Speaking for the room, I said, “Works for us.”
“Splendid!” Bones said. “Now, back to my story. So, a thundering herd was approaching Joe Fur and Lucy!” Again with the arm gesture as though creating a real vision.
As he set the scene, describing the thundering hordes of people and animals coming Joe and Lucy Fur’s way, he made it all seem so realistic that I saw Puppy #2 slip down from the sofa, slink around the edge of the room and leap up onto the comfy cushion in front of the bay window, curling up beside Mr. Javier for comfort. One wouldn’t think that a hard-shelled reptile could function as a security blanket, but there you go.
“And who do you think was the man at the very front?” Bones asked.
Honestly. He expected us to guess? Right now? But we were all still so dizzy!
“Stangerson!” Bones cried triumphantly.
We all stared back at him blankly.
“Come on!” Bones cried, a little less triumphant now; a little more desperate. “You know who I’m talking about!”
We really didn’t.
“The Secretary!”
Well, blow me down.
“The Secretary?” I gazed at Bones in open-mouthed shock. Typically, I don’t like physically to appear foolish, but I was that shocked. “You mean to tell me,” I said, “that the Secretary, the second murder victim in our last case, was the leader of these ten thousand people?”
“Well, technically, he was not the leader. There was actually another leader over everybody – and we’ll get to that part shortly – but the lead horse of the ten thousand heading toward Joe Fur and Lucy? That was the Secretary. Well, actually, that wasn’t him. It was his father.”
“So,” I said, still amazed, “you mean to tell me that the Secretary was not always the Secretary, but was once the son of a sort of leader of a group of people?”
“I am saying exactly that,” Bones said.
“I know Dr. Catson’s not done being amazed,” Waggins piped up, “but could you continue with the tale anyway?”
“Of course,” Bones said. “When the father of the Secretary and the Group came upon Joe Fur and Lucy, they offered to bring them along on their trip west and to feed them. The father of the Secretary even offered to have his wife care for Lucy beside his own children in their wagon, for the father of the Secretary had a family, while Joe Fur did not. The only demand the Group made on Joe Fur and Lucy, the only thing they asked, was that Joe and Lucy agree to think just like them.”
“Is that all?” I snorted. “You can’t demand that others think just like you do.”
“Normally, I would wholeheartedly agree with you on that, my dear Catson. Although, I do think the world would be a better place if everyone thought like me.”
I snorted even louder, but the dog ignored me.
“I’m afraid, though,” the dog said, “in this instance, I cannot agree, because that is exactly what happened.”
“That’s right,” Bones said, much to my astonishment. “Joe Fur and Lucy agreed to think just like the Group. Or, to put it more accurately, Joe agreed on both their behalf since a child Lucy’s age wouldn’t have been able to enter into such agreement with any amount of understanding.”
“Is he trying to say that young’uns like us are stupid?” Puppy #3 said to Puppy #4.
“Not at all,” Bones assured Puppy #3 before Puppy #4 could respond. “Only that a human child of age five could not be expected to understand the predicament the Furs found themselves in.”
“Human children,” I added, in Bones’s defense, “are not as sophisticated as you lot.”
I wasn’t sure I necessarily believed as much, but the puppies looked so offended that anyone would think them stupid because of their age. Also, I supposed it didn’t hurt too much, to back the dog every now and then.
“I’m glad we have that settled,” Bones said. “Of course, we all know that kittens are not as smart as puppies either, and most certainly not if the puppy in question is me in my youth – ”
What? And after I’d agreed with him!
“ – but that is neither here nor there,” Bones continued, “for I have another fun fact to share. I know I said the father of the Secretary was only the leader of the caravan of ten thousand, and that is true. But, remember I also said, there was another leader who was the head of everything and everybody, including the father of the Secretary.”
“And who was that?” I said.
“Tell you what, my dear Catson. Why don’t I make it easy on you: We’ll just call him the Leader.”
“Fine,” I agreed, resignedly. By this point, I was through being offended, at least for the time being. I was overdue for a nap and a meal and just wanted to get to the heart of the story so that I could go get both.
I was in the midst of thinking about that happy prospect – a nap! – when I glimpsed something outside the window that put me on full wide-awake alert.
“Squirrel!” I shouted, pointing.
Every creature in the room raced to the bay window, crowding in around Mr. Javier and Puppy #2.
“Are you sure?” Bones cried. “Where did he go?”
“He was here just a moment ago,” I said. “I saw him staring in the window with his beady little eyes. Do you think it could have been that Moriarty fellow, coming to spy on us?”
At the mention of Moriarty, the puppies cringed. Even Mr. Javier cringed. Did everyone know Moriarty?
“You must not give in to fear, my dear Catson,” Bones said.
“I wasn’t! I – ”
“You must not begin seeing shadows – in this case, squirrel-shaped shadows – where none exist.”
“It was no shadow! It was a real sq – ”
“Just because Professor Moriarty is a squirrel,” Bones said, “it does not logically follow that all squirrels are Professor Moriarty.”
I opened my mouth, shut it again. Fine. Let him have it his way.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I did see a squirrel outside the window. How did he get there? We are, after all, on the second story.”
“Elementary.” Bones smooshed his face against the window, no doubt leaving some slobber on the formerly pristine panes. “He must have walked along those eaves up there, shimmied down the drainpipe and then hopped over to this ledge, and … Over there!”
“Where?” I said. “What are you looking at?”
The dog pointed. There, on the flat roof of the brick building across the road from where we all were, a building quite similar in outward appearance to my own row house, stood a squirrel on the white gutter.
“Now, how did he get all the way over there?” I said.
“Must’ve run along the telephone wires between the buildings,” Waggins said, pointing.
Despite the distance, I would swear on anything that the squirrel winked and gave a mocking little wave before scurrying out of sight.
“Moriarty!” Bones cried.
I refrained from saying “I told you so.” Sometimes, it’s enough to let events speak for themselves.
“Well,” Bones said with a sigh, “we’ll never catch him right now. Might as well return to our tale.”
I resumed my place on one of the wing chairs and Bones resumed his place on the floor, but now all the puppies except #5 crowded around Mr. Javier for comfort. It was like he’d become their mascot or den mother. As for Puppy #5, he pulled out one of Bones’s chew toys, facing off against it and attacking like it might be an enemy.
“So,” Bones said, “to sum up, we have the Leader, who is at the top of everything. But right below him, there are four other men, who have almost as much power as he does. Of these four, one is the father of the Secretary and two don’t figure into the story, at least not at this point. Now, can you guess the fourth?”
I groaned. “Guessing games, Bones? Seriously?”
“Think, Catson.”
“But I�
��m so hungry!”
“I know you can guess this one, Catson. In fact, I’m sure of it. Really try. Think.”
I thought.
I thought and I thought and I thought.
I thought of all the people he knew that I also knew, because it only made sense that it should be someone we both knew. Otherwise, why would he think that I knew what he knew?
It couldn’t be Inspector Strange or Inspector No One Very Important – both of whom would be impossible choices for this, a high-ranking position in some group in the U.S., not to mention they’d have been too young back then – or Mr. Javier; several decades back, he’d have still been in Castile.
I strained and I strained, trying to think of who the most improbable person would be.
Then, I got it, snapping my paw at him several times in rapid succession and crying: “The other victim from the last case! The German! The one whose name I couldn’t get right! You’re talking about, er, John Smith!”
“Brava, Dr. Catson!” The dog actually clapped for me. “I knew you had it in you! Although, it was not, er, John Smith, but rather, his father. Now, give the cat a cookie, Mr. Javier. Come to think of it, it’s time we all had a meal.”
While the others debated what to get – they were sure they wanted “the takeout,” as Mr. Javier likes to put it, but they weren’t sure which kind – I marveled at the craziness of what I’d just learned.
“But how is such a thing possible?” I shouted to Bones over the clatter of the puppies, who were busily passing back and forth takeout menus amongst themselves; I could only guess that most of their meals came from leavings in the streets or trash bins behind the city’s restaurants, as opposed to a choice between Lebanese and Chinese. “Both the father of the Secretary and the father of, er, John Smith, our two victims in the last case, were somehow involved together previously, were in fact two of four sub-leaders in some sort of group … in Utah?”
“How many times have I told you, my dear Catson, that once you have removed the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth?”
“None,” I said dryly. “I’m quite certain I’ve never heard that one before in my life.”
“Then I am telling you now.”
I looked over at Mr. Javier. The turtle was having a devil of a time trying to get the puppies to all agree on just one place to get their dinners from. In the end, they could not agree, so it was decided that we would order spaghetti and meatballs from the Italian place on First Street, chicken lo mein from the Chinese place on Second Street, and several nice juicy steaks from Samuel’s Steakhouse on Third Street. We had explained to the puppies that anything to do with seafood was no longer an option, a conversation that went something like:
Puppy #1: I’ve always wanted to try lobster.
Mr. Javier: Lobsters are my friends.
Puppy #2: Maybe some shrimp then?
Mr. Javier: The shrimps are my friends.
Waggins: Clams? Mussels? Oysters? Salmon? Or maybe –
Mr. Javier: Am I not making myself sufficiently clear here? All the creatures of the sea are my friends! Nay, they are like my family. So asking me to –
And there he proceeded with a long speech about how all the creatures of the sea were his brethren and then it took a most gruesome turn when he went into detail about what life would be like if he expected us to order takeout food comprised of our own species. Puppy #5 didn’t seem to mind too much – as far as he’s concerned, the more gruesome a thing is, the better – but the rest of us did see Mr. Javier’s point. So, like I said: spaghetti etcetera.
Of course, the added guests for dinner meant moving several heavy chairs from their usual positions against the wall up closer to the dining room table. Before the jetpack, such an operation might have taken Mr. Javier a whole day. Not because the chairs were so heavy – the little turtle is surprisingly strong – but because of the slowness factor. Now, however, he had the task accomplished in a trice. And in another trice, he had jetted all over town, returning with our various suppers.
While Mr. Javier was gone, and while the dog and puppies made wide use of the chew toys, I made use of my own telephone. It’s not a device I normally care to use myself, but I’d had a thought earlier in the day, now I had means and opportunity to do something about that thought, and so I did. The others were so busy chewing, that even the dog – with his so-called superior powers of observation – didn’t notice what I was doing.
Like I said, the turtle was quick. Within an hour we were all seated around the table, dishing up food. Even Mr. Javier sat with us. The turtle was determined not to miss any of the story.
As I lifted a forkful of spaghetti toward my mouth, I thought how, the few times the public human detectives had been in our presence while Bones and I ate, they’d marveled at the sight of a cat using a fork properly. For some reason, the dog utilizing utensils didn’t throw them half so much – perhaps because the dog never used them properly.
This reaction always caused me to laugh silently to myself. Seriously? Once they accepted that animals could talk, this was what they stumbled over?
“Now that everyone has food on their plates,” the dog announced from his head of the table, “I shall continue. Let’s fast forward twelve years in our story.”
“Why?” I said. “Did nothing of significance happen in those twelve years?”
“Not really,” Bones said, “unless you include Joe Fur doing very well for himself and Lucy Fur growing up and reaching the age of seventeen. In fact, Joe Fur did so well for himself, he grew to be quite wealthy and a well-respected member of the Group. There was just one problem.”
“Which was?” I prompted.
“Joe Fur had yet to get married and this was frowned upon by the Group, for the Group believed in marriage, very much so.”
“Well,” said Puppy #5, “I for one am glad he didn’t get married. Marriage, to me, means there might be a romance in the story, which would be worse than history or geography, and the exact opposite of mystery.”
“I think,” Bones said carefully, “that you are quite wrong about romance, but no, this is not a romance. Or at least, not for very long.”
Whatever could he mean by that?
“If Joe Fur would not get married,” Bones said, “who do you think, in his household, the Group would want to see married?”
This was so easy, even the puppies could do the math. Subtract Joe Fur, and who was left in his household?
“Lucy Fur?” Puppy #4 gasped. “The Group wanted Lucy Fur to get married … to one of them?”
“That is precisely what they wanted, my young friend,” Bones said. “The only problem was that was not what they got.”
There he went with the cliffhangers again.
“Then who?” I asked, exasperated. “Who did they get instead?”
“All in good time, my dear Catson, all in good time. First, I must tell you a story.”
“I thought that’s what you were doing!” I said, more exasperated still. Honestly.
“I suppose I am,” the dog said. “Very well. A story within the story, then.”
Oh, brother.
My heavy sighs, my exaggerated eye rolls – they did nothing to affect or deter the dog.
“Picture this,” he said, squinting at a dusty horizon only he could see. “Young Lucy Fur at age seventeen, still considered young to us for a human, but in that time and place considered to be a young woman of marriageable age. One day, she is out riding on a horse – ”
“She has a horse now?” Puppy #1 interjected. “When did she get a horse?”
Bone chose to ignore him – a rare move on his part. Some animals and humans are just always getting distracted. True, I can get distracted by a moving piece of yarn, but that, I think we can all agree, is completely understandable.
“No matter. So, Lucy was out riding around on her horse when, suddenly, she found herself trapped inside a
herd of cattle.”
“How does that even happen?” Puppy #2 asked. “Did she not see them coming? Could she not get out of the way?”
Wisely, with a heavy sigh and a paw swipe across his own brow, Bones chose to ignore these questions too. “It seems to me,” Puppy #3 said, “that lots of things happen suddenly in the west in the United States of America. Dust storms, herds of cattle surrounding you, even stories jumping ahead twelve years – it all happens suddenly.”
“She was in dire peril! Then, suddenly!” Bones cried so loudly, I dropped my fork. “A man on a horse appears! Out of nowhere!”
“What did I tell you?” Puppy #3 said with a nudge to Puppy #4.
“The man saves Lucy!” Bones cried, louder yet.
For one who was normally such a practical being, the dog was certainly wrapped up in the romance of the thing.
“Afterward,” Bones continued, in a less dramatic voice, “the man tells Lucy he believes that, years ago, his family and Lucy’s family – or at least Joe Fur – knew each other in a different state within the United States of America. The man is just passing through, a stranger to the town when he rescued Lucy – and this is not the sort of town that likes strangers – but he decides to stick around for a bit. He finds a place to stay at an inn in town. He even makes a few friends – perhaps it’s more accurate to call them acquaintances, since no one in the Group much cares for outsiders.”
“But where did he even come from?” I said. “Did he really just appear out of nowhere?”
“Pretty much.” The dog shrugged. “In those days, in the American West, people were always appearing out of nowhere. He was heading west, like so many before him, in hopes of finding gold.”
“He had no money of his own?” I asked.
“Oh, he did.” The dog shrugged again. “A fair amount, actually. But you know humans. They always want more.”
That’s certainly true.
“The man never made it far enough west to find gold, however,” Bones said. “But he found something even better. He found love.”
Sherlock Bones 2: Dog Not Gone! Page 4
