The Dog Megapack

by Robert Reginald

  I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn’t. We looked so much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shook the streets that Morgan’s cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last December’s snow on the streets where cheap people live.

  One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn’t have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard play Mendelssohn’s wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:

  “What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She don’t kiss you. You don’t have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you’re not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the blues begone.”

  The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face.

  “Why, doggie,” says he, “good doggie. You almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggie—Cats?”

  Cats! Could speak!

  But, of course, he couldn’t understand. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

  In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tan terrier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening, but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation.

  “See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip,” I says, “you know that it ain’t the nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public. I never saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn’t look like he’d like to lick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an amateur prestidigitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Don’t tell me he likes it.”

  “Him?” says the black-and-tan. “Why, he uses Nature’s Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out, he’s as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make ’em all jackpots. By the time we’ve been in eight saloons, he don’t care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I’ve lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors.”

  The pointer I got from that terrier—vaudeville, please copy—set me to thinking.

  One evening about six o’clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The black-and-tan was called “Tweetness.” I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still, “Lovey” is something of a nomenclatural tin can on the tail of one’s self-respect.

  At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press dispatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook.

  “Why, darn my eyes,” says the old man, with a grin; “darn my eyes if the saffron-colored son-of-a-seltzer-lemonade ain’t asking me in to take a drink. Lemme see—how long’s it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the footrest? I believe I’ll—”

  I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbells coming. I sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equaled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before papa comes home.

  When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread, the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street.

  “Poor doggie,” says he; “good doggie. She shan’t kiss you anymore. ’S a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy.”

  I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man’s legs happy as a pug on a rug.

  “You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser,” I said to him—“you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can’t you see that I don’t want to leave you? Can’t you see that we’re both Pups in the Wood, and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards forever more?”

  Maybe you’ll say he didn’t understand—maybe he didn’t. But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking.

  “Doggie,” says he, finally, “we don’t live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat anymore, I’m a flat, and if you do, you’re flatter; and that’s no flattery. I’m offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachshund.”

  There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-Third Street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them.

  On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun:

  “Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains.”

  But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said: “You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-colored son-of-a-doormat, do you know what I’m going to call you?”

  I thought of “Lovey,” and I whined dolefully.

  “I’m going to call you ‘Pete’,” says my master; and if I’d had five tails I couldn’t have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.

  THE SOUND OF THE BARKERVILLES, by Robert Reginald

  My dear packleader and -mate, Cn. Sheraton Bones, with whom it has been my privilege to run lo these twenty years, was curled up in his favorite lounge chair, seeming to read a copy of the London Canine News—but actually taking his post-supper nap—when a knock at our kennel door, at ccxxi-z Barker Street, suddenly brought his long face back into view, his dangling ears swinging out to either side of his head.

  “See to that, Sniffson, would you, please?” he asked—and I happily complied.

  “Message for Cn. Bones,” the whippet at the door said. I took the biscuit-gram from his paw. “Shall I wait for a reply, Sirrah?”

  “If you would, please,” I said, and then walked over and handed my friend the missive.

  He put his broad nose down to the trit and breathed in deeply. “Straight from the Telegraph Office,” he said. He looked at the letter-ciphers impressed into the hardened dough, and then snapped up the pungent bit in two bites. His long, almost serpentine tongue flicked up the surviving crumbs. Then he picked up the newsprint, which I had thought ignored, opened it wide, and slammed his paw down on a story on page three.

  “Finally, Sniffson,” he said, again tapping the paper. “Finally, we have a challenge worthy of our intellect. It seems that Sirrah Rovero Barkerville’s Vermin-Meister has been murdered under mysterious circumstances at his estate in Barkshire. Since the human servants there have been implicated as possible suspects by the local constabulary, he would like us to make the trip north, and determine who is actually to blame—and why—in order to avoid a scandal. There have also been suggestions in the press that a legendary human fiend, a slayer of Doggés called the Barkside Slasher, may be responsible.”

  “Where was the body found, Sirrah?” I asked.

  “On the nearby moors,” he replied. “Apparently, it was terribly mutilated. Pieces of the corpus were…detached from the body.”

  “No!” I said. “No! That would be a terrible outrage to all Doggédom, Sirrah, if true.”

  “Indeed. There is some urgency, Sniffson, so please respond in the affirmative to Sirrah Rovero’s request. Let him know that we will take the eight o’clock electrotram from Doggone Station.”

  This I accomplished, sending the whippet on her way, and then I went to pack our things for the short trip.<
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  “Be sure to include your four-five,” my leader’s resonant voice bayed from the other room.

  I did so.

  * * * *

  The transit service was, as usual, prompt and speedy, and we reached Barktown by nine P.M. As we exited our box, I drew in a lung full of the fresh air with a sigh of contentment, reveling in the olio of olfactory surprises. My nose wasn’t nearly as sensitive as my companion’s (indeed, there isn’t a Canine on Bossa-Terranova whose snout can match the incredible ability of this bloodhound’s nose), but still, my proboscis was almost overwhelmed with the combined odeurs of flora, fauna, and their collective excretory merde. I felt this tremendous urge to find the nearest patch of greenery and just, well, “roll in the spray,” as our feline flibbertigibbets might say.

  But I was able to control my body before my packleader noticed the wandering of my sensibilities; I nuzzled up to his hindquarters, and then motioned to one of the human-servants at the station to pick up our two bags and follow on. Although the simian-folk do understand some basic verbal communications, their inability to grunt more than a few Canine sounds makes it difficult for us to convey meaning without including paw-gestures. These creatures can just be the most stupid and obtuse of animals, despite their relatively large brains.

  An autocar had been sent from Barkerville Manor, and as we piled in, I marveled again at the luxury and efficiency of our vehicles. Even though our destination was several kilometers out in the country, our transit was smooth and swift. Sir Rovero was waiting for us at the door of his kennel-manse.

  “Cn. Sheraton Bones,” he intoned, touching noses with my leader in a formal greeting of equals. Both of their tails were curled over their backs, wagging slightly. “Why, ’tis truly a pleasure to see you again, Sirrah. You greatly assisted my cousin, Lord Chatchasseur, in solving the mystery of the missing pussies some years ago.”

  “Quite an intriguing puzzle, that,” my friend said. “As I recall, they were being snatched by the carnivorous pussy-willows that had been nefariously seeded on your relative’s estate by a rival Politi-Doggé—such plants being almost indistinguishable at first glance from their more benign cousins, the weepers.”

  “Ah, yes, yes,” the Barkonet said, “an exemplary and certainly a unique solution; why, I cannot think of any other Doggé-Detective who could have penetrated to the heart of the matter so quickly. But, alas, I feel that we have a much more difficult situation here. The bayings of fear and outrage from the local population threaten to result in a wholesale massacre of the human-folk.”

  “Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing,” I opined, before my leader hissed at me a low bark that meant, “Quiet!”

  “Please tell us about it, Sirrah Rovero,” Cn. Bones said.

  “If you’ll follow me, Gentle-Doggés, I will take you to the corpus,” he said.

  He led the way through a maze of kennel runs and puzzle passages—quite interesting, really, and filled with mysterious but delectable smells tucked away in odd corners—until we reached the manor’s “cold room,” a cellar which helped preserve bovine-brods, man-steaks, and piggy bones, which were stacked in profusion on the surrounding shelves. We could see our breaths clouding the cold, dry air.

  “What is that odor?” I hissed at my leader, in a low growl that the Barkonet could not hear.

  “Ah, you noticed it too, Sniffson,” Cn. Bones said. “You should be able to identify it soon, if you try.”

  But I could not, despite my best sniffing and whining. Then we came upon a scene that I would rather permanently displace from my mind’s memory.

  Laid out on a slab was the stretched-out body of our poor dead brother, the Vermin-Meister, an Irish Hound-Doggé named Runnymede, who certainly didn’t deserve the fate that had been meted out to him.

  “Doctor Sniffson, this looks to be your province,” Bones said, nodding at the deceased. “Sirrah Rovero, the good doctor saw service in the late Afghan War, and after we decimated those barbarous mutties, was sectioned back to the British Isles.”

  “I treated many terrible wounds during that conflict,” I said, “but very few that matched the ferocity of what I see here.”

  I pointed my right front paw to the area below and in front of the Canine’s anus. “As you can see here, Gentle-Doggés, the Sire’s sex organ has been ripped away from his body, and taken (or eaten) by the killer.” There was a gasp from the Barkonet.

  Then I opened the deceased’s jaw, and motioned for the other Canines to draw closer. “The poor Doggé’s tongue is gone, bitten away, as are his ears. His eyes have been blinded, nose mutilated, and tail clipped. Every piece of the body that gave him his noble stature and dignity has been slashed asunder, as if the murderer was trying to diminish the Canine mystique itself. Why, this reminds me of what the Afghani natives did to some of their captives.”

  “Do you see any similarity between the wounds?” the Barkonet asked.

  “Only superficially, Sirrah,” I said. “I cannot explain this very well to a non-physician, but it almost seems to me that these wounds were not actually accomplished by a Doggé—the pattern looks somewhat different to me—although, to be sure, the biting and slashing did arise from Canine-like incisors and razor-sharp claws similar to those adorning Doggé mouths and paws. Also, the attacker appears to have been taller and more powerful than his victim, as curious as that may sound. As you know, the Irish Hound-Doggés are among the largest of all Canine tribes, being exceeded in size only by their Scottish cousins. They put us shepherds to shame.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Sniffson,” Cn. Bones said. “And now, perhaps.…”

  But Sirrah Rovero interrupted him, stating; “The hour is getting late, Gentle-Doggés, so perhaps you had best be shown to your rooms. You can resume your investigations in the morning. Did you dine before your arrival?”

  “We munched on bits of kibbles during our trip north, Sirrah,” my packleader said, “and require nothing further other than a bowl of cold water, and a stop at the facilities, if you please.”

  Sir Rovero barked out a loud command, and his MajorDoggo immediately appeared. “See to their needs,” he commanded.

  “As ye howl, so shall it be done,” the Major said, and led us through another series of passageways, culminating in a stop at the potty-path, and thence to our den on the third floor. After asking further re our requirements, he left us in blessèd peace.

  “These are quite, quite luxurious,” I said, swinging round and round in circles until I had settled down on the plush, padded bed, curled into a ball. “Perhaps we should acquire someth.…”

  “Do you find this all a bit strange, Sniffson?” my leader interrupted.

  “In what way, Cn. Bones?” I asked.

  “I cannot say for sure,” he mused, “but something seems ‘off’ to me here. Well, let us sleep on it: perhaps we will learn more in the morning.”

  * * * *

  But morning came with a rude pounding on our den door.

  “Cn. Bones! Cn. Sniffson! Come quickly!”

  I tumbled out of my lair and staggered to my feet, no easy task when one has yet properly to stretch the kinks out of one’s backbone. In rare bad humor, I flung open the door.

  “What?!” I demanded of the MajorDoggo.

  “There…there has been another murder,” he said. He seemed to be having great difficulty keeping control of himself. “In one of the runs in the garden. Master Sirrah says to come quickly!”

  “Very well,” I said. “We will join you in a moment.”

  But my leader was already almost dressed even as I turned to rouse him. He adjusted his catstalker hat with the tail down the back, and looked at me for my approval. I went over and licked him in and around one ear. The left ear.

  By the time we reached the scene of the new slaying, most of the household had joined us: Sirrah Rovero’s family, his staff, his servants, and even a few of the human-creatures. The stench of blood nearly overwhelmed my senses, until it was completed subsumed
beneath another odor. I swiveled around and riveted my gaze on a pretty Bitch in a rich Chez Chienne d’Amour dressing-gown standing to one side by herself.

  “Why, she…she…”—but I could not gasp it out, I was so shocked. It simply was not done!

  “…She lies in estrus,” Cn. Bones said in an undertone. “Yes, I know, Doctor, that would not be allowed in the big city, where decorum must prevail over all else, if Doggés are to retain their sanity; but in the countryside they sometimes operate under a different set of rules. Control yourself, Sniffson: you have work to do!”

  Indeed I did, and my packleader’s admonition chastened me sufficiently to turn to the task at hand. The victim was a young Sire of perhaps five and twenty years. From his well-developed musculature, I would guess that he worked primarily outside. I said so to the assembled crowd.

  “One…one of the groundskeepers,” The Major confirmed. “He supervised a small crew of human-drudges.”

  At that moment, the Master-Sirrah of the house himself appeared, and ordered most of those present to leave. I do not think that he wanted them to hear the more gruesome details of the murder.

  “What can you tell us, Doctor?” Cn. Bones asked a few minutes later.

  “The Sire’s corpus lies deep within the rigor mortis; I would say he has been dead about four hours, perhaps a bit longer,” was my judgment. “He was mutilated in the same way as the first body. If you would give me a hand…?” I motioned to one of the staff. With his help, I was able to roll the body over on its back.

  “He was killed somewhere else, and moved to this location after rigor had set in. How was he discovered?” I asked the Master.

  Sirrah Rovero looked to the MajorDoggo for a response.

  “Uh, Sirrah, the first crew on site for the morning shift stumbled across the corpus about a half hour ago.”