of here before David commits murder.” He leaned over and addressed the werewolf. “You hear that, Leona? David’ll be here in a minute. Come on out and we’ll hide you someplace.”
Leona rolled the whites of her eyes up at Angus and stayed put.
“I think,” said Amos, “I’m not sure, but I think she’s waiting for an apology from Dr. McCloud. A fine thing, I must say, Angus, spanking a lady with a rolled-up newspaper.”
“She’s not a lady, she’s a dog,” said Angus.
“She’s not a dog, she’s a werewolf,” said Harry. “And if we don’t get her out of there inside of the next second or two—oh—oh!”
He held up his hands for silence. And in the distance, approaching with the speed of an express train, they all heard the triumphant yodeling of
David, who had finally gotten the mixed up trail straightened out, and was on his way to the lodge.
“For the last time, Leona,” pleaded Harry. “Will you come out? We can—”
“Too late,” interrupted Amos.
There was the noise of pounding feet outside and David came crashing bodily through two of the French windows into their midst.
“Huroo! Yowp? Yowp? Yowp?” he yelped.
“If you must know,” said Amos, “she’s under the table.”
“Ruff?” said David, astonished, discovering the crouching Leona and eyeing her with surprise.
“Angus here beat her brutally with a rolled-up newspaper and drove her under the table,” said Amos, nastily.
“I did not beat her brutally,” protested Angus. “A few whacks with a rolled up newspaper—”
“Arf!” said David, shocked, looking at the older man, accusation in his eyes.
“Go ahead,” said Amos, somberly. “She’s battered to a pulp. Go in there now and finish her off.”
David turned back to Leona; and to all who watched, it was evident that a terrific struggle was taking place within his shaggy breast. The characters in the scene that met his eyes were correct. Here were the humans it was his duty to protect. And here was the werewolf it was his duty to protect them from. But something about the tableau was wrong. It was not the werewolf, savage, bloodthirsty and evil, who stood towering over the shivering, frightened humans; but a human, irascible, brutal and cruel, who stood looming over a shrinking and abused werewolf. There could be no doubt that the revelation of Angus’ savagery with the rolled-up newspaper had shaken David’s were-wolfhoundish heart to the core. Still, duty was duty, and he might have followed the instincts bred into him; but at that moment, it may have been by chance, and it may not—but Leona allowed a sad little whine to escape her.
It was too much for the gallant were-wolfhound. For generations it had been the code of his line to succor and comfort the threatened and attacked. He stretched his head under the table and licked Leona’s nose. Then he crawled under himself.
“Thank heaven!” gasped Amos, mopping his brow. “It’s going to be all right.” He grabbed Harry and Angus by their elbows and hustled them out the door of the library, closing it behind him. “Quiet now,” he said. “Just leave them alone.”
“Wait a minute,” protested Harry, digging in his heels. Noises had begun to emanate from the library. “Listen to that. Maybe they’re starting to fight, after all.”
“I don’t think so,” said Amos, firmly, retaining his grasp on the two elbows. “Gentlemen, I must insist. This way, if you please!”
Harry, Amos and Angus were already seated at the breakfast table the following morning, looking somewhat dazed but not unhappy.
“—and so I will accept your apology,” Angus was just saying to Amos, “although in the old days singing a parody on Comin‘ Thro the Rye would have called for claymores at dawn. Ah, good morning, lad.”
“Morning,” said David, blushing and blinking around the room.
“I see you’re fully recovered,” said Amos, with satisfaction. “Luckily, I believe I’ve now stumbled on a new principle in para-science which should enable me to treat both you and Leona and bring this matter under control.” He turned to pound Angus affectionately on the back. “Well, how about it, Angus?” he said. “Are you convinced now that para-science exists?”
But Angus had had an evening to think it over.
“Well, now, I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he replied cautiously. “While this is all very interesting, you must bear in mind I’ve seen no actual proof that either of the two young people were actually the two beasts I observed last night. No, I’m afraid if you want me to admit I’m convinced, Amos, you’ll have to arrange incontrovertible physical evidence that Leona and that wolf I left in the library last night with your dog, was one and the same—” He broke off suddenly. Leona had just entered the breakfast room of the lodge. “Ah, good morning, my dear.”
But Leona ignored him. Eyes flashing, she marched up to David.
“How dare you?” she cried. “You beast! You hound! You brute!”
—And slapped his face.
Can a Garden of Earthly Delights flourish with unearthly aid?
Salmanazar
I SEEM TO HAVE ACQUIRED A SORT OF KITTEN. I CALL IT SAM.
I suppose that doesn’t sound too odd, but it would if you knew me better. I know. I realize all the nonsense about middle aged bachelors (like old maids) being supposed to like cats is supposed to go with a quiet suburban existence and activity in the local Garden Club. But, I promise you, I am not the type.
In the first place, I don’t look fifty. There’s not a grey hair on my head. My existence is far from quiet. And as for our Garden Club—there is a great deal more to it than gardening.
We who are in it recognize this. All of us; myself, Helen Merrivale, Cora Lachese and her contingent, and (until recently) Achmed Suga—are, if I may say so, in pivotal position with regard to the junior organizations. The Hiking Club, the Fund Drives, the Golden Sixties, and all the host of lesser groupings which flourish in a respectable area like Glen Hills. Indeed, the Garden Club is the H.Q. of Glen Hills. And, like all elements in which supreme authority is vested, it has its continual, sometimes brilliant and sometimes deadly, internal struggles between opposing chiefs of staff, once external frontiers have been secured.
Oh, indeed I knew—I knew it as long as a year before—that the tide had begun to run against Helen Merrivale, hard-bitten veteran and courageous campaigner that she was. Not one, not two— but five crucial issues, ranging from the placement of the comfort stations at the annual Old-Timers’ picnic to the naming of the executive vice-president to the yearly Anti-Trash and Litter Campaign, had gone against her. And what made this doubly awkward was that I was her chief lieutenant.
With all this, however, I suspected nothing when Helen, in August of last year, cleverly managed a nervous breakdown to ensure her honorable withdrawal from the field of combat. I saw her off on a round-the-world trip with my mind occupied only by the disgraceful tactical situation she had
dropped in my lap.
Well, I tried to do what I could—but the result was certain. Experienced opponents like Cora Lachese simply do not make mistakes. One by one, I watched my (and Helen’s) appointees stripped of their positions of authority in the junior organizations. Though the smile of easy confidence never left my lips during those long and terrible months, I began to make quiet inquiries of travel agencies myself.
How little I knew my leader! She is a great woman, Helen Merrivale. Completely without mercy, of course, but one expects that in such memorable leaders.
Helen returned, quietly and unexpectedly. With her she brought Sam—now why did I write that? She most certainly did not bring Sam. She has no more use for cats or kittens than I do; and at the time Sam could hardly have been more than an embryo. The creature will insist on intruding into my writing, as he has intruded into my life. —Now, where was I?
Oh, yes. The first we knew of Helen’s return was when we all received mailed invitations to a Home Again party. Attached to my invitation was a note asking me to come early.
I obeyed of course, arriving shortly before the hour. Her sister let me in. Letty. A poor thing by comparison with Helen.
“And where is the dear girl, Letty?” I asked.
“She’s waiting for you in the living room,” whispered Letty, giving me a strange look. I frowned at her and strode on inside. As I saw the two people waiting there for me, I checked. For an instant. And then I was moving forward with smile and outstretched hand.
I believe I mentioned that I am not the ordinary type of middle-aged bachelor. No grand vizier of an ancient, oriental court, arriving to find his successor waiting by the Emir’s chair, could have reacted with more insouciance than myself. And I believe, looking back on it, that at that moment I noticed a spark—just a spark—of admiration in Helen’s eyes.
“Horace,” she said, “I want you to meet a new, but very dear friend of mine.” She turned to the small man at her side. “Mr. Achmed Suga. Achmed, this is Horace Klinton.”
I shook hands with him. What the three of us then spoke about in the ensuing moments while the living room gradually filled up with guests, I do not remember. Nor does it matter. The important thing was Suga; as obviously dangerous as he was unprepossessing.
The grip of his hand had been suety. And the rest of him looked to be of the same material. He was like nothing so much as a little sausage-man. His head, a round grey blob of bulk sausage, seated upon a longer, oblong blob of sausage body. To this larger blob were attached link sausages, two to a limb and sewed tightly together at the elbow or knee joint. Little patties of bulk sausage shaped his hands and feet. I was most cordial to him.
But a natural terminus was approaching to our conversation. And in a moment it had arrived. A stir swept through the room; and a second later, surrounded by her own lieutenants—and a hard-eyed lot they were, as I could testify—Cora Lachese came tramping in.
“Helen!” she cried. And—
“Cora!” echoed Helen. They fell into each others’ arms—Helen tall and majestically well-upholstered with regal grey hair, Cora short, stocky and leathery-skinned, with a Napoleonic glint in her dark eyes. A scent of blood was in the air.
“How we missed you!” barked Cora, in her ringing baritone. “Whatever made you stay away so long?”
“The mysterious East,” answered Helen. “Its spell got me, my dear! Helpless—I was quite helpless before it.” She half-turned toward Suga. “I might have lost myself there forever, if it hadn’t been for dear Achmed here.”
Cora glanced at the man, and from him to me. I saw her note my own awareness of the fact that I had been supplanted at Helen’s side.
“Achmed, this is Cora Lachese, whose praises you’ve heard me sing so frequently. Cora—Achmed Suga…” Helen was saying.
“Haylo, dear lady. Most honored,” said Achmed in a thick accent which I had not noticed previously, though it was quite obvious now.
“Achmed will be staying with me several months,”
Helen said. “While he completes his book on Witchcraft in America. We must get him to speak at the Garden Club on the Thugees, or the Assassin’s Guild—or one of those other fascinating societies.”
“Oh, you study such things, Mr. Suga?” said Cora.
“He is an adept!” murmured Helen.
“Please, dear lady,” said Achmed, fattily. “Merely I am creature of powers greater than my own.”
“Really?” growled Cora. She cocked an eye at Helen. “He’s far too valuable for the Garden Club, Helen. We’ll have to have him give his little talk to the Old People’s Home. I’ll tell Marilyn Speedo—”
“Dear Marilyn,” murmured Helen again, “where is she?”
We all looked around for Cora’s first lieutenant, but she was nowhere to be seen in the room. And at that moment a shriek rang out from the garden beyond the french doors.
We poured out into the garden, all of us. And there lay Marilyn Speedo, dead in a nastursium bed, evidently having just been strangled by a pair of powerful hands.
Quite naturally, this incident cast a pall over the Home Again party. Cora and her group slipped away quite early. A charming funeral was held two days later for Marilyn and during the next few weeks, the police set up patrols about the streets of Glen Hills. However, they had no success by the time the next meeting of the Garden Club was held—on this occasion at the home of Cora Lachese, herself, where custom had shifted it from Helen’s home after Helen had left.
Achmed gave us what I must admit was an interesting talk on Hemlock and Related Poisons. I had had no idea, myself, how many lethal substances were available in our fields and woods; and I imagine few of us had, for I saw many of the members taking notes. But after the talk, over the coffee and cakes, the talk inevitably turned to the subject of the murderer, still no doubt lurking among us.
“… The terrible thing is,” said Helen, casting a judicious eye on Cora. “You can never tell who he might choose for his next victim!”
“Quite right!” boomed Cora. And, snapping open the sensible leather shoulder bag she had been wearing, rather surprisingly in her own home, she produced a snub-nosed, thirty-two revolver. “Belonged to my little brother Tommy—the one who was a major in the army, you know. Dear Tommy, taught me to shoot like a man—” The revolver went off suddenly, clipping a rather good-sized antler from the deer head overhanging the fireplace. “Oops—how careless of me! Helen, how can you forgive me! It just missed your ear!”
“A miss,” said Helen, rather grimly I thought, “is as good as a mile.”
“As good as about two inches, in this case, I’d say,” replied Cora. “It’s remarkable what an eye I have. Tommy never ceased to be amazed at it. Well, what I wanted to show you all were these marvelous little bullets. Something they invented in the first World War, and later outlawed by the United Nations, or some such thing. See—” she took one out and showed it around. “You just cut a deep cross in the soft metal of the nose. When it hits, it spreads out—dum-dum bullets, I believe they used to call them…”
While she was showing it around, someone commented on the color of the metal of the bullet itself.
“—Well, yes, as a matter of fact they are silver,” said Cora. “Rather chic, don’t you think? Don’t you think so, Helen?”
“Oh, indeed, Cora dear,” murmured Helen.
And so our even tenor of life continued—although the murderer was not found. A couple of rather sad suicides occurred, however, to cloud the bright June sunshine—for we were now into mid-summer. Only a week or so after the Garden Club party, Joan Caswell, Cora’s second most reliable hench-woman, apparently drowned herself in her own lily pond; and Maria Selzer, the next in line, while doing her morning TV exercises, managed to judo-chop herself on the back of the neck, killing herself instantly.
With this last tragedy a shifting of values became apparent in Glen Hills—many of Helen’s lieutenants taking thought evidently on the insecurity of life, an
d withdrawing from club offices to devote themselves more to home and family. So, perhaps to bring a note of cheer back into all our lives, Cora Lachese chose this moment to announce a gala evening to which all were invited. A Night Lawn Party and Beirfest, with Barbecue.
I must say it was a pleasant evening at first. Cora had produced a most interesting new person—a young man with a heroic name.
“… Seigfried,” Cora called him over as Helen, Suga, and I arrived together. “You must meet him. Seigfried.‘ Seig—now, he’s gone again. A cultured anthropologist, Helen—from the college over at Inglesby, at the moment. But he’s studied abroad for years—oh, there he is!”
She pointed. And we perceived, under the paper lanterns of the lawn party, a tall, shambling young man in a tweed suit. We all moved off to meet him. But I, for one, got waylaid by someone halfway there and never did reach his side. The next I looked he was not to be seen. Neither, for that matter, were Cora or Helen.
However, I quickly ceased to worry about them. The beer Cora had ordered was evidently infernally strong stuff. Either that or I—but I’m sure it was the beer. I have met nobody who was at Cora’s that night who did not admit to being a little, at least, uncertain about what went on and what they remember.
In my case, confusion begins later in the evening. Cora had announced an entertainment, while standing by the fire pit where the meat had been barbecued. The fire was mainly red coals by that time. But I remember her flinging up her arms, dramatically in its dim glow, and bellowing out— “Seigfried!”
At that there was a sudden explosion—as I remember—of red smoke from the fire pit. And there leaped into view a figure that no more resembled the youth I had seen, than a sabre-toothed tiger resembles something like—well—Sam. The figure was naked except for a breechclout and feathers, and twice Seigfried’s size.
The Last Dream Page 9