by Neil Gaiman
Gloria smiled her best cruel and queenly smile. “Come along, Wolfie. This may interest you.”
Professor Oscar Fearing, overflowing one of the graceful chairs of the sitting room, beamed benevolently as Gloria and the wolf entered. “Ah, my dear! A new pet. Touching.”
“And what a pet, Oscar. Wait till you hear.”
Professor Fearing buffed his pince-nez against his sleeve. “And wait, my dear, until you hear all that I have learned. Chiswick has perfected his protective screen against magnetic bombs, and the official trial is set for next week. And Farnsworth has all but completed his researches on a new process for obtaining osmium. Gas warfare may start any day, and the power that can command a plentiful supply of—”
“Fine, Oscar,” Gloria broke in. “But we can go over all this later. We’ve got other worries right now.”
“What do you mean, my dear?”
“Have you run onto a redheaded young Irishman in a yellow shirt?”
“No, I— Why, yes. I did see such an individual leaving the office yesterday. I believe he had been to see Wolfe.”
“He’s on to us. He’s a detective from Los Angeles, and he’s tracking us down. Someplace he got hold of a scrap of record that should have been destroyed. He knows I’m in it, and he knows I’m tied up with somebody here in the German department.”
Professor Fearing scrutinized his pince-nez, approved of their cleanness, and set them on his nose. “Not so much excitement, my dear. No hysteria. Let us approach this calmly. Does he know about the Temple of the Dark Truth?”
“Not yet. Nor about you. He just knows it’s somebody in the department.”
“Then what could be simpler? You have heard of the strange conduct of Wolfe Wolf?”
“Have I!” Gloria laughed harshly.
“Everyone knows of Wolfe’s infatuation with you. Throw the blame onto him. It should be easy to clear yourself and make you appear an innocent tool. Direct all attention to him and the organization will be safe. The Temple of the Dark Truth can go its mystic way and extract even more invaluable information from weary scientists who need the emotional release of a false religion.”
“That’s what I’ve tried to do. I gave O’Breen a long song and dance about my devotion to Wolfe, so obviously phony he’d be bound to think it was a cover-up for something else. And I think he bit. But the situation’s a damned sight trickier than you guess. Do you know where Wolfe Wolf is?”
“No one knows. After the president…ah…rebuked him, he seems to have vanished.”
Gloria laughed again. “He’s right here. In this room.”
“My dear! Secret panels and such? You take your espionage too seriously. Where?”
“There!”
Professor Fearing gaped. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as you are about the future of Fascism. That is Wolfe Wolf.”
Fearing approached the wolf incredulously and extended his hand.
“He might bite,” Gloria warned him a second too late.
Fearing stared at his bleeding hand. “That, at least,” he observed, “is undeniably true.” And he raised his foot to deliver a sharp kick.
“No, Oscar! Don’t! Leave him alone. And you’ll have to take my word for it—it’s way too complicated. But the wolf is Wolfe Wolf, and I’ve got him absolutely under control. He’s perfectly in our hands. We’ll switch suspicion to him, and I’ll keep him this way while Fergus and his friends the G-men go off hotfoot on his trail.”
“My dear!” Fearing ejaculated. “You’re mad. You’re more hopelessly mad than the devout members of the temple.” He took off his pince-nez and stared again at the wolf. “And yet Tuesday night— Tell me one thing: From whom did you get this…this wolf dog?”
“From a funny plump little man with a fringy beard.”
Fearing gasped. Obviously he remembered the furor in the temple, and the wolf and the fringe-beard. “Very well, my dear. I believe you. Don’t ask me why, but I believe you. And now—”
“Now, it’s all set, isn’t it? We keep him here helpless, and we use him to—”
“The wolf as scapegoat. Yes. Very pretty.”
“Oh! One thing—” She was suddenly frightened.
Wolfe Wolf was considering the possibilities of a sudden attack on Fearing. He could probably get out of the room before Gloria could say Absarka! But after that? Whom could he trust to restore him? Especially if G-men were to be set on his trail…
“What is it?” Fearing asked.
“That secretary. That little mouse in the department office. She knows it was you I asked for, not Wolf. Fergus can’t have talked to her yet, because he swallowed my story; but he will. He’s thorough.”
“Hm-m-m. Then, in that case—”
“Yes, Oscar?”
“She must be attended to.” Professor Oscar Fearing beamed genially and reached for the phone.
Wolf acted instantly, on inspiration and impulse. His teeth were strong, quite strong enough to jerk the phone cord from the wall. That took only a second, and in the next second he was out of the room and into the hall before Gloria could open her mouth to speak that word that would convert him from a powerful and dangerous wolf to a futile man.
There were shrill screams and a shout or two of “Mad dog!” as he dashed through the hotel lobby, but he paid no heed to them. The main thing was to reach Emily’s house before she could be “attended to.” Her evidence was essential. That could swing the balance, show Fergus and his G-men where the true guilt lay. And, besides, he admitted to himself, Emily was a damned nice kid….
His rate of collision was about one point six six per block, and the curses heaped upon him, if theologically valid, would have been more than enough to damn him forever. But he was making time, and that was all that counted. He dashed through traffic signals, cut into the path of trucks, swerved from under streetcars, and once even leaped over a stalled car that was obstructing him. Everything was going fine, he was halfway there, when two hundred pounds of human flesh landed on him in a flying tackle.
He looked up through the brilliant lighting effects of smashing his head on the sidewalk and saw his old nemesis, the policeman who had been cheated of his beer.
“So, Rover!” said the officer. “Got you at last, did I? Now we’ll see if you’ll wear a proper license tag. Didn’t know I used to play football, did you?”
The officer’s grip on his hair was painfully tight. A gleeful crowd was gathering and heckling the policeman with fantastic advice.
“Get along, boys,” he admonished. “This is a private matter between me and Rover here. Come on,” and he tugged even harder.
Wolf left a large tuft of fur and skin in the officer’s grasp and felt the blood ooze out of the bare patch on his neck. He heard a ripe oath and a pistol shot simultaneously, and felt the needlelike sting through his shoulder. The awestruck crowd thawed before him. Two more bullets hied after him, but he was gone, leaving the most dazed policeman in Berkeley.
“I hit him,” the officer kept muttering blankly. “I hit the—”
Wolfe Wolf coursed along Dwight Way. Two more blocks and he’d be at the little bungalow that Emily shared with a teaching assistant in something or other. Ripping out that telephone had stopped Fearing only momentarily; the orders would have been given by now; the henchmen would be on their way. But he was almost there….
“He’o!” a child’s light voice called to him. “Nice woof-woof come back!”
Across the street was the modest frame dwelling of Robby and his shrewish mother. The child had been playing on the sidewalk. Now he saw his idol and deliverer and started across the street at a lurching toddle. “Nice woof-woof!” he kept calling. “Wait for Robby!”
Wolf kept on. This was no time for playing games with even the most delightful of cubs. And then he saw the car. It was an ancient jalopy, plastered with wisecracks even older than itself; and the high school youth driving was obviously showing his girlfriend how it could make
time on this deserted residential street. The girl was a cute dish, and who could be bothered watching out for children?
Robby was directly in front of the car. Wolf leaped straight as a bullet. His trajectory carried him so close to the car that he could feel the heat of the radiator on his flank. His forepaws struck Robby and thrust him out of danger. They fell to the ground together, just as the car ground over the last of Wolf’s caudal vertebrae.
The cute dish screamed. “Homer! Did we hit them?”
Homer said nothing, and the jalopy zoomed on.
Robby’s screams were louder. “You hurt me!! You hurt me! Baaaaad woof-woof!”
His mother appeared on the porch and joined in with her own howls of rage. The cacophony was terrific. Wolf let out one wailing yelp of his own, to make it perfect and to lament his crushed tail, and dashed on. This was no time to clear up misunderstandings.
But the two delays had been enough. Robby and the policeman had proved the perfect unwitting tools of Oscar Fearing. As Wolf approached Emily’s little bungalow, he saw a gray sedan drive off. In the rear was a small, slim girl, and she was struggling.
Even a werewolf’s lithe speed cannot equal that of a motorcar. After a block of pursuit, Wolf gave up and sat back on his haunches panting. It felt funny, he thought even in that tense moment, not to be able to sweat, to have to open your mouth and stick out your tongue and…
“Trouble?” inquired a solicitous voice.
This time, Wolf recognized the cat. “Heavens, yes,” he assented wholeheartedly. “More than you ever dreamed of.”
“Food shortage?” the cat asked. “But that toddler back there is nice and plump.”
“Shut up,” Wolf snarled.
“Sorry; I was just judging from what Confucius told me about werewolves. You don’t mean to tell me that you’re an altruistic were?”
“I guess I am. I know werewolves are supposed to go around slaughtering, but right now I’ve got to save a life.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Ah,” the cat reflected philosophically. “Truth is a dark and deceitful thing.”
Wolfe Wolf was on his feet. “Thanks,” he barked. “You’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
“See you later.” And Wolf was off at top speed for the Temple of the Dark Truth.
That was the best chance. That was Fearing’s headquarters. The odds were at least even that when it wasn’t being used for services it was the hangout of his ring, especially since the consulate had been closed in San Francisco. Again the wild running and leaping, the narrow escapes; and where Wolf had not taken these too seriously before, he knew now that he might be immune to bullets, but certainly not to being run over. His tail still stung and ached tormentingly. But he had to get there. He had to clear his own reputation, he kept reminding himself; but what he really thought was, I have to save Emily.
A block from the temple he heard the crackle of gunfire. Pistol shots and, he’d swear, machine guns, too. He couldn’t figure what it meant, but he pressed on. Then a bright-yellow roadster passed him and a vivid flash came from its window. Instinctively he ducked. You might be immune to bullets, but you still didn’t just stand still for them.
The roadster was gone and he was about to follow when a glint of bright metal caught his eye. The bullet that had missed him had hit a brick wall and ricocheted back onto the sidewalk. It glittered there in front of him—pure silver!
This, he realized abruptly, meant the end of his immunity. Fearing had believed Gloria’s story, and with his smattering of occult lore he had known the successful counterweapon. A bullet, from now on, might mean no more needle sting, but instant death.
And so Wolfe Wolf went straight on.
He approached the temple cautiously, lurking behind shrubbery. And he was not the only lurker. Before the temple, crouching in the shelter of a car every window of which was shattered, were Fergus O’Breen and a moonfaced giant. Each held an automatic, and they were taking pot shots at the steeple.
Wolf’s keen lupine hearing could catch their words even above the firing. “Gabe’s around back,” Moonface was explaining. “But it’s no use. Know what that damned steeple is? It’s a revolving machine-gun turret. They’ve been ready for something like this. Only two men in there, far as we can tell, but that turret covers all the approaches.”
“Only two?” Fergus muttered.
“And the girl. They brought a girl here with them. If she’s still alive.”
Fergus took careful aim at the steeple, fired, and ducked back behind the car as a bullet missed him by millimeters. “Missed him again! By all the kings that ever ruled Tara, Moon, there’s got to be a way in there. How about tear gas?”
Moon snorted. “Think you can reach the firing gap in that armored turret at this angle?”
“That girl…” said Fergus.
Wolf waited no longer. As he sprang forward, the gunner noticed him and shifted his fire. It was like a needle shower in which all the spray is solid steel. Wolf’s nerves ached with the pain of reknitting. But at least machine guns apparently didn’t fire silver.
The front door was locked, but the force of his drive carried him through and added a throbbing ache in his shoulder to his other comforts. The lower-floor guard, a pasty-faced individual with a jutting Adam’s apple, sprang up, pistol in hand. Behind him, in the midst of the litter of the cult, ceremonial robes, incense burners, curious books, even a Ouija board, lay Emily.
Pasty-face fired. The bullet struck Wolf full in the chest and for an instant he expected death. But this, too, was lead, and he jumped forward. It was not his usual powerful leap. His strength was almost spent by now. He needed to lie on cool earth and let his nerves knit. And this spring was only enough to grapple with his foe, not to throw him.
The man reversed his useless automatic and brought its butt thudding down on the beast’s skull. Wolf reeled back, lost his balance, and fell to the floor. For a moment he could not rise. The temptation was so strong just to lie there and…
The girl moved. Her bound hands grasped a corner of the Ouija board. Somehow, she stumbled to her rope-tied feet and raised her arms. Just as Pasty-face rushed for the prostrate wolf, she brought the heavy board down.
Wolf was on his feet now. There was an instant of temptation. His eyes fixed themselves to the jut of that Adam’s apple, and his long tongue licked his jowls. Then he heard the machine-gun fire from the turret, and tore himself from Pasty-face’s unconscious form.
Ladders are hard on a wolf, damned near impossible. But if you use your jaws to grasp the rung above you and pull up, it can be done. He was halfway up the ladder when the gunner heard him. The firing stopped, and Wolf heard a rich German oath in what he automatically recognized as an East Prussian dialect with possible Lithuanian influences. Then he saw the man himself, a broken-nosed blond, staring down the ladder well.
The other man’s bullets had been lead. So this must be the one with the silver. But it was too late to turn back now. Wolf bit the next rung and hauled up as the bullet struck his snout and stung through. The blond’s eyes widened as he fired again and Wolf climbed another rung. After the third shot he withdrew precipitately from the opening.
Shots still sounded from below, but the gunner did not return them. He stood frozen against the wall of the turret watching in horror as the wolf emerged from the well. Wolf halted and tried to get his breath. He was dead with fatigue and stress, but this man must be vanquished.
The blond raised his pistol, sighted carefully, and fired once more. He stood for one terrible instant, gazing at this deathless wolf and knowing from his grandmother’s stories what it must be. Then deliberately he clamped his teeth on the muzzle of the automatic and fired again.
Wolf had not yet eaten in his wolf’s body, but food must have been transferred from the human stomach to the lupine. There was at least enough for him to be extensively sick.
Getting
down the ladder was impossible. He jumped. He had never heard anything about a wolf’s landing on its feet, but it seemed to work. He dragged his weary and bruised body along to where Emily sat by the still unconscious Pasty-face, his discarded pistol in her hand. She wavered as the wolf approached her, as though uncertain yet as to whether he was friend or foe.
Time was short. With the machine gun silenced, Fergus and his companions would be invading the temple at any minute. Wolf hurriedly nosed about and found the planchette of the Ouija board. He pushed the heart-shaped bit of wood onto the board and began to shove it around with his paw.
Emily watched, intent and puzzled. “A,” she said aloud. “B—S—”
Wolf finished the word and edged around so that he stood directly beside one of the ceremonial robes. “Are you trying to say something?” Emily frowned.
Wolf wagged his tail in vehement affirmation and began again.
“A—” Emily repeated. “B—S—A—R—”
He could already hear approaching footsteps.
“—K—A— What on earth does that mean? Absarka—”
Ex-professor Wolfe Wolf hastily wrapped his naked human body in the cloak of the Dark Truth. Before either he or Emily knew quite what was happening, he had folded her in his arms, kissed her in a most thorough expression of gratitude, and fainted.
Even Wolf’s human nose could tell, when he awakened, that he was in a hospital. His body was still limp and exhausted. The bare patch on his neck, where the policeman had pulled out the hair, still stung, and there was a lump where the butt of the automatic had connected. His tail, or where his tail had been, sent twinges through him if he moved. But the sheets were cool and he was at rest and Emily was safe.
“I don’t know how you got in there, Mr. Wolf, or what you did; but I want you to know you’ve done your country a signal service.” It was the moonfaced giant speaking.
Fergus O’Breen was sitting beside the bed too. “Congratulations, Wolf. And I don’t know if the doctor would approve, but here.”
Wolfe Wolf drank the whiskey gratefully and looked a question at the huge man.