The Compleat Boucher

by Anthony Boucher; Editor: James A. Mann

  “I could be a Seeing Eye dog, maybe?”

  “They have to be female.”

  “When I’m changed I can understand animal language. Maybe I could be a dog trainer and— No, that’s out. I forgot: they’re scared to death of me.”

  But Ozymandias’ pale-blue eyes had lit up at the suggestion. “Colleague, you’re warm. Oh, are you warm! Tell me: why did you say your fabulous Gloria was coming to Berkeley?”

  “Publicity for a talent hunt.”

  “For what?”

  “A dog to star in Fangs of the Forest.”

  “And what kind of a dog?”

  “A—” Wolf’s eyes widened and his jaw sagged. “A wolf dog,” he said softly.

  And the two men looked at each other with a wild surmise—silent, beside a bar in Berkeley.

  “It’s all the fault of that damned Disney dog,” the trainer complained. “Pluto does anything. Everything. So our poor mutts are expected to do likewise. Listen to that dope! ‘The dog should come into the room, give one paw to the baby, indicate that he recognizes the hero in his Eskimo disguise, go over to the table, find the bone, and clap his paws gleefully!’ Now, who’s got a set of signals to cover stuff like that? Pluto’s” he snorted.

  Gloria Garton said, “Oh.” By that one sound she managed to convey that she sympathized deeply, that the trainer was a nice-looking young man whom she’d just as soon see again, and that no dog star was going to steal Fangs of the Forest from her. She adjusted her skirt slightly, leaned back, and made the plain wooden chair on the bare theater stage seem more than ever like a throne.

  “All right.” The man in the violet beret waved away the last unsuccessful applicant and read from a card: “ ‘Dog: Wopsy. Owner: Mrs. Channing Galbraith. Trainer: Luther Newby.’ Bring it in.”

  An assistant scurried offstage, and there was a sound of whines and whimpers as a door opened.

  “What’s got into those dogs today?” the man in the violet beret demanded. “They all seem scared to death and beyond.”

  “I think,” said Fergus O’Breen, “that it’s that big gray wolf dog. Somehow, the others just don’t like him.”

  Gloria Garton lowered her bepurpled lids and cast a queenly stare of suspicion on the young detective. There was nothing wrong with his being there. His sister was head of publicity for Metropolis, and he’d handled several confidential cases for the studio; even one for her, that time her chauffeur had decided to try his hand at blackmail. Fergus O’Breen was a Metropolis fixture; but still it bothered her.

  The assistant brought in Mrs. Galbraith’s Wopsy. The man in the violet beret took one look and screamed. The scream bounced back from every wall of the theater in the ensuing minute of silence. At last he found words. “A wolf dog! Tookah is the greatest role ever written for a wolf dog! And what do they bring us? A terrier, yet! So if we wanted a terrier we could cast Asta!”

  “But if you’d only let us show you—’’Wopsy’s tall young trainer started to protest.

  “Get out!” the man in the violet beret shrieked. “Get out before I lose my temper!”

  Wopsy and her trainer slunk off.

  “In El Paso,” the casting director lamented, “they bring me a Mexican hairless. In St. Louis it’s a Pekinese yet! And if I do find a wolf dog, it sits in a corner and waits for somebody to bring it a sled to pull.”

  “Maybe,” said Fergus, “you should try a real wolf.”

  “Wolf, schmolf. We’ll end up wrapping John Barrymore in a wolfskin.” He picked up the next card. “ ‘Dog: Yoggoth. Owner and trainer: Mr. O. Z. Manders.’ Bring it in.”

  The whining noise offstage ceased as Yoggoth was brought out to be tested. The man in the violet beret hardly glanced at the fringe-bearded owner and trainer. He had eyes only for that splendid gray wolf. “If you can only act . . .” he prayed, with the same fervor with which many a man has thought, If you could only cook . . .

  He pulled the beret to an even more unlikely angle and snapped, “All right, Mr. Manders. The dog should come into the room, give one paw to the baby, indicate that he recognizes the hero in his Eskimo disguise, go over to the table, find the bone, and clap his paws joyfully. Baby here, hero here, table here. Got that?”

  Mr. Manders looked at his wolf dog and repeated, “Got that?”

  Yoggoth wagged his tail.

  “Very well, colleague,” said Mr. Manders. “Do it.”

  Yoggoth did it.

  The violet beret sailed into the flies, on the wings of its owner’s triumphal scream of joy. “He did it!” he kept burbling. “He did it!”

  “Of course, colleague,” said Mr. Manders calmly.

  The trainer who hated Pluto had a face as blank as a vampire’s mirror. Fergus O’Breen was speechless with wonderment. Even Gloria Garton permitted surprise and interest to cross her regal mask.

  “You mean he can do anything?” gurgled the man who used to have a violet beret.

  “Anything,” said Mr. Manders.

  “Can he— Let’s see, in the dance-hall sequence . . . can he knock a man down, roll him over, and frisk his back pocket?”

  Even before Mr. Manders could say “Of course,” Yoggoth had demonstrated, using Fergus O’Breen as a convenient dummy.

  “Peace!” the casting director sighed. “Peace . . . Charley!” he yelled to his assistant. “Send ’em all away. No more tryouts. We’ve found Tookah! It’s wonderful.”

  The trainer stepped up to Mr. Manders. “It’s more than that, sir. It’s positively superhuman. I’ll swear I couldn’t detect the slightest signal, and for such complicated operations, too. Tell me, Mr. Manders, what system do you use?”

  Mr. Manders made a Hoople-ish kaff-kaffnoise. “Professional secret, you understand, young man. I’m planning on opening a school when I retire, but obviously until then—”

  “Of course, sir. I understand. But I’ve never seen anything like it in all my born days.”

  “I wonder,” Fergus O’Breen observed abstractly from the floor, “if your marvel dog can get off of people, too?”

  Mr. Manders stifled a grin. “Of course! Yoggoth!”

  Fergus picked himself up and dusted from his clothes the grime of the stage, which is the most clinging grime on earth. “I’d swear,” he muttered, “that beast of yours enjoyed that.”

  “No hard feelings, I trust, Mr.—”

  “O’Breen. None at all. In fact, I’d suggest a little celebration in honor of this great event. I know you can’t buy a drink this near the campus, so I brought along a bottle just in case.”

  “Oh,” said Gloria Garton, implying that carousals were ordinarily beneath her; that this, however, was a special occasion; and that possibly there was something to be said for the green-eyed detective after all.

  This was all too easy, Wolfe Wolf—Yoggoth kept thinking. There was a catch to it somewhere. This was certainly the ideal solution to the problem of how to earn money as a werewolf. Bring an understanding of human speech and instructions into a fine animal body, and you are the answer to a director’s prayer. It was perfect as long as it lasted; and if Fangs of the Forest was a smash hit, there were bound to be other Yoggoth pictures. Look at Rin-Tin-Tin. But it was too easy.

  His ears caught a familiar “Oh,” and his attention reverted to Gloria. This “Oh” had meant that she really shouldn’t have another drink, but since liquor didn’t affect her anyway and this was a special occasion, she might as well.

  She was even more beautiful than he had remembered. Her golden hair was shoulder-length now, and flowed with such rippling perfection that it was all he could do to keep from reaching out a paw to it. Her body had ripened, too; was even more warm and promising than his memories of her. And in his new shape he found her greatest charm in something he had not been able to appreciate fully as a human being: the deep, heady scent of her flesh.

  “To Fangs of the Forest!” Fergus O’Breen was toasting. “And may that pretty-boy hero of yours get a worse mauling than I did.”
>
  Wolf-Yoggoth grinned to himself. That had been fun. That’d teach the detective to go crawling around hotel rooms.

  “And while we’re celebrating, colleagues,” said Ozymandias the Great, “why should we neglect our star? Here, Yoggoth.” And he held out the bottle.

  “He drinks, yet!” the casting director exclaimed delightedly.

  “Sure. He was weaned on it.”

  Wolf took a sizable gulp. It felt good. Warm and rich—almost the way Gloria smelled.

  “But how about you, Mr. Manders?” the detective insisted for the fifth time. “It’s your celebration really. The poor beast won’t get the four-figure checks from Metropolis. And you’ve taken only one drink.”

  “Never take two, colleague. I know my danger point. Two drinks in me and things start happening.”

  “More should happen yet than training miracle dogs? Go on, O’Breen. Make him drink. We should see what happens.”

  Fergus took another long drink himself. “Go on. There’s another bottle in the car, and I’ve gone far enough to be resolved not to leave here sober. And I don’t want sober companions, either.” His green eyes were already beginning to glow with a new wildness.

  “No, thank you, colleague.”

  Gloria Garton left her throne, walked over to the plump man, and stood close, her soft hand resting on his arm. “Oh,” she said, implying that dogs were dogs, but still that the party was unquestionably in her honor and his refusal to drink was a personal insult.

  Ozymandias the Great looked at Gloria, sighed, shrugged, resigned himself to fate, and drank.

  “Have you trained many dogs?” the casting director asked.

  “Sorry, colleague. This is my first.”

  “All the more wonderful! But what’s your profession otherwise?”

  “Well, you see, I’m a magician.”

  “Oh,” said Gloria Garton, implying delight, and went so far as to add, “I have a friend who does black magic.”

  “I’m afraid, ma’am, mine’s simply white. That’s tricky enough. With the black you’re in for some real dangers.”

  “Hold on!” Fergus interposed. “You mean really a magician? Not just presti . . . sleight of hand?”

  “Of course, colleague.”

  “Good theater,” said the casting director. “Never let ’em see the mirrors.”

  “Uh-huh,” Fergus nodded. “But look, Mr. Manders. What can you do, for instance?”

  “Well, I can change—”

  Yoggoth barked loudly.

  “Oh, no,” Ozymandias covered hastily, “that’s really a little beyond me. But I can—

  “Can you do the Indian rope trick?” Gloria asked languidly. “My friend says that’s terribly hard.”

  “Hard? Why, ma’am, there’s nothing to it. I can remember that time in Darjeeling—”

  Fergus took another long drink. “I,” he announced defiantly, “want to see the Indian rope trick. I have met people who’ve met people who’ve met people who’ve seen it, but that’s as close as I ever get. And I don’t believe it.”

  “But, colleague, it’s so simple.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Ozymandias the Great drew himself up to his full lack of height. “Colleague, you are about to see it!” Yoggoth tugged warningly at his coattails. “Leave me alone, Wolf. An aspersion has been cast!”

  Fergus returned from the wings dragging a soiled length of rope. “This do?”

  “Admirably.”

  “What goes?” the casting director demanded.

  “Shh!”said Gloria. “Oh—”

  She beamed worshipfully on Ozymandias, whose chest swelled to the point of threatening the security of his buttons. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he announced, in the manner of one prepared to fill a vast amphitheater with his voice. “You are about to behold Ozymandias the Great in—The Indian Rope Trick! Of course,” he added conversationally, “I haven’t got a small boy to chop into mincemeat, unless perhaps one of you— No? Well, we’ll try it without. Not quite so impressive, though. And will you stop yapping, Wolf?”

  “I thought his name was Yogi,” said Fergus.

  “Yoggoth. But since he’s part wolf on his mother’s side— Now, quiet, all of you!

  He had been coiling the rope as he spoke. Now he placed the coil in the center of the stage, where it lurked like a threatening rattler. He stood beside it and deftly, professionally, went through a series of passes and mumblings so rapidly that even the superhumanly sharp eyes and ears of Wolf-Yoggoth could not follow them.

  The end of the rope detached itself from the coil, reared in the air, turned for a moment like a head uncertain where to strike, then shot straight up until all the rope was uncoiled. The lower end rested a good inch above the stage.

  Gloria gasped. The casting director drank hurriedly. Fergus, for some reason, stared curiously at the wolf.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen—oh, hang it, I do wish I had a boy to carve— Ozymandias the Great will ascend this rope into that land which only the users of the rope may know. Onward and upward! Be right back,” he added reassuringly to Wolf.

  His plump hands grasped the rope above his head and gave a little jerk. His knees swung up and clasped about the hempen pillar. And up he went, like a monkey on a stick, up and up and up—until suddenly he was gone.

  Just gone. That was all there was to it. Gloria was beyond even saying “Oh.” The casting director sat his beautiful flannels down on the filthy floor and gaped. Fergus swore softly and melodiously. And Wolf felt a premonitory prickling in his spine.

  The stage door opened, admitting two men in denim pants and work shirts. “Hey!” said the first. “Where do you think you are?”

  “We’re from Metropolis Pictures,” the casting director started to explain, scrambling to his feet.

  “I don’t care if you’re from Washington, we gotta clear this stage. There’s movies here tonight. Come on, Joe, help me get ’em out. And that pooch, too.”

  “You can’t, Fred,” said Joe reverently, and pointed. His voice sank to an awed whisper. “That’s Gloria Garton—”

  “So it is. Hi, Miss Garton. Cripes, wasn’t that last one of yours a stinkeroo!”

  “Your public, darling,” Fergus murmured.

  “Come on!” Fred shouted. “Out of here. We gotta clean up. And you, Joe! Strike that rope!”

  Before Fergus could move, before Wolf could leap to the rescue, the efficient stagehand had struck the rope and was coiling it up.

  Wolf stared up into the flies. There was nothing up there. Nothing at all. Someplace beyond the end of that rope was the only man on earth he could trust to say Absarka! for him; and the way down was cut off forever. Wolfe Wolf sprawled on the floor of Gloria Garton’s boudoir and watched that vision of volupty change into her most fetching negligee.

  The situation was perfect. It was the fulfillment of all his dearest dreams. The only flaw was that he was still in a wolf’s body.

  Gloria turned, leaned over, and chucked him under the snout. “Wuzzum a cute wolf dog, wuzzum?”

  Wolf could not restrain a snarl.

  “Doesn’t um like Gloria to talk baby talk? Um was a naughty wolf, yes, um was.”

  It was torture. Here you are in your best-beloved’s hotel room, all her beauty revealed to your hungry eyes, and she talks baby talk to you! Wolf had been happy at first when Gloria suggested that she might take over the care of her co-star pending the reappearance of his trainer—for none of them was quite willing to admit that “Mr. O. Z. Manders” might truly and definitely have vanished—but he was beginning to realize that the situation might bring on more torment than pleasure.

  “Wolves are funny,” Gloria observed. She was more talkative when alone, with no need to be cryptically fascinating. “I knew a Wolfe once, only that was his name. He was a man. And he was a funny one.”

  Wolf felt his heart beating fast under his gray fur. To hear his own name on Gloria’s warm lips . . . But before she cou
ld go on to tell her pet how funny Wolfe was, her maid rapped on the door.

  “A Mr. O’Breen to see you, madam.”

  “Tell him to go ’way.”

  “He says it’s important, and he does look, madam, as though he might make trouble.”

  “Oh, all right.” Gloria rose and wrapped her negligee more respectably about her. “Come on, Yog— No, that’s a silly name. I’m going to call you Wolfie. That’s cute. Come on, Wolfie, and protect me from the big, bad detective.”

  Fergus O’Breen was pacing the sitting room with a certain vicious deliberateness in his strides. He broke off and stood still as Gloria and the wolf entered.

  “So?” he observed tersely. “Reinforcements?”

  “Will I need them?” Gloria cooed.

  “Look, light of my love life.” The glint in the green eyes was cold and deadly. “You’ve been playing games, and whatever their nature, there’s one thing they’re not. And that’s cricket.”

  Gloria gave him a languid smile. “You’re amusing, Fergus.”

  “Thanks. I doubt, however, if your activities are.”

  “You’re still a little boy playing cops and robbers. And what boogyman are you after now?”

  “Ha-ha,” said Fergus politely. “And you know the answer to that question better than I do. That’s why I’m here.”

  Wolf was puzzled. This conversation meant nothing to him. And yet he sensed a tension of danger in the air as clearly as though he could smell it.

  “Go on,” Gloria snapped impatiently. “And remember how dearly Metropolis Pictures will thank you for annoying one of its best box-office attractions.”

  “Some things, my sweeting, are more important than pictures, though you mightn’t think it where you come from. One of them is a certain federation of forty-eight units. Another is an abstract concept called democracy.”